Hi All,

OK, I'm just a newbie, but am keen to get my set up all running as fast as possible. After losing a month to a hardware fault my wife isn't exactly happy anymore on account of the time the box is soaking up (she's in that worrying zen-state where you don't know what will happen next, but it probably won't be pretty). I've looked all over the place for some concise answers, but have found few. So, the easiest thing to do is just to ask a whole bunch of people who will probably know already. Stuff you probably need to know is that I have a Hauppauge PVR3000 card, am running Vista Ulitmate (though I can easily downgrade to XP), I have a satellite dish with two LNBs and a DiSEqC switch (4 way).

I've had a brief play with Media Centre (very stable, DVB-s is a bit of a problem, little or no configuration options) and also with Media Portal (with and without TV Server - could record view multiple DVB-S streams (might all have been on same transponder) which I thought was interesting since I only had the one card, but lacked stability, wouldn't wake to record and VMC kept showing up univited). Now I have a box that is sound (hardware wise) it's time to stop playing and to lock in a final configuration.


The questions I have are:

1. Media Portal - Should I run this on XP or Vista?
2. If I run Media Portal on Vista how do I stop VMC from gate-crashing?
3. If I run Media Portal should I run the TV Server plugin (seems like a good idea to me)?
4. If I run Media Portal (with or without TV Server) how do I get it to wake up the PC from sleep in order to start recording?
5. Does TV Server support waking - I read somewhere that it was designed to be 'always on'?

If I can get Media Portal running well I'll probably stick with it as it has some VERY cool features and is very configurable in terms of plugins etc - but otherwise I have to go VMC. If I did that:

1. How do I get it to see both LNBs? In several of the DVB-S to DVB-T posts the reg file given contains lines for setting DiSEqC switch parameters, but there is never any explanation as to what the parameters for it are. Does any one have a canned file for Optus D1/D2?
2. Is there a XMLTV guide for dummies somewhere that I can grab? Most of the posts just say "slap on xmltvnz and you are done" - which isn't that helpful if you feel you haven't got a clue to begin with...
3. How do you tell VMC to give you options for inputs - sometimes it insists on scanning for DVB-T, other times it asks if you have a set top box? It never says - how would you like to me to get the video feed?

Or is the answer different alltogether - i.e. Nah, you should use GB-PVR it is much better than all the others combined!

Sorry for the number of questions - I guess I have accumulated a few along the way over the last couple of weeks....need to get it all straight in my head so I don't drown in detail...

Thanks in advance,
Bewildered.