HTPC with Sky Digital

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darkness

59 posts

Master Geek

#25242 16-Aug-2008 09:05

Hi, I've been working on an HTPC for my dad. And I've run into a slight issue.

He already has Sky digital, and has now built up an HTPC, and I am currently running MediaPortal on it with a Happauge PVR-350.

We are running the antenna and dish feeds into the skydigi box, then running the antenna feed from there to the PC. I can tune in reuglar channels fine using mediaportal, but it won't tune the output channel of the skydigi box.

I have also tried outputting from one of the scart ports on the skydigi box to the s-video in on the pvr350. That works and i get the sky signal, however the PC doesn't seem to want to pass the line-in audio to it's optical output, so we get no sound (we do if we plug headphone into the front of the pc.

Has anyone run a htpc with sky digital? Am I trying the right things?

Thanks for the help.

eXDee

4033 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1070

Trusted

#157417 16-Aug-2008 14:10

Optical out is set in AC3 direct passthrough or something by the sound of that, change your codec settings/sound card settings so it will decode it. You should be able to get svideo working with audio. Make sure you have AC3filter or something installed, this should allow you to change it in mediaportal options i think.

I'm in the process of setting up sky with mediaportal with a HVR-2200, except im IR blasting so i dont have to use the sky remote too, and when recording it will auto change channel.

gyrogearloose

22 posts

Geek

#159526 25-Aug-2008 11:45

MediaPortal didn't successfully tune analogue channels for me either, so I manually added Prime and the UHF output of my Sky decoder. I looked at the Sky decoder setup for UHF, it said channel 38, then I went to www.lincrad.co.nz to get the Prime UHF frequency and calculate what channel 38 was in Mhz. When you add the analogue channels manually, enter the frequency. Using an HVR2200 I also had to setup grouping of the Digital/Analogue combinations, otherwise I got the error "Unable to start timeshifting" when changing between Digital & analogue.

darkness

59 posts

Master Geek

#159544 25-Aug-2008 13:07

gyrogearloose:
MediaPortal didn't successfully tune analogue channels for me either, so I manually added Prime and the UHF output of my Sky decoder. I looked at the Sky decoder setup for UHF, it said channel 38, then I went to www.lincrad.co.nz to get the Prime UHF frequency and calculate what channel 38 was in Mhz. When you add the analogue channels manually, enter the frequency. Using an HVR2200 I also had to setup grouping of the Digital/Analogue combinations, otherwise I got the error "Unable to start timeshifting" when changing between Digital & analogue.

thanks for that.

2 questions. i haven't been looking at the freq stuff for long. How did you calculate that?

and for the grouping, was that just putting them in the same group in the mediaportal tv server setup?

gyrogearloose

22 posts

Geek

#159551 25-Aug-2008 13:38

Frequencies: the lincrad site shows the transmitter sites and the frequency of each channel. Each slot uses 8 Mhz, so figure out what frequency your Sky decoder is putting out by looking at the Sky setup, and then extrapolate from the closest lincrad value.

Grouping: kiwijunglist had replied to a thread I raised, noting "2) Try enabling hybrid mode, the instructions are in mediaportal tvserver configuration wiki, the link is via the main mediaportal homepage." And yes, you create groups containing a Digital and an Analogue tuner

darkness

59 posts

Master Geek

#159580 25-Aug-2008 14:30

Thanks a lot.

when i get a chance I'll head to my dads place and work on it some more.

eXDee

4033 posts

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+1 received by user: 1070

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#159641 25-Aug-2008 17:11

RE: HVR-2200 "cannot start timeshifting"
The solution here is using the latest Mediaportal SVN as this bug has been fixed. Also ensure you group the first analogue and first digital together to get the hybrid combinations right.