Hi,

While trying to figure this out, and perusing the forums I realised there wasn't an overview of how to go about this. I figure that by making this easier to do for more people, this supports the 3rd party tools that enable us to do this in the first place.
Hence this topic

In my system I am running Win 7, with a Hauppauge PVR-150MCE (that the sky decoder is hooked into), and a Hauppauge HVR 3300 HD (that the aerial cables are hooked into)

Just a little more pre-amble. I have the cable from the dish combined with the aerial cable. This combined signal then goes into a splitter. From the splitter I feed two cables to the 3300 and 1 through a tv/sky splitter to the sky decoder. The RF out from the sky decoder then feeds back into the same splitter and hence into the splitter where one of the feeds goes to the other TV.

Here’s the overview

Step 1 – Get XMLTV

Step 2 – Setup WIN 7 MCE

Step 3 – Use program like Big Screen EPG to import XMLTV file into WIN7 Guide listings

Step 4 – Edit Channels in Win7 MCE Guide

The assumption here is that you are doing this all on your HTPC

Step 1
Right onto the software bit.
First things read this http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/7220 
This leads to a page explaining where EPG collector came from etc.
Use the links to
1. download the EPG collector
2. follow the link to the discussion forum and then to the detailed instructions
Read them, play with them until you manage to get the XML downloaded

One gotcha is the Dish or LNB frequencies. The examples given probably assume a newer dish etc. I happen to have an older single one.

So these are the params that worked for me.
Note: I used the GUI means of setting the params hence the GUI in the ini filename.


my DVB-S_GUI.ini file looks like this.

[GENERAL]
Location=NZL
Output=DVB-S_XMLTV.xml
Tuner=2
Timeouts=10,300
TuningType=Satellite
TuningFile=160.0 E Optus D1.xml
Option=USECHANNELID,USEIMAGE
ScanningFrequency=12519000,22500,3/4,V,OpenTV
[SATELLITE]
Dish=11300000,11300000,0
Satellite=0

There is also a list of channels that I have ignored but each to there own.

Here is the contents of my batch file. (“Run EPG DVB-S”.bat)
cd C:\Program Files\Geekzone\EPG Collector
EPGCollector.exe /ini=DVB-S_GUI.ini

Optionally you can do the DVB-T (freeview) XMLTV as well

My DVB-T_GUI.ini file looks like this

[GENERAL]

Output=DVB-T_XMLTV.xml

Tuner=1

Timeouts=10,300

TuningType=DVBT

TuningFile=New Zealand.Auckland - Waiatarua.xml

Option=USEIMAGE

ScanningFrequency=570000,8,MHEG5

Step 2

Go through the TV setup.

A couple of pointers decide before hand which tuners you want to use for what. In my case I had DVB-T (Freeview), DVB-S, Analog (Antenna), and the PVR-150 (SKY via video capture).

I wanted to end up with Sky and Freeview, so all I had to setup was the PVR-150 and the DVB-T of the HVR3300.


Win 7 MCE TV Setup

Choose one of Cable, Satellite, Antenna.  I chose cable for the sky (Doesn’t really matter)

And then said Yes to the set top box question

Choose the appropriate tuner card.

Next comes all the MCE EPG palava just go next next etc and choose post code of 0000 as it doesn’t matter.

Where you stop is the video selection screen. In my case the automatic scan of my chosen tuner picked out that I had a s-video signal. Keep going.

Go through the set top box IR setup

At the end the setup asks if you would like to setup another tuner…YES


Choose one of Cable, Satellite, Antenna.  I chose Antenna for the freeview

And then said NO to the set top box question

Choose the appropriate tuner. (May be a bit tricky as the names aren’t too helpful. But then there is only two to choose from so if it doesn’t work go back and pick the other one.)

The next steps go through setting up frequencies etc for the DVB-T tuner. Note: This step can be helpful when figuring out what freq your LNB of the sky dish is. Just type in the freq in MHz i.e. leave off the last 3 zero’s from the figures from the EPG Collector readme files e.g. 11300 or 10750.

Just type in a freq and wait a few seconds, the entry field where you typed the freq will seem to pause while its checking it. If it’s the right one then the green bars will appear. Be a little patient here, give it at least 5 seconds or so just to be sure.

Continue on and then MCE will scan the DVB-T frequencies. This will pick up the freeview guide data directly into the MCE guide.

 

Finish at this point without setting up any other tuners.



If you went to guide now you would probably have up to a 1000 channels. This is probably from saying that you use 3 digits for the Set Top Box during the IR setup. Note this as it is important later.

The guide is useable at this point to change channels although you won’t know what they are ahead of time.

 
Step 3

Use a program like Big Screen EPG.I haven't tried others like GuideHoundEPG, XMLTV2MXF, DVBLink (with DVBViewer etc)

You can either add the provider files individually or separately.


I recommend to add them separately as this way you know which channles to belong to which file and you can change the affiliate column accordingly.
One tip I can recommend is to change the affiliate column to identify if the channel is from SKY or FREEVIEW. This comes in handy when editing channels in the MCE guide later.

The channel numbers should be correct or mostly correct at this point without changing anything else.

Start with just using the defaults. If you have issues follow the trouble shooting, first though try disabling the inband guide.

Do a test generate MXF data.

Then if all good do a import into win 7 MCE


Step 4

Start MCE. Goto Settings, TV, Guide and choose Edit Channels

Now you’re thinking it didn’t work as I can’t see the guide info huh. Well check out the number of listings there are. More than 1000. All the imported listings got tacked on the bottom.


First unselect everything. It’s easier to select 30 or so then it is to unselect a thousand


So choose a channel e.g. TV ONE

Next select edit listings, then type in T or TV this will jump to the listings starting with that letter. This saves using the remote and scrolling down a thousand channels…real pain that would be doing 20-30 or so times.

Once you get to the T listings you will note that some have TV ONE-SKY and TV ONE-FREEVIEW, lucky someone said to change the Affiliate column earlier huh.



My advice here is to select listing to the correct channel using the Show Preview option first then worry about renumbering them afterwards.



Repeat until you have OOS.

Not bad from memory huh, the wifes busy watching X-factor so couldn’t check on things.

 Happy to attempt to answer questions or to clarify above points

Cheers,

Beany
Win7 MCE:
Silverstone Grandia GD05B, abit AN-M2HD, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+, Gigabyte HD 5450 1GB Fanless. Hauppage PVR150 (for A/V capture from SKY), Hauppauge HVR 3300 HD (for Freeview and EPG),



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