MySky equivalent now available for TelstraClear (sort of...)

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Ultimate Geek
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Topic # 9229 31-Aug-2006 14:28

I'm based in Wellington, and for the last couple of years have been developing my own home theatre PC software. It started out primarily supporting analog capture devices like the common Hauppauge PVR150/250/500 cards, but for the last year or so it has also had support for DVB capture devices.

How is it like mysky?
You can have one or more digital tuners in your PC. When it records, it records the original MPEG2 stream from TelstraClear transmission.

I'm now using it in place of my TelstraClear digital box and I'm very happy with it. I use DVI for connecting my video card to my plasma TV, so its digital all the way from TelstraClear to my TV.

What things does it do better than MySky? Lots of things:
- Unike MySky, you end up with normal MPEG-2 files that you can do anything you like with.
- The recordings are unencrypted on your harddrive, so easily able to be archived to DVD etc.
- You can have more than two tuners if you want
- You can also mix in channels from other sources such as DVB-S satellite or analog channels.
- Music playback, Photo viewing etc
- DVD playback from both DVD or hard drive.
- Different skins can be installed to change the look and feel.
- Plugins can be installed to add all sorts of additional functionality.
- Automatically skip commercials on playback

Does this allow me to illegally access TelstraClear programming?
No, you still need to have valid TelstraClear subscription smartcard. It'll only enable you to watch those channels valid for your subscription.

What will it cost you?
Nothing, well...nothing more than the price of the hardware (DVB-C capture device plus Irdeto CAM), and the subscription you're already paying for.

Why are you posting this?
Because we have too few options in New Zealand, and I'm sure there is a few people that would love to be able to do this. I'd also like to get a few people using my software for this. Here is where you picture yourself as a guinea pig...

Limitations worth mentioning?
Sadly you will need one subscription card per digital tuner. So, if you have on TelstraClear digital decoder, you have one smartcard that can be plugged into one digital tuner.

You've got more questions?
Cool, ask them and I'll respond. Or PM me if you prefer.

----

Initially I only want get a few people up and running with this, but after I'm happy that things are going well, I'll open it up to wider set of users. Send me an email if this is something you'd be interested in, and want to come around to my place to get a demo etc...

Ideally this is suited to someone who is technically inclined, and already trying to do the Home Theatre PC thing - otherwise it's probably not worth the hassle.

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45069 31-Aug-2006 14:30

Here are some screenshots:

sbiddle

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Reply # 45073 31-Aug-2006 15:36

How did you get your DVB-C card working with TCL cable? What model card are you actually using?

GB-PVR is seriously cool, I'm just building up a PVR now with it..

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chiefie

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Reply # 45078 31-Aug-2006 15:44

looks good. and anyway to get it to work with MCE 2005 RU2?

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45079 31-Aug-2006 15:56

chiefie: looks good. and anyway to get it to work with MCE 2005 RU2?

Sorry, I cant help you with that one.

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45080 31-Aug-2006 16:01

sbiddle: How did you get your DVB-C card working with TCL cable? What model card are you actually using?

GB-PVR is seriously cool, I'm just building up a PVR now with it..

I've used it with a three different DVB-C devices. Two Twinhan DVB-C devices (model 2031 and model 2033), and the FireDTV DVB-C device. The FireDTV device has a slightly quicker channel change time, about the same as TelstraClear digital cable boxes. The Twinhan devices are about a half second to a second slower changing channels.

The public release of GB-PVR doesnt enable this CAM functionality, since its just a new feature, but for anyone here that decides to try this sort of setup, I'll send them the appropriate files.

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Reply # 45093 31-Aug-2006 18:13

sub:
sbiddle: How did you get your DVB-C card working with TCL cable? What model card are you actually using?

GB-PVR is seriously cool, I'm just building up a PVR now with it..

I've used it with a three different DVB-C devices. Two Twinhan DVB-C devices (model 2031 and model 2033), and the FireDTV DVB-C device. The FireDTV device has a slightly quicker channel change time, about the same as TelstraClear digital cable boxes. The Twinhan devices are about a half second to a second slower changing channels.

The public release of GB-PVR doesnt enable this CAM functionality, since its just a new feature, but for anyone here that decides to try this sort of setup, I'll send them the appropriate files.

I just realised your nick and am assuming you are the same "sub" who is actually the author of GB-PVR?

Chiefie: GB-PVR rocks, Windows MCE PC is a waste of time time and you'll realise how inferior it is compared to Windows XP with GB-PVR! It's a million times better than even the media centre functionaility in Vista.

I'm interested in possibly having a play, I'll send you a PM.

JAMMAN2110

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Reply # 45096 31-Aug-2006 18:20

sub: I'm now using it in place of my TelstraClear digital box and I'm very happy with it. I use DVI for connecting my video card to my plasma TV, so its digital all the way from TelstraClear to my TV.

So you have the cable running directly into your card? oh and:

Does this allow me to illegally access TelstraClear programming?
No, you still need to have valid TelstraClear subscription smartcard. It'll only enable you to watch those channels valid for your subscription.

So you use your card...?

I'm incredibly interested I just demand technical details on it :P

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45101 31-Aug-2006 18:54

JAMMAN2110:
sub: I'm now using it in place of my TelstraClear digital box and I'm very happy with it. I use DVI for connecting my video card to my plasma TV, so its digital all the way from TelstraClear to my TV.

So you have the cable running directly into your card? oh and:

Does this allow me to illegally access TelstraClear programming?
No, you still need to have valid TelstraClear subscription smartcard. It'll only enable you to watch those channels valid for your subscription.

So you use your card...?

I'm incredibly interested I just demand technical details on it :P

Yes, you still use your smartcard.

The TelstraClear cable is plugged directly in your digital capture device. The Twinhan devices are PCI cards. The FireDTV device is an external firewire capture device.

Both the Twinhan and FireDTV devices are "CI" models, meaning they have a CI slot. This is effectively the same thing as a laptop PCMCIA module slot. Into this you plug a CAM module. In this case of TelstraClear, this an Irdeto2 CAM module. Irdeto2 is the encryption used by the TelstraClear digital TV.

The CAM module has a slot in the exposed end, which pokes out the back of the device. You plug your TelstraClear smartcard into this slot in the CAM module.

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45102 31-Aug-2006 19:03

I just realised your nick and am assuming you are the same "sub" who is actually the author of GB-PVR?

Yes, thats me.

Chiefie: GB-PVR rocks, Windows MCE PC is a waste of time time and you'll realise how inferior it is compared to Windows XP with GB-PVR! It's a million times better than even the media centre functionaility in Vista.

I dont know if I'd go that far. I think its pretty good, but its hard to compare my wee project to MCE.

GB-PVR is definitely better at some things (no DRM, more flexibility in terms of mixing and matching different types of capture devices, allowing for different channel lineups per device, auto commercial skipping, etc), but it lacks the polish of MCE. My excuse is that I'm a team of one - I imagine the MCE team has a few more members...

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Reply # 45130 1-Sep-2006 12:55

stop selling yourself and GBPVR short sub. You've done extremely well, and built up a very loyal and dedicated following (myself included)....I'm always pushing people onto GBPVR if they're looking at this sort of project. Even if it's just to get a taste before moving on to something else.

Glad you got the Cable stuff working....now if it can just be made to save the encoded streams and decode for playing (a-la MySky) then you'd really be cooking.

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45134 1-Sep-2006 13:06

davidcole: now if it can just be made to save the encoded streams and decode for playing (a-la MySky) then you'd really be cooking.

Why would you want to do that? Wouldnt you prefer to decrypt at recording time so you end up with nice clean MPEG2 files? (are you thinking about the one smartcard per digital tuner requirement?)

davidcole

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Reply # 45138 1-Sep-2006 13:58

sub:
davidcole: now if it can just be made to save the encoded streams and decode for playing (a-la MySky) then you'd really be cooking.
Why would you want to do that? Wouldnt you prefer to decrypt at recording time so you end up with nice clean MPEG2 files? (are you thinking about the one smartcard per digital tuner requirement?)

Yeah. That AFAIK is how MySky gets around that problem. That is the only disadvantage to your solution I see - when compared directly to mySky, the ability to record 2 things off sky/TCL at one time without needing 2 subscriptions.

I'm not advocating illegally getting any content, and would not suggest anyone try doing that.

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Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 45139 1-Sep-2006 14:10

davidcole:
sub:
davidcole: now if it can just be made to save the encoded streams and decode for playing (a-la MySky) then you'd really be cooking.
Why would you want to do that? Wouldnt you prefer to decrypt at recording time so you end up with nice clean MPEG2 files? (are you thinking about the one smartcard per digital tuner requirement?)

Yeah. That AFAIK is how MySky gets around that problem. That is the only disadvantage to your solution I see - when compared directly to mySky, the ability to record 2 things off sky/TCL at one time without needing 2 subscriptions.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Its not really possible to do that type of thing with readily available consumer hardware. They're pretty much hard-wired to have the DVB stream go through the CAM module for decryption at the time it is received, with no possibility to playback through the CAM at a later stage.

davidcole: I'm not advocating illegally getting any content, and would not suggest anyone try doing that.

Me either, which is why I'm not going to bring up topics like card splitters...

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Reply # 45171 1-Sep-2006 18:40

davidcole: stop selling yourself and GBPVR short sub. You've done extremely well, and built up a very loyal and dedicated following (myself included)....I'm always pushing people onto GBPVR if they're looking at this sort of project. Even if it's just to get a taste before moving on to something else.

My thoughts exactly! GB-PVR is an amazing product for a single developer and IMHO if you want a rock solid PVR then it is the best PC based software. Some commercial software may have a few extra bells & whistles but don't do the basics as well as GB-PVR. As for MythTV it's a nice system if you're a Linux geek and want to fiddle around under the hood every day to keep it going!

Windows MCE's biggest flaw is it's recording format, being able to encode video in the format you want and even automatically transcode (to your iPod for example) is a very cool feature.

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Reply # 45240 2-Sep-2006 23:17

Looks very interesting. I have been using gbpvr for the past year or so and it works great with a Hauppauge 250 card. I can see the advantages of not decoding the MPEG2 signal and re-encoding it with the Hauppauge. Also it would seem that since the MPEG2 signal is captured directly to the drive, if you play that back from your PVR to your TV over say HDMI, then gets over the complaints that many users have that the TCL STB only has composite video outputs. This would provide the best signal you could get from the incoming signal.

I guess the only issue for me would be, since you have to put the smartcard in the Irdeto CAM that means to be able to watch TV normally without having to go through gbpvr you will need two cards and that will cost you an additional $19.95/month from my recollection.

Out of interest how much is the FireDTV DVB-C and a Irdeto CAM?

Thanks

Larry

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