DVB-T Problem: Mediaportal is the only software that can get a signal from my tuner

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › DVB-T Problem: Mediaportal is the only software that can get a signal from my tuner

breakaway

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Topic # 26897 6-Oct-2008 21:02

Hey guys, Howsit?

Here's my super peculiar problem - I just got a hold of a cheap USB DVB-T tuner. Decided to try it out, and installed the software that came with it after installing the drivers (The software is called BlazeDTV).

I've got a UHF aerial mounted on the top of my house, so I thought signal should be no issue (according to freeview's reception checker), and hooked everything up, and initiated the channel scan process only to find that ONLY ONE channel was picked up - TV3. Even then, I was unable to get an image - I only got the audio and the EPG working.

I then installed mediaportal upon recommendation of a friend, and was quite surprised to find that mediaportal found every single channel! And I tried them all out, they work perfectly:

I've also tried dvbviewer 3.9.2 and was unable to get anything. No channels found.

Now although mediaportal works, it is a less than ideal solution for me as I want to be able to have TV playing while I'm able to browse the web etc. Can anyone tell me what I can do to get my tuner to work with the program it came with? Or VLC media player or something?

Any help appreciated :D

mcraenz

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Reply # 169434 6-Oct-2008 22:16

You could use the MPTV Client which runs off TVServer instaed of using the full MediaPortal client.

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mp-tv-client-262/announce-mptvclient-v1-2-5-20-12-2007-ii-22027/

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breakaway

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Reply # 169602 7-Oct-2008 15:23

Woow - thanks! That works a charm.

However is there any way I can get the channels to show up in VLC so I don't have to keep going back to the MPTV Client to change channels? It can get a bit tedious.

Also - does anyone have any ideas as to why mediaportal is the only one that can get a signal and the rest don't pick up squat? :

TIA

sbiddle

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Reply # 169604 7-Oct-2008 15:32

breakaway: Also - does anyone have any ideas as to why mediaportal is the only one that can get a signal and the rest don't pick up squat? :

TIA

At a guess you were probably using 7Mhz rather than 8Mhz channel spacing in DVBViewer. As for the picture did you install a H.264 codec?

breakaway

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Reply # 169716 7-Oct-2008 22:16

sbiddle:
At a guess you were probably using 7Mhz rather than 8Mhz channel spacing in DVBViewer. As for the picture did you install a H.264 codec?

I'm sure that's not it, because I got a friend to send me the frequencies used in NZ (What is it, 538000 to 666000 @ 7mhz and got BlazeDTV to scan it. And yet, it found nothing.

Another question - here's a screenshot of me watching TV2 (720p) with MPTV + VLC 0.9.2

As you can see, it's kicking my CPU's butt (The CPU is a AMD Athlon 6000+, so it's pretty high end). Is there a way to enable hardware assisted decoding? I'm unable to watch TV3 (At a guess because it's 1080i and my CPU doesn't have the juice to decode it on the fly).

Anyone? Also, what are my alternatives other than DVBViewer and MPTV Client?

mcraenz

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Reply # 169726 7-Oct-2008 23:17

Hmmm...Yeah I didn't really think too hard when reccomending MPTV Client. VLC uses it's own internal codecs rather directshow filters. So yeah that's probably not gonna work, why not just use MediaPortal in windowed mode with "Keep MediaPortal Ontop" unticked

Anyhow to get hardware acceleration working you need power dvd h.264 codec and supporting video card. i.e. Nvidia 8500 8600 etc there's plenty of info about this stuff if you snoop around some threads here.

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breakaway

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Reply # 169944 8-Oct-2008 18:21

Yes! I got it working! Turns out I really was scanning @ 7mhz bandwidth. The Geekzone DVB-T guide should be updated to tell users to pick "EUR" under "Transponder list" (For DVBViewer)

So - I've gotten it to work with DVBViewer! Woohoo!

HOWEVER - DVBViewer changes the 'Wave' volume which messes up the volume of other applications on my computer (I'm on XP, no application based volume control). Is there a workaround for this? Or am I back to using VLC