Satellite on PC?

TheBigLebowski

Is it possible to hook my PC up to my current Sky satellite dish and get all the free to air channels? I have a quad LNB so that shouldn't be a problem. I'm just wondering is it just a simple case of buying the correct PCI card and away I go? And if so, can anyone recommend a good one?
Cheers,
BigL

satgirl

Yes, but only for FTA channles such as BBC, ITV etc.

I use a TwinHan card, it's OK and quite cheap. You need a recent PC, mine's a 3.2ghz CPU.

I do not get as strong a signal on the TwinHan as with my FTA STB, I think this may be because the TwinHan is sensitive to the rating of the PSU of the PC, so your mileage may vary.

watty

satgirl wrote:

Yes, but only for FTA channles such as BBC, ITV etc.

I use a TwinHan card, it's OK and quite cheap. You need a recent PC, mine's a 3.2ghz CPU.

I do not get as strong a signal on the TwinHan as with my FTA STB, I think this may be because the TwinHan is sensitive to the rating of the PSU of the PC, so your mileage may vary.

The signal strength is meaningless btween different models of receivers, just relative. Nothing to do with PC PSU.

A Skystar1 / Hauppage Nexus/Premium card has its own MPEG2 decoder and TV out built in. It will work and record 100% perfect even on a 90 MHz original pentium.

The Twinhan/Skystar2/Hauppauge Nova/ Basic card has no MPEG2 chips, it needs the CPU to do MPEG decoding and a separate graphics card with TV out facility. For normal TV it needs 450MHz PIII or better. For Mpeg2 HDTV a 1.8GHz P4 (not celeron) is needed. For MPEG4 HDTV a 3.5GHZ top of range AMD or Intel chip is needed.


There is a new card for Satellite TV that has MPEG4 DSP chip. It will do all normal Satellite TV and all HDTV on a 600MHz PIII or better.

watty

A Skystar2 or compatible has widest range of SW and is around the cheapest.

Recording & Playback equals Live TV quality

bauderline

You can also download transponder finder for the Skystat 2 that will allow you to do blind searches on satellites. Useful for feedhunters.....

baud.

watty

Is that a plug in for ProgDVB? If so where is it. It should work on any card supported by ProgDVB or not?

Zaphod

It's a standalone program which generates .ini files which can be used with ProgDVB. However, only rev 2.3 of the Skystar card supports hardware (fast) blindsearch. Rev 2.6 and higher use software based blindsearch which is much slower.

If you have ProgDVB and the old SS2 r2.3 card only (not with any other card), just use 0 as the symbol rate and it will blindsearch at that frequency. I have ini files with freqs 5 or 10 mhz apart from 10.7GHz to 12.75GHz with 0 as sr both H and V, which essentially does a blindsearch through ProgDVB. If anyone wants a copy, PM me.

watty

Why not put it in a File Gallery on the Wiki with page under Satellite General linked to the file?

Will it work SkyStar1 and compatibles in "soft mode" I wonder?

bauderline

Watty,

See here...

http://bxs.no.sapo.pt/index_direita_ss2_tf_bxs_eng.htm

Standalone tool, only works with a number of Skystar 2 revisions... Nice tool though...

rgs. baud.

Zaphod

The wiki won't accept .zip or .ini files, so I've uploaded it here:
{Watty: I'll put it someplace less infested }

ScanSR is a software based blindsearch for SS1 cards:
http://dvbzone.dvhk.pl/?id=d_ant

watty

The Wiki didn't have file gallery enabled. Now it has. It had only Image Gallery.

Both files are at
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=PC+Satellite+Cards

(ICDGopedia)

Zaphod

For the Linux brigade, there is also a blindsearch plugin for SS2 r2.3:
http://linuxtv.org/mailinglists/linux-dvb/2004/08-2004/msg00003.html

TheBigLebowski

Cheers for the reply's. I went ahead and ordered this, cos it was only €49.90. (I hope it's the right one!).

http://www.dvbshop.net/product_info.php/info/p12_Technisat-Skystar2-2-6D-incl--remotecontrol.html

So hopefully I'll be up and running in a few days...

watty

You can pay 70Euro for without Remote. (The SS1 has the remote feature built in, the SS2 is using a separate one like Media Centre), so a good deal.

You can check how old the drivers are compared with
http://www.technotrend.de/english/download/download.html
(These people make the cards).


They now have a online shop which is new:
http://shop.technotrend.de/

But
http://www.dvbshop.net/product_info....tecontrol.html is cheaper!

I see here
http://shop.technotrend.de/shop.php?mode=show_group&sid=8accd8ba318f98fa145d0f0d1565bcfa&group=6

That they sell the CI board for CAM for SS1/Nexus-s and also for some of the basic SS2 models (not all), also MHP software at 16 Euro. It would be just too lucky if BBC/ITV used MHP. (It used by some German stations).