Satellite & Terrestrial on MCE with Twin Tuner

air

Hi,
I've set up an MCE HTPC for a friend with the Linksys MCE extender.
However, he has freesat and an terrestrial aerial.
The pc has a Hauppauge PVR500 dual tuner but in MCE it seems you can only set it up to use two set top boxes and / or two terrestrial feeds.
Ideally I'd like to have the set top box working with its guide (SKY East Anglia - have this working no probs) and the normal Irish terrestrial working on the second tuner.
My instints tell me that MCE wont do it but I'd love to be proved wrong.

Krusty_Clown

Trust your instincts.. You can't pick and mix your sources in media centre. Media Portal can handle multiple sources though, and can be installed on top of MCE.

Also, the PVR 500 may have dual analog tuners, however, it only accepts a single coax source (the other coax input is for radio reception). So unless you can use the composite video or s-video connection along with the analog signal you're stymied again.. (Here's a picture of the inputs on the PVR board.)

I remember someone had created a batch file (Launchable from MCE) to switch the Hauppauge card from receiving input from the S-video connection to the coax and vice versa, however, you'll only be able to have a single EPG in place in Media Center.

The thread will be somewhere on this forum if you do a search.. (maybe search for s-video / batch file / hauppauge / etc..)

air

Krusty_Clown wrote:

Also, the PVR 500 may have dual analog tuners, however, it only accepts a single coax source (the other coax input is for radio reception). So unless you can use the composite video or s-video connection along with the analog signal you're stymied again.. (Here's a picture of the inputs on the PVR board.)

The Bulk PVR500 I bought from komplett came with an additional input bracket that allows input from two SVideo sources simultaneously.
Note I bought another 500 for myself recently from ebay and it didnt come with the bracket so I had to buy one seperately from the Hauppauge online store for about 15 euro.

In any case I dont think its actually needed for what I want to do as there is apparently an internal splitter on the terrestrial aerial input which connects it to both tuners inside. This should mean that the digibox could be connected via svideo and the aerial input could be on the same input card - this isnt an issue for me anyway as I have the extra input card but the info might be of use to someone else.

Krusty_Clown wrote:

Media Portal can handle multiple sources though, and can be installed on top of MCE.

I guess its hardly compatible with the Linksys MCE Extender though?

Krusty_Clown

I didn't know that this bracket was available..
Unfortunately, it doesn't really resolve the problem with switching sources, but does mean that it'll accomodate more simultaneous sources if you use Media Portal.

Hauppauge Website wrote:

The switching of the sources from one input to the other can be done with the WinTV2000 application or via the WinTV Select program.

So, to get over this limitation, someone had written a couple of batch files to launch WinTV and switch the sources. The limitation being that in MCE2005 you can only have one EPG, and it's unlikely that you'll be able to change channels for both sources using MCE.

Perhaps Vista has resolved some of these limitations, but I have not seen any indications of this, as of yet.

Media Portal is a lot more customisable. You can include as many channels (and associated EPGs) as you like from as many sources as your PC can handle, and point to a different source for each channel.

As for Linksys Extender compatibility, I wouldn't have thought so, but this post would seem to indicate otherwise:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/permalink/60489/141609/ShowThread.aspx#141609

Your best bet is to visit the Media Portal site and do some research. Remember, Media Portal is free, and can siimply be installed and uninstalled on top of your MCE setup, with little grief (Might be advisable to make a backup just to be certain, but my experience was hassle-free). All it will cost you is time, and potentially a lot of time, as it takes quite a lot of configuration to get it right.

air

Thanks Krusty, I might give it a go although time isnt something I have a lot of especially seeing as the set up isn't at my own house.
From that post it seems the extent of the Linksys Extender's compatibility with MP is that it can play MP's recorded tv (presumably because MP saves them as normal video files which the Linksys then plays as normal videos)

Krusty_Clown

Looks about right.. From looking at the Media Portal site, they don't officially support any extenders (although Media Portal is in itself a branch of a Media Centre Extender).

Vista only seems to support the XBox 360 as an extender at the moment...
And 8T8 has answered the questions about multiple sources / EPGs in another thread.. So not much hope for your multiple sources with LinkSys extender.. For the time being it looks like one or the other... (Multiple sources or the Extender).

air

Yep, I read 8T8's thread in between posts all right.
Pity I didint check this out before shelling out 170 on the Linksys Extender, a Hauppauge MVP would have been a more flexible option.
I think he'll probably just use MCE for pvr functionality on the terrestrial (using both tuners) and use the satellite as before.

Krusty_Clown

If you change your mind and decide to give it another go, here's The Green Button article that describes the workaround for switching between inputs on the Hauppage card.