Saorview on Desktop

thegills

Guys,
Know of any USB type devices that will pick up the Saorview channels and allow me watch them on my desktop

The Cush

thegills wrote: »

Guys,
Know of any USB type devices that will pick up the Saorview channels and allow me watch them on my desktop

http://www.mpeg4ireland.com/saorview-dtt-on-a-pc

watty

Loads. If it has a BDA driver...
I'm testing a cheap €30 inc postage Dual Tuner USB 2.0 stick shortly... Review and setup for various OS later (I'll look at Ubuntu, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 if possible. Not Mac OSX as it has only one recommended stick & SW).

The http://www.mpeg4ireland.com/ site is very good...

Trevord

Check out this post over on boards bargain alert sections.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056076074

Bought the USB dongle referred to above. It comes with a 10cm magnetic aerial and a remote control. Will allow you to watch and record the 16 DTT channels.
All for less than 6 euro incl P&P from Hong Kong (I know it sounds too good to be true) on ebay.

It arrived yesterday and its a great little toy once you figure out how to get it up and running.
Even comes with its own software, altough it will also work through VLC.

How they can manufacture it and ship here for 6 euro and make a profit at the same time is beyond me.

Initially I thought that the aerial was too small to pick up a good signal, but I actually now find that when positioned properly it is providing a better picture on the desktop than the UHF rabbits ears (ocassionally pixelates) I have in my Mpeg4 TV in the same room.
Smaller aerial works better - How can this be ?

watty

The one I got has dual tuner. Plus all the SW for MPEG4. Review here
http://www.techtir.ie/reviews/mobidtv-dual-usb-dtt
less than a week from UK

I spent most of today getting it not working on Linux though. Fine Windows.

Those aerials are too small and also really only for vertical polarisation. "rabbit's ears" are mostly VHF, so don't work well on UHF, even if it has the UHF loop as well as the pair of rods. See http://www.techtir.ie/radio-tv/uhf-aerials My UHF indoor aerial is far better than the rod. Outdoor better still, reduction in artefacts.

FREETV

watty wrote: »

The one I got has dual tuner. Plus all the SW for MPEG4. Review here
http://www.techtir.ie/reviews/mobidtv-dual-usb-dtt
less than a week from UK

I spent most of today getting it not working on Linux though. Fine Windows.

Those aerials are too small and also really only for vertical polarisation. "rabbit's ears" are mostly VHF, so don't work well on UHF, even if it has the UHF loop as well as the pair of rods. See http://www.techtir.ie/radio-tv/uhf-aerials My UHF indoor aerial is far better than the rod. Outdoor better still, reduction in artefacts.

How well would it run using a laptop with an AMD Turion 64 dual core processor and nvidia GeForce 8400M G 128MB graphics card? It would be a good buy for people who have desktops and laptops with hdmi out, wouldn't it? It would be a cheap option until the price of the Humax FreevieW HD dual tuner pvrs drop in price. They could watch Saorview with that usb stick on their lcd or plasma tv screens via the hdmi out of the computers. From what I can see there will be a lot more people watching tv and staying indoors after December 1 because of less funds available to us all.

watty

Should be good to go as on 8+ year old GeForce 440 Go + 1.8MHz P4 Mobile works on SD.
There are three computers tested in review. HD was fine on two of them.
I was impressed that driver work on 64bit Win7 as well as 32bit XP.

mossym

watty wrote: »

The one I got has dual tuner. Plus all the SW for MPEG4. Review here
http://www.techtir.ie/reviews/mobidtv-dual-usb-dtt
less than a week from UK

I spent most of today getting it not working on Linux though. Fine Windows.

Those aerials are too small and also really only for vertical polarisation. "rabbit's ears" are mostly VHF, so don't work well on UHF, even if it has the UHF loop as well as the pair of rods. See http://www.techtir.ie/radio-tv/uhf-aerials My UHF indoor aerial is far better than the rod. Outdoor better still, reduction in artefacts.

have used several of the ones from ebay, have 3 of them knocking around at the moment on different things, and agree the provided aerials are too small for a lot of cases, but if you are close to a transmitter/in a good reception area they work jsut fine, i used one in raheen to pick up the world cup matches while i was at work, i'm sitting in the middle of a large company building and it worked fine.

so for those on the move around the major metro areas they could work as a portable rig for a laptop...

KeRbDoG

Anyone recommend a combo DVB-T and DVB-S2 receiver for a desktop machine that supported under Linux?
Either PCI or PCIe (or even USB but doubt they exist)

mossym

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Anyone recommend a combo DVB-T and DVB-S2 receiver for a desktop machine that supported under Linux?
Either PCI or PCIe (or even USB but doubt they exist)

the only combo dvb-t/dvb-s2 device on the market is the Blackgold card, or so i believe

all the other combo cards are dvb-t/dvb-s only, i.e. no dvb-s2

KeRbDoG

mossym wrote: »

the only combo dvb-t/dvb-s2 device on the market is the Blackgold card, or so i believe

all the other combo cards are dvb-t/dvb-s only, i.e. no dvb-s2

Ah cool
/* Googles it */
Can't find anything about Linux drivers for the card

mossym

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Ah cool
/* Googles it */
Can't find anything about Linux drivers for the card

yeah, didn't mean it was linux supported, sorry, only that it was the only combo card out there, which makes it an easy search

watty

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Anyone recommend a combo DVB-T and DVB-S2 receiver for a desktop machine that supported under Linux?
Either PCI or PCIe (or even USB but doubt they exist)

You need separate cards.

For Linux (Ubuntu etc)

1: Install application "DVB apps" then...

2: Check the Linux DVB wiki sites..
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Category:DVB-T_USB_Devices
http://wikiindex.org/DVB_wiki


If the mentioned card/stick has any caveats, don't buy.
3: Check the mentioned card/stick *.fw file is in your firmware directory already.. It's a pain to build one as its kernel version specific.

Best mix seems to be PCI card for DVB-S2 and USB stick for DVB-T

Unless the file for the device is automatically there when you install dvbapps, don't consider buying the card/stick.

4: Add Card or Stick
if ls /dev/dvb has no results after you add the card/usb stick, then it won't work.
Only install one Viewing application at a time (to test), as they install background services and task tray stuff for recording, scheduling and other stuff.

5: Download DTT files for scan from http://www.mpeg4ireland.com/saorview-dtt-linux

5: Follow linux tutorials for how to set up application / scan channels etc.

Windows
For XP, Vista, Win7, (32bit or 64 bit) the dual DVB-T I mentioned seems best unless you need UK "freeview HD".
You can get a dual or couple of plain basic DVB-S2 PCI cards cheap.
I used to be a fan of DVBprog, (which does now work with the DVB-T dual stick, but only if the the supplied App is not installed), not so keen on it now, seems "fragile". Only install one Viewing application at a time (to test), as they install background services and task tray stuff for recording, scheduling and other stuff.

KeRbDoG

Cool, thanks for the steps Watty