Advice needed for hardware for UPC STB to HTPC

Remouad

I'm looking for a bit of advice.

My folks have one of the UPC boxes with a single tuner.
They'd love to have the timeshift and series link but because of a hullabaloo with UPC a few years ago they currently have all the UPC channels(including movies and sports) for free and they don't want to risk losing that by asking for a new digibox.

So I'm looking for the hardware & software setup that would give them all the record and playback features.

Requirements(in order of importance):
1) Pause and rewind live tv
2) Program Record /Series Link
3) Simple to use (they're not that tech savvy)
4) Single Remote (ir blaster or some other way of controlling stb)
5) Stable and easy to maintain.

The upc box(sagem ITD60) only has scart output so only needs to record SD.

Going to be a Christmas present for them but want to get it sooner so I have enough time to set it up and test it out properly.

Cheers

Remouad

Ok maybe I was a bit too general with the specification so I'll add some detail.

I have an old machine that I'm going to use as a base.
p4 processor, around 2gbs of ram, an old 128mb gforce graphics card that should do the job(tv has PC input) and the on board sound card(tv speakers only so stereo output is fine)

What I'm looking for are recommendations on TV cards that will take the input from the STB and where to get them.
The machine has 2 free PCI slots with space for full size cards.

I know I'm going to need an ir blaster if I want to get the program record/series link working correctly.
Loads of people are talking about them but not saying where they can be sourced.

software wise windows media center is probably the simplist solution but given the hardware I have to work with I was thinking of something like openelec 2.0
It has PVR support and is linux based so the requirements will be lower than a windows based solution.
I'm open to any other options though.

Would appreciate any advice even if it's just to point me in the right direction.
Thanks

Wheeker

Hi Remouad,

I used an old UPC STB as my TV input for a few years with my HTPC. However there are a couple of big issues which I encountered that led me to ditch UPC & go with Saorview + Freesat.

1. Grey Video with your NTL Box? Help is here!
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055144625

There are lots of PCI TV Tuner cards (Compro/Avermedia/Blackgold/PCTV/Hauppague etc.) that will have analogue inputs of either S-Video &/or Composite video + Audio. You can easily get a SCART-> Composite or S-Video lead to connect the STB. However, as per the thread above I found that Composite produced a dull picture. I then used a RGB->S-Video Convertor to use an S-Video input (B&W picture without convertor) & got good results, but then the convertor packed-in . Since then I did try another card (Compro Videomate T750f)which gave reasonable enough results.


2. Recent UPC + HTPC Problems
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=71602666

AFAIK the thread above describes the main issue now with using a UPC STB with an HTPC. The IR blasters won't work with the STB's any more, so you can't schedule recordings. :mad:

In summary, I've been there & I think you could be going down a blind alley

Remouad

Thanks for the response Wheeker.

Decided to give it a go anyway. The STB is really old (it doesn't even take a card!) so I'm hoping that it won't have the ir blaster problems.

In the end I picked up a Hauppauge WinTv-HVr-1900

Seems to cover all the bases. Has the ir blaster and svideo inputs.

Hopefully should do the job.