Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!)

[Bleazle]

I run 2 x Skystar tuner cards with the WDM/BDA driver setup and they work great (set the card with the BDA driver as priority 1 in the TV Server setup). Plus I have a PVR150 for Prime but the picture is crap - when all of my channels were analogue Prime didn't seem so bad...

I'm looking at upgrading to a 50" 1080p HD Plasma TV at the moment - does anyone else have an HD TV hooked up to their home theatre PC? Are there any known issues? I take it my older (low resolution) digital pics will look like postage stamps on the screen?

[mcraenz]

Have you tried to run both cards with BDA, does it work? I'd head over to the home theater thread at Geekzone: technology news, blogs, forums for advice on HD/HD-TVs

[handya]

has anyone managed to get freeview dvb-t working? if so please explain what you have done to the frontend settings, and codecs cheers

[DrLurch]

Originally Posted by Bleazle

I run 2 x Skystar tuner cards with the WDM/BDA driver setup and they work great (set the card with the BDA driver as priority 1 in the TV Server setup). Plus I have a PVR150 for Prime but the picture is crap - when all of my channels were analogue Prime didn't seem so bad...

I'm looking at upgrading to a 50" 1080i HD Plasma TV at the moment - does anyone else have an HD TV hooked up to their home theatre PC? Are there any known issues? I take it my older (low resolution) digital pics will look like postage stamps on the screen?

i have a 47" 1080p LCD, i have my HTPC hooked up to it via Dvi/HDMI the picture is awesome
i have had no issues with it

[rpmnz]

Originally Posted by mcraenz

Have you tried to run both cards with BDA, does it work? I'd head over to the home theater thread at Geekzone: technology news, blogs, forums for advice on HD/HD-TVs

Long story short, I'm currently in the process of doing this. I have had to resort to a complete rebuild of XP2 SP2 in order to get the TV server to "see" the two cards. I just fired it up yesterday after playing with it all weekend and now TV server "sees" both the cards. Hooray...., although I'm not counting my chickens as I haven't scanned for channels etc yet.

One major difference I have noticed is the cards are no longer listed as network adaptors within the hardware manager. They appear under video controllers, this is different to what I had previously.

They are both currently on BDA drivers but possibly not the latest version, i will update when I get everything running.

I have noticed in doing all this that my splitter for the two cards causes the signal levels to drop so low I cant get signal lock. Is this usual? Have I got the wrong kind of splitter? I just asked at the shop for a satellite splitter .

[mcraenz]

I cant get signal lock

Um yea, don't pay any attention to signal levels reported by the BDA driver I don't find them helpful at all. This weekend I replaced my dish mount. First I ghosted my fully working system, then installed the WDM driver so I could use the setup4PC which has the good signal meter to align all my LNBs then rolled back to the ghost image. As it sounds like you've found out swapping SS2 drivers in and out can result in a mess.

i have a 47" 1080p LCD, i have my HTPC hooked up to it via Dvi/HDMI the picture is awesome
i have had no issues with it

Do you get pixel for pixel and what resolution?

as anyone managed to get freeview dvb-t working?

I've been able to scan in the channels but had trouble playing them with TSReader in MP , however if I start timeshifting then play the file with VLC it works ok. I'm using CoreAVC; it seems to be the very best HD codec.

[rpmnz]

Originally Posted by mcraenz

Um yea, don't pay any attention to signal levels reported by the BDA driver I don't find them helpful at all. This weekend I replaced my dish mount. First I ghosted my fully working system, then installed the WDM driver so I could use the setup4PC which has the good signal meter to align all my LNBs then rolled back to the ghost image. As it sounds like you've found out swapping SS2 drivers in and out can result in a mess.

Ah that would explian why setup4PC stopped working

So you would advise against reloading the WDM drivers to check the signal through the splitter?. I wasnt getting qood "quality" levels to start with ( which has always puzzelled me) but when i put in the spillter in before my system quit is pretty much killed the signal all together.

Is there any other app that I can use for signal strength/quality with the BDA drivers?.

Hmm come to think of it I've left system restore on as I hadn't got around to turning it off. I could use that to roll back to prior to the BDA installation, poor mans ghosting

[mcraenz]

I would recommend using the WDM driver+Setup4PC to check signal levels/align the dish. However I've had problems with swapping the drivers between BDA and WDM. Going from WDM to BDA seems straight forward but I've had issue going back the other way. E.g. I got the WDM driver to install again but device wouldn't work and the installation for the setup4PC util refused to find the device etc etc. I got messy! In the end I removed every reference to anything skystar/technisat/B2C2 from my registry, system32\drivers and windows\inf and re-installed; that fixed it.

My advice (easy if you have 2 HDDs) is to just do a ghost image before you start mucking around, then you can do what you like get the dish all aligned etc then roll back to the clean system with BDA drivers knowing that singnal is fine.

I've not found (and I have looked) any other signal meter utils that work with the BDA driver. I think the problem is actually with what the driver reports. I don't know why it doesn't work!? It seems like a pretty straight forward and reasonable feature.

Something else I noticed when doing my dish alignment on the weekend is that the latest WDM driver+Setup4PC util doesn't seem to report signal strength! Only signal quality, I just aligned based on that.

I wasnt getting qood "quality" levels to start with ( which has always puzzelled me)

Was that measured with the WDM+UTIL? Did you do the dish install your self or was it a sky dish? Maybe it's just moved a bit or maybe you need to adjust the skew on the LNB.

[rpmnz]

Originally Posted by mcraenz

Was that measured with the WDM+UTIL? Did you do the dish install your self or was it a sky dish? Maybe it's just moved a bit or maybe you need to adjust the skew on the LNB.

Originally it was with the WDM and setup4pc when I hadd no TV server. I was getting only between 50 and 60% quality from the dish.

I tried adjusting everything and it just wouldnt get any better. I have no obstruction between the dish and satellite either. The only other thin I could think off was the cabling itself.

I have a mast head amplifier which I've been told I probably don't need as the run of cable is only about 15m. I do have joint in there though which could be another cause, although I've check all the joins etc and they seem ok.

It was a case of me getting a signal and it working, then thinking it aint broke so why try to fix it further. I could replace the entire run of cable (relatively easy but costly) to take it out of the equation but again it worked at these quality levels so there was no need.

Now that I have the splitter in it may force my hand.

Oh and yes I did the install myself. I have an eliptical 75cm or 90cm dish I forget which. I had to play around for quite a while on the roof to get a signal and ended up judging off the neighbours one and fine tuning in each direction from there. Likewise forthe lnb I just move backwards and forwards to find the best signal.


I guess I could get up there and check the alignment as you are quiet correct in saying it may just have moved a bit.

What do you use to do your ghosting?

[mcraenz]

I do have joint in there though which could be another cause, although I've check all the joins etc and they seem ok.

How is it joined? proper connectors or soldered?

Also what sort of LNB do you have? I find the ex-Sky Sharp ones to be very good.

Have 3 LNBs and I get 60-75% SQ shown by the WDM on all 3

What do you use to do your ghosting?

Symantec Ghost 8.something booted from CD.
I have a system/apps disk and a recordings disk and I just run an image file of system/apps to the recording disk. Takes about 5min for a 5GB image. Also good to have in case of a WAF crash!