Analogue and STB (1 Viewer)

[doubletop]

I have been searching the Forum and Wiki for confirmation how to setup analogue inputs and control the STB without luck. I have a PVR 350 with my STB connected to the composite 2 input. I know it all works because I've been running SagetV through this config for over 3 years.

1) In "TV server" I have selected the analogue card and selected "Add SVHS/VHS channels" and get 9 channels added under "TV channels" I can select each of them in turn and preview and get various combinations of B/W video, Colour Video, Black screen sound or no sound. This seems to change when delete and re-introduce the SVHS/VHS channels or select de-select the channels. I am suspecting that I am only getting input as a result of having SageTV running before I shut it down and started up MP TV server. I never have them going together. I am not certain that MediaPortal has actually taken full control of the card.

The Wiki is very light in this area so could somebody please confirm I am on the right track at this point?

2) If I am; I assume that I now have to establish which input channel I am really connected to, lets say it is CVBS#2 which is most likely as I know I am connected to composite video channel 2. Am I correct in assuming that I now have to manually enter each STB channel through the "add" screen and name it after each of my STB channels for example "Disney" and under the Analogue tab set it to

Channel = 40 (as on the STB)
Freq = 0
Antenna = Cable (but is probably don't care as freq is 0)
Country = "Afghanistan" (because I don't care and its the first one in the list)
Source = CVBS#2

(If this is correct can I suggest that Antenna and Country get greyed out if freq is 0 then there's no confusion.)

Please can somebody confirm I am still on the right track or is there an .xml I can edit to set all the channels up?

3) I now assume that to control the STB I need to use TV3 to control my blaster, but I'll save that for another day as I have UIRT2 controlled by Girder so anticipate a few issues in hooking TV3 ext channel changer to Girder. But if somebody could point me in the right direction with that I'd appreciate it.

I've been dabbling with this for a few days now and am impressed with what I have seen so far. In general the documentation is very good but biased towards DVB-S and DVB-T and I have both of these running fine with an HVR4000. Its the analogue area that's a bit light and only really addresses analogue off air recording.

 

[trevor]

I confirm that you have the setup right and that Freq, Antenna and Country are not required.

I have not added SVHS/VHS channels as these are not needed for normal running, useful to check which is the active input on the card though.

As for channel setup, little time consuming as you have to manually configure each Analog channel. I used to generate a TvGuide.xml from XMLTVGui and import that, then edit each channel (via SetupTV or directly via SQL), not sure if that still works with current xmltv plugin changes.

Look at IRSuite for controlling the STB.

Hope that helps.

Trevor

 

[doubletop]

Trevor

Thanks for the prompt reply. Confirmation helps rather than spending hours of time uncertain that you are doing the right thing.

I had seen IRsuite and was going to try them both but thought of the TV3 external channel tuner as a cut down version that just did the bit I needed.

Anyway I'll set up the channels first; and thanks again

 

[and-81]

The TV3 external channel tuner is a cut down version of the TV3 Blaster plugin that is in IR Server Suite.

So think of IR Server Suite as being the TV3 external channel changer, plus girder, in the one box.

There is no UIRT2 support in IR Server Suite at this stage, but I could certainly add it. And the Girder UIRT2 plugin should work with IR Server Suite too...

If you need any help let me know and I'll do what I can.

Cheers,

 

[trevor]

I use TV3 External Channel changer here but I use it to run an external program to control some h/w that changes channel on my Sky STB via the RF2 input so never looked at it's IR blaster functions. I did look at IR Suite but does have far more functionalty than I require.

Trevor

 

[doubletop]

Aaron

USBIRT has its origins in UIRT2 is the so inclusion in IR Server Suite may not be that difficult. The only reason I went with UIRT2 is I could build it myself and my first HTPC was a PVR350 and a pile of bits out of the junk box just to try out PVR's. It worked fine so I replaced all the hardware but the UIRT2 worked and has never failed so I kept it.

UIRT2 Home Page

The only issue I ever had was the hotch potch of unsupported bits a pieces required to get the whole thing going in SageTV so if the UIRT2 could be incorporated in IR Server Suite and become a one stop shop I for one would be grateful but I'm not sure how many others would use it.

In the meantime I'll give TV3 and Girder a go at some point. I'm slowly moving to MediaPortal for DVB-T which SageTV doesn't support, but my SageTV setup still works OK for Sky recording so its that I leave running full time and only shut it down as I tinker with MediaPortal.
Regards

Pete