Aussies that have Foxtel working (1 Viewer)

[darkmenace]

Hi all

A mate and I are about to build him a new Media Center machine and I think we're going to steer away from Windows Media Center due to alot of basic limitations that Media Portal it would seem doesn't have.

Is there anybody who has managed to get Foxtel satellite viewable/recordable on their Media Portal setup?

We would like to ultimately use a DVB-S card and a card reader and skip the foxtel box altogether but if we have to plug the fox box in to a suitable tv tuner card via s-video or component and do it that way, that will work too.

We are not in any way trying to do anything illegal such as get access to free Foxtel. This is a legitimate subscription that we are trying to roll into his all in one media machine.

Any help, ideas, thoughts, suggestions etc would be appreciated.

If neither of these options are possible in Media Portal, please let me know

Cheers
DM

 

[50chickens]

You won't be able to use a dvb-s card to receive/decode foxtel akaif. supposedly the foxtel decoder card won't fit/decode a foxtel signal as they dont use standard encryption.. i have't tried myself so i don't know. i did look at getting a dvb-s card to receive fta digital satellite but it's probably a waste of time because a) i don't know if the foxtel satellite on my roof can pick up everything becuse it's not pointing in the right direction and b) if it can it's probably not in english. there are a handful of us fta channels i can maybe get though.

last thing, if you buy a tuner card, buy a decent one. i have 2 crappy leadtek cards (the pxdvr 3200 isnt one of them). anything that doesnt use the audio cd cable to output sound to your sound card should be ok. (the 3200 does this)


the rest of this is basically my trials and tribulations with foxtel. i only write it so you know what to expect with MP/external stb's/tv's.

i have foxtel hd atm, but had normal foxtel up until recently.. i can tell you that the old non iq boxes work with MP relatively well (eventually). my setup was basically -

hauppauge hvr-1300 tuner, mp 0.2.3.0 (not using tv server), foxtel box (old one, not the iq/iq2).

way back when, i plugged in the foxtel box via RCA into my hauppauge card and configured MP to use cvbs #1.
i had a problem with de-interlacing, but using ffdshow as the video codec and setting an mpeg2 profile that used kernel bob de-interlacing fixed that.

i also had a problem early on where i couldnt get the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen flowing smoothly, but initially this was caused by me (stupidly) plugging my tv in via vga port which is only 60hz not 50hz like the pal tv signal we have.

the other thing i found annoying but with no solution is that MP expects data in mpeg2. it does this so you can do things like recording and timeshifting like a normal pvr. originally i had a cheap-ass leadtek card and it did not have a hardware mpeg2 encoder. so i had to use the software one (after messing around literally for days with the carddefinitions.xml file trying various combinations of mpeg2 encoders/filters. some mpeg encoders sent the cpu to 100% on my core2 box, others had sound delays, others had wierd ass crashes.. nothing worked well. eventually i ditched the leadtek for a hauppauge hvr-1300. this card has a hardware mpeg encoder for coverting the tv signal into more MP friendly data. the problem with this was that there was a delay of around a second (ie, you hit the channel change on your foxtel remote and the picture on screen doesnt change instantly like it normally would). i found out this was introduced with the mpeg2 encoding. i later found out is actually caused by the mpeg2 format. BUT, with all above things fixed the thing worked.

the last thing was trying to configure MP with all of the channels that foxtel knew about (eg, 100 for ch9, 411 for movies). i needed to buy a mce remote with the extra receiver/blaster but once you have it you can install and configure IR server suite. it is basically a replacement for the inbuilt os handling of the remote w/blaster (if i remember right). you then need to configure each channel in MP (or tv server) as external and then add the proper channel number (eg 100/411) and then ir blaster will work.

all in all, that is where i was at about a year ago. apart from the second or two delay everything was working fine (eventually). the picture quality wasn't quite as good as foxtel -> tv but it is being re-encoded so is to be expected.

now.. fast forward a year.

i now have - leadtek pxdvr 3200 H tuner card as well as my hauppauge 1300, foxtel hd with IQ2 and 52" samsung lcd and MP 1.0.0.0 RC4 (released a few days ago)

i'll continue this story later on.

 

[fromaron]

We would like to ultimately use a DVB-S card and a card reader and skip the foxtel box altogether

If Dreambox can do it then MP will. You just need a right plugin and Phoenix reader as to get a NDS CAM is a bit problematic. This is only theoretical answer as I don't have Foxtel sub and never tried it myself. I just read somewhere else it was done.

 

[darkmenace]

Thanks 50chickens, that was interesting reading. Sounds like you can at least get Foxtel working through the Media Portal interface, albeit with a bit of mucking around.

Fromaron - i've also read you can make foxtel work with a phoenix card reader and suitable dvb-s card but I dont know if it'll work with Media Portal. Sounds like a bit of mucking around so probably the foxtel box connected via component (if thats viable) to a suitable hardware encoding analog tv tuner card (hauppage of some description) would be the way to go...

Any other schools of thought on this subject?