BlackGold BGT3620 DVB-T2 card - Where are the HD channels? (4 Viewers)

[Bucky O'Hare]

@oglesbyj

Thanks for sharing. Any idea if those debug drivers support the BGT3540? I have 2 Pinnacle 7010ix cards (BGT3540 clones) and I'm using the latest 6.0.0.49 XP BGT3540 drivers. The Blackgold drivers are better than the Pinnacle ones, but I still get one card missing on startup sometimes - not consistent as to which card so I'm pretty sure it isn't a hardware problem...

Not sure if they would support your card as the BG support page says version 8.0.0.0 is for the 3590 and 3595 Sat cards and the 3620 DVB-T2 card and no other cards are listed against them. I think they use a different chipset to the 3540 card not sure what is on the 3590/3595 cards but the 3620 uses Dual Sony DVB-T2 chips

 

[mm1352000]

Hi Bucky

Thanks for the comment. I spent some time looking through the support section of the BG website "last night" and discovered the issue that the debug drivers are meant to address - tuners disappearing from WMC 7. I guessed immediately at that point that the drivers wouldn't help me even if they are suitable for the BGT3540...

Having said that, I might still try and give the drivers a run. FYI, the Blackgold drivers actually tend to support a bundle of tuner, demodulator and PCIe bridge chips internally because they were initially developed by the PCIe bridge chipset manufacturer (NXP/Philips) for their reference designs. Reference designs are meant to be flexible enough to allow OEMs like BG to choose from a range of chips for their products. For example, the BGT3540 drivers support the SAA716x family of PCIe chipsets (7160, 7162, 7164) with a range of Zarlink, NXP/Philips, and possibly Fujitsu demodulator and tuner chips. I've also seen code references in that driver to the SAA723x family of chipsets (2nd generation of the SAA716x family), which are used with the BGT3620, BGT3590 and BGT3595. It wouldn't surprise me if the SAA723x driver was developed "on top" of the SAA716x driver, hence it may support the SAA716x family even though BG don't say so...

 

[Dark Eyes]

Hello folks,

I am new to MediaPortal (infact the whole HTPC experience), so apologies if I ask something that is answered elsewhere on the forums.

I have installed MediaPortal with the BGT3620, and it is working well. I am currently using the DivX codec for the audio, but I am currently only getting stereo out for 5.1 programs.
I was wondering how I get 5.1 sound out from MP, do I need to use an audio post processor ?

I can use multichannel PCM over HDMI or AC3/DTS over SPDIF to my amp.

Thanks

P.S. I installed the 8.0.0.3 drivers, as offered by oglesbyj and both tuners have always been available until yesterday, when it lost one from a sleep resume and a complete restart didn't get both back. Do I need to reinstall the drivers ?

 

[mm1352000]

Welcome!

I installed the 8.0.0.3 drivers, as offered by oglesbyj and both tuners have always been available until yesterday, when it lost one from a sleep resume and a complete restart didn't get both back. Do I need to reinstall the drivers ?

Often you need to do a full *shutdown* and start up (not just a simple restart) to get hardware to be redetected...

 

[Bucky O'Hare]

I was wondering how I get 5.1 sound out from MP, do I need to use an audio post processor ?

I can use multichannel PCM over HDMI or AC3/DTS over SPDIF to my amp.

Freeview HD uses AAC for the audio stream which is not supported by any AV Amps / Receivers there is a BBC Blog entry about this. It seems the audio stream would need to be transcoded on the fly to AC3 for 5.1 sound to work via an AV Amp / Receiver.

 

[Dark Eyes]

Oh yes, the joys of HE-AAC ...

I was hoping that I could use MP to get 5.1 out (when broadcast), but it seems that it is outputting it all as stereo (same as WMC).

Can I use an audio post-processor, like AC3 Filter, in MP to convert the 5.1AAC to 5.1AC3 or MPCM ?
I am aware of some DVBViewer users who do this.

If so, any tips how I would set it up in MP.

 

[Bucky O'Hare]

I don't know whether that is possible or not I have not played with the post processing yet maybe a post in the codec section would get an answer on this.

I would also dump the Divx codec as its crap tbh I have swapped to using the Mainconcept Broadcast H264 Decoder package this has a Broadcast AAC decoder that doesn't get confused by the swapping between 2 and 6 channel content and bitrate changes see below.

Originally Posted by oglesbyj
3) here's the best bit
Use codecs from MainConcept. They have demo ones on their website (install their demo showcase to test) note the demo showcase AAC codec only demos for 30 seconds then mutes audio but still allows the video to work, and the demo H264 broadcast codec keeps going forever but has a logo in the top corner.
Now I needed more than 30 seconds audio and hate logos on my screen so ................. pm for info.

 

[Dark Eyes]

Well I have added AC3 Filter as an audio post processor, and bingo, we have 5.1 AC3 to the AMP when the AAC is 5.1
Upgrading to the Mainconcept AAC codec has improved the channel changing issue (thanks oglesbyj).

I can't seem to get the webepg grabber to work for the HD channels. TVG v0.5.5.5 is doing its bit and creating the xml file, but the xmltv import doesn't seem to see it, or its contents. Any tips ?
There must be a way to include the Huffman decoding in the Freeview EPG grabber, I know that they have done it for the Sky / Freesat EPG in MePo - then we would get the last minute updates.

I finally got my 2nd tuner back, by shutting down and pulling the power lead out for 30secs - i hope this isn't going to be a reoccuring problem.

 

[Bucky O'Hare]

I can't seem to get the webepg grabber to work for the HD channels. TVG v0.5.5.5 is doing its bit and creating the xml file, but the xmltv import doesn't seem to see it, or its contents. Any tips ?
There must be a way to include the Huffman decoding in the Freeview EPG grabber, I know that they have done it for the Sky / Freesat EPG in MePo - then we would get the last minute updates.

I do not use the Webepg Grabber plugin just the XMLTV one but I did use TVG to setup xmltv 0.5.5.9 to grab the channel data I just made sure that tvg wrote the tvguide.xml file to the c:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\Team MediaPortal TV Server\xmltv folder which isn't the default for TVG.

 

[oglesbyj]

I finally got my 2nd tuner back, by shutting down and pulling the power lead out for 30secs - i hope this isn't going to be a reoccuring problem.

Did you try the new 8.1 drivers ??

http://home.btconnect.com/blackgold/Downloads/BGT_8.1.0.0.zip

I'm travelling so have not tried them yet but will update at the weekend.