Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!) (21 Viewers)

[captcol]

I was using a hauppage nova-s before i moved to a house with no dish, very nice card also, similar pricing. I will be getting a second one once I get a dish up

 

[shacknasty]

Yeah I think it happen on the 31st July, Not sure though; I don't have sky. Check out the Home Theater thread on the geekzone forum were some discussions about it. As far as DVB-S cards, I've been very happy with my skystar 2 I bout off trade me for $145. Can't say I've had any problems with my Technotrend 1500S either.

Thanks, I have just bought a Skystar 2 off trademe from the same person. Ill pick up the splitter and extra lengths of cable over the weekend and hopefully setup on Monday

Im having some trouble with the EPG at the moment, some stuff seems to be coming through and others not. Ill have to check when I get home, but it looked like most of the sky listings were missing. Im using xmltvnz 2.5

 

[johnrw]

I have tried the zxcvbnm2 trick of using the EPG gained from the FloppyDVT (from Digital-Everywhere) DVB-S card installed by Autotuning it to all the Horizontal Transponders of Optus D1 which finds Sky TV and the Freeview Channels. I then assign all the Channels I want to the External Source input with appropriate channel numbers (to make my MCE Blaster change channels on the Sky STB and also (Bingo!) I get the guide for all channels without needing to use xmlTVNZ. I am only using MediaPortal Single User 0.2.3 Rec1 latest SVN and all works fine. I could not find the latest Optus D1 Horizontal Transponders (on Lygsat or Satcodx) which now feed New Zealand until I did a Blind Scan with one of my Generic STB's. This is what I got which allowed me to edit my Transponder .tpl list before I did the Auto Scan with the internal tuner:

12393
12420
12456 (at this time Freeview TV3, C4)
12483 (at this time Freeview TV1, TV2, Maori, TVNZ Wide or TVNZ6, TVNZ Sports Exta)
12519
12545
12581
12607
12644
12670
12706
12732

all with SR 22500

It all worked fine. I too do not now need to use xmlTVNZ.

If you look at Posts #378 to #383 this thread, you get some options to consider when using a DVB-S card in conjunction with an analog card but using its AV input from Sky. This works fine for me and I no longer use xmlTVNZ. I think macraenz has gone this way also. My Blaster works with MCE Replacement without problems except for some strange reason I had to set up each channel with the STB channel numbers with a zero in front to introduce a delay to the blaster - so TV1 is 01 (not just 1) and Sky Movies is 020 (not 20). Even channels like CUE required 0110 (or is it 0111 - can't rember but it still needed the leading 0).

 

[Bleazle]

Hi all - I've got a "few" more questions...

I'm running 2 x Skystar 2 tuners + a PVR 150 (for Prime and Juice) on a Media Centre PC. SInce changing to MP the longest I've gone without a BSOD is about 3 days and it's getting "boring" having to re-tune the channels etc everytime it turns to crap - it's not good for domestic relations either - I'm sure I'm not alone in that boat!! The BSOD message is "ks.sys", which, from all the searching I've done (on forums like this) might indicate a problem with the BDA driver I installed (only on the second card).

I know it could be all sorts of other things (my graphics and sound card drivers are up to date) but I'm thinking of uninstalling the BDA driver and installing the drivers that came with the card? any opinions/ideas on this? I take it I just do that through the Device Manager? I understand that the BDA drivers are supposed to allow quicker channel changes but what use is that if you can't even get MP to open without getting the BSOD?? It's at the stage that everytime I start MP I have to look away because the BSOD drives me nuts

I read somewhere (on this site) that the "ks.sys" isn't MP's "fault" - how does that work when the computer only dies when I'm trying to open MP? Not complaining, just wondering what the go is there.

Also, after having to re-tune the digital channels (again) last night all of the recorded TV for the digital channels has dissapeared from Recorded TV (Analouge recordings are fine though). I can get to the digital recordings through "My Videos" but then all I get is a file name - no programme info - is there a way of getting these shows to appear in "Recorded TV" again"? ((I'm using MPEG for recordings rather than the TS setting))

Has anyone got any pointers on how to setup my music folders? I've got around 700 CD's on my harddrive and I haven't worked out how I should set MP up to show CD covers like Media Centre does, other than "break out" all of the CD folders so that they're in the Music Root folder - which will be a real mission because Windows Media Player has stored files all over the place and a lot of the time when I open a folder in MP it's empty because the songs are stored elsewhere I've just started using the Global Search plugin which is a hell of a lot better than My Music in MP (when it comes to finding a song or album etc quickly) but maybe there's an easy way to set My Music up that I've missed?? ((using ID3 tags in MP setup just in case that makes any difference..))

My Videos - is there any way to generate thumbnails of videos like MCE has? A picture tells a 1,000 words...

In general I prefer MP over Media Centre, just need to keep ironing the bugs out... Hope you guys can help!!

 

[mcraenz]

I've seen those blue screens before. ks.sys with SS2
-Are you running the BDA driver with both cards?
-Are you running TVServer or MP built-in TV? If your running TV Server make sure you don't have any cards set up in MP Built-in TV remove them all. I think thats what caused the BSODs for me.
-Also apply this patch if you haven't already:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...6d-198c-4197-82ad-28251f9c50a5&displaylang=en
And this one:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896626

Let us know how you get on

 

[mruane]

Trying to implement the idea discussed earlier of assigning the SKY channels to the SVideo input on the Nova card whilst getting the EPG from the satellite. I must be missing something crucial because I cannot see how you can map the DVB-S channel to the SVideo input on the card. When I select any of the DVB-S channels that MP and TV3 has found and try to change the source for that program, MP just reports that it has "No Analgue tuning details for this channel". Can someone walk me through the process of transferring a DVB-S channel from the Nova S card to an SVideo input on that card. I also have a PVR500 in the box so I have multple Video input sources.

Cheers Mike

 

[mcraenz]

Yu need to manually create the analog channes then combinthem with DVB-S channels in the "cmbinations" section. I think thats what you mean.

 

[Bleazle]

I've seen those blue screens before. ks.sys with SS2
-Are you running the BDA driver with both cards?
-Are you running TVServer or MP built-in TV? If your running TV Server make sure you don't have any cards set up in MP Built-in TV remove them all. I think thats what caused the BSODs for me.
-Also apply this patch if you haven't already:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...6d-198c-4197-82ad-28251f9c50a5&displaylang=en
And this one:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896626

Let us know how you get on

Thanks for those links - I'm running MCE '05 Rollup 2 so do I still need them? I know there was a patch required for XP (not sure if that's one of the links you've given me) but I didn't think it was needed for MCE? Should I apply those patches anyway??

Re: Setup: TV Server, single seat MP (for now!) no cards showing in MP but for some reason Prime shows up as a channel and I can't delete it - not worried about that though because I never have a problem with the ananlogue side of things.

Re: BDA Drivers - just on one card - which is second in the priority list. Should I go the opposite way to what I was thinking and have BDA drivers on both cards - or will that just give me twice as many BSOD eppisodes??

Something else: I went into the TV Guide last night (a show was already recording) and when I tried to watch live TV on another channel it said no tuner available (or was it no audio/video? - not sure..) Anyway I started recording the show I wanted to watch live (no problems there) and then watched it more or less live. Why can I record two shows at once but not record one/time shift another? seems strange... (I think I used to be able to do it..)

Anyone got any hints on the Music set up thing - I had a look in the Music area of the forum a while ago but didn't see anything that answered my question and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wondered what the best thing to do is after changing from MCE to MP

Cheers

 

[shacknasty]

My Skystar turned up already!

 

[mruane]

Thanks mcraenz. Still don't fully see how this is setup but i will get back into it when I get back next week. Many thanks for the help.

Cheers Mike