Direct Tv (1 Viewer)

[mackandall]

direhard,
I figured out what the problem was on my part. As I suspected it was very basic. Are you willing to give it another shot? Trust me, its worth it.

 

[diehard2]

Sure. Actually, if you write up detailed instructions, you would probably help lots of people. I don't understand why they can't just put this into some sort of wizard like Meedio did. There are a lot of Directv subscribers. Thanks!

 

[mackandall]

Sorry for the lull direhard.

I am assuming you have your tv listing set up via the zapzit plugin and all. If not let me know... Here is the guide I followed:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=1829

I tired almost every version of the direct tv serial port plugin with my d10-300 box and all gave me errors in my log with the exception of the ver first one posted here:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=4025


Once the plugin is installed you need to set the channels listed by zapping and xmltv to use the external source. If each channel is not set to do this in channels section of your media portal setup then media portal will keep assuming that your tv card is the means to tune into the channels listed in your tv guide and not your direct tv box.

There are two ways to do this:

The Short Way

Open the utility is in 'C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Docs\'.

Fire it up and open the 'TVDatabase' in 'C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\database\'

Ok now navigate to the 'Browse Data' tab and select 'channel' in the 'Table' menu. Next move to the "Execute SQL' tab and run the commands listed in the first post found here:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=2989&highlight=sql+commands

You shoudl be good to go after that.

The Long Way

And so what you do after setting up your tv guide and enabled the diretv plugin that works for you depending on your box do the following:

1. Go to the televisions section of the MediaPortal setup app and navigate to TV Channels.

2. Click on each channel individually and then choose the edit button below the list.

3 In the window that pops up, navigate to the tab labeled 'External'.

4. From the 'Type' menu choose 'Received by external settop box'.

5. From the "Input via' menu choose the means by which your tv card connects to the direct tv box. Mine connects through SVHS for example.

6 You then choose the channel number. This should correspond the number that came up in the guide that was generated.

You should now be able to tune in to this channel with media portal. Exit setup after setting three or so channels and try navigating your tv guide and switching to them.

Depending on your programming subscription with driect tv putting in all your channels this way can be a long and tedious process. Or, it can be a long, awful, painful, and exasperating process. Chances are you will be running down the street clad only in your underwear, screaming before you get to your 200th channel. If you have kids of a sensible age i suggest you put them to work on it. Things weren’t so bad for me. Being a graudate student puts me ever so often on the brink of insanity.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[mackandall]

Deleted

 

[Hesse]

I wrote a plugin to automatically set channels to external and sort as well. Search for MP Channel Updater.

Jesse

 

[mackandall]

diehard, any luck? Hesse, could you provide us a link?

 

[Hesse]

Sorry, was too lazy to look before. Here is the link. Its a very small little utility and the zap2it plugin basically makes it so you don't need it, but oh well. I was going to incorporate it into the MP source code, I just have been extremely busy lately.

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=11178

I think there were some issues with the version that's on the webpage if you have some exotic channels. You can try the one at the link because it has some instructions too. If it crashes, then go to the end of that thread and get the file from post #33.

Jesse