Few questions about TV-cards (1 Viewer)

[Kaero]

Thanks, I found a guide on spoofing MAC address for windows 7 but the only thing is that Windows 7 is incapable of spoofing an address where the first two characters are the same... such as the MAC address of my STB is. I do have a laptop with Ubuntu on it that I scarcely use so I'm gonna give it a go on that.

And yeah I tried a few of those and they didn't work. My guess is that the guy who wrote that walkthrough cancelled his subscription.

 

[pilehave]

If your broadcaster uses multicast, it may be possible to sniff the packet data if your PC is on the same network as the tv box. This way you may be able to find each IP-address for individual channels.

 

[Kaero]

Well, I think I found the IP-address and port for a few channels but I can't get them to play in VLC so I may be wrong =\

 

[pilehave]

Well, I think I found the IP-address and port for a few channels but I can't get them to play in VLC so I may be wrong =\

How is the format input in VLC? If it is UDP it should be udp://@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:yy where yy is the portnumber

 

[Kaero]

That's one of the ways I've been inputting it. I've also been trying them without the @ symbol and a variety of other ways and nothing.

 

[Kaero]

I may have been doing something wrong, looking over the guide it mentioned two network cards and changing the MAC address of the second and I only have one network card.

One other thing that I'm not sure is relevant but I decided to try plugging my STB into my TV with a coaxial cable and using the TV's import channel feature to try and at least be able to use my TV remote to change the channels and it didn't work exactly as I expected; it found one channel which essentially did the same thing as my HDMI cable, and I still have to use the STB remote to change channels. Would that be relevant to how a tuner card would treat the STB? Also would a S-Video cable provide different results or is that for something completely different as I'm not overly sure what exactly an S-video cable does.

 

[mm1352000]

The guide seems to suggest a few key things:
1. You need a MAC address in a particular format.
2. You need to be allocated an IP address in a particular range.

Did you verify that you got an IP address in the correct range?

Regarding the TV setup: the behaviour that you found with the coax cable is expected. If you're not using the TV's inbuilt tuner (which I assume is an ATSC and/or clear QAM tuner) then the TV becomes merely a display. Any input whether it be HDMI, s-video, component or composite will only supply one channel to the TV at any given time.

A very similar situation would apply with a tuner card setup. With a tuner card setup, you can think of the tuner as a remote control for the STB. You press buttons on your remote which the HTPC receives. These button presses are then interpretted by MP to mean you want to change channel. MP then tells the tuner card to change channel. The tuner then tells the STB to change channels. You would only be able to watch/record one channel at any given time if you use a tuner, because the STB can only supply one channel on its outputs (s-video etc.). The STB is the limitation there, which is another reason why it is much better to directly connect the ISP feed to the HTPC if at all possible.

mm

 

[Kaero]

I've been able to change the MAC address to the same as my STB without much problem but I haven't done anything regarding being allocated a specific IP. Is this in the DHclient section of the guild? I just noticed it mentions allocating a specific IP which I've been skipping over. I've been starting from the 'How I worked this out' section. Would I not still require two network adapters? It mentions eth1 and eth0, from my understanding one adapter is required to maintain internet access while the other pretends to be the STB.

I don't think using eth0 and wlan0 would work for doing this, would it? I do have a USB wireless adapter somewhere that I had used with an old PC that didn't have a wireless adapter too, if that might be of any use.

And thanks for the information regarding my TV setup.

 

[mm1352000]

Yes, the info I was referring to is in the DHClient section. I assumed you had a router connecting all your PCs as well as the STB, and two network adapters (wireless and wired) built in to the laptop. It should still be possible to at least test the IPTV with one network connection and forego internet temporarily. The wireless MAC address should be able to be spoofed in the same way - the question would be how everything is connected...

mm

 

[Kaero]

Yes, Sasktel provided us with a 2Wire router that everything is connected to. and I do have wireless and wired on the laptop. I'll see about allocating an IP in the specific range indicated in the guide.