How to: Setup TV Server to record from STB (1 Viewer)

[globaldonkey]

I've been looking through the forum for an answer to this. I've seen plenty of posts about people blasting to their STB to change channels, and I assume this is so you can capture a stream from the STB and view or record it with TV Server.

I have a tuner card with component, composite and S-video inputs, which I can easily connect to a STB, but the capture device doesn't appear in TV Server (only the tuners). How do you setup a "channel" to a STB so it can be viewed and recorded in TV Server?


TV-Server Version: TVE 3
MediaPortal Version: 1.0 RC2 (no SVN)
MediaPortal Skin: Xface 1.6
Windows Version: Windows XP SP2
CPU Type: Intel Core2 Duo 3GHZ
HDD: 2 x Samsung 1TB
Memory: 2 x 2GB DDR2
Motherboard: ASUS P5E-VM HDMI
Video Card: On board Intel G35 Graphics Accelerator
Video Card Driver: 6.14.10.4869
Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver: 5.10.0.5404
1. TV Card: DNTV Live Dual PCIe S3
1. TV Card Type: DVB-T x 2 + Analogue x2
1. TV Card Driver:
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec:
MPEG2 Audio Codec:
h.264 Video Codec: CoreAVC 1.8
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Silverstone LC16M
Cooling:
Power Supply: Zalman ZM460B-APS 460W
Remote: Soundgraph IMON IPAD
TV: Pioneer PDP 506HD
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

 

[Bagal]

1. If you go to the TV Channels section within the TV Server config, you can manually add a channel by clicking on the 'Add' button.
2. Move to the 'analogue' tab on the dialog that appears, then for the channel number enter the number that you would enter on your STB to change channels.
3. In the 'source' drop down list choose the input that the STB signal comes in from, so choose CVBS for composite and SVHS for s-video. (You might have more than one of each here, such as SVHS#1, SVHS#2, just choosing the first one should work)
4. Click OK to exit the dialog and your new channel will appear in the list, but at this point it's not mapped to a card, so go to the channel mappings section and assign your newly created channel to your tuner.

That's the basics, if you then want the TV server to blast the channel to the STB you need to setup either the ServerBlaster plugin or the IR Server suite to do this for you. Both methods send the channel number that you entered in the channel setup to the STB to change channel.

 

[globaldonkey]

Ahhh that's the trick....... that little gem needs to find it's way into the Wiki. Thanks Bagal.

I've setup a channel for CVBS#1, and connected the composite video out on the STB to the tuner card's CV input. Then I mapped the channel I created to the analogue tuner card. However, when I try to preview or start timeshifting through manual control, the following exception gets thrown. Looks like I'm missing a codec or filter. I assume this means MP is trying to compress the incoming audio stream. Which encoder is it looking for?

008-10-10 00:33:50.220717 [6]: Exception ystem.Exception: No audio compressor filter found
at TvLibrary.Implementations.Analog.TvCardAnalog.BuildGraph()
Exception :No audio compressor filter found
site :Void BuildGraph()
source :TVLibrary
stacktrace: at TvLibrary.Implementations.Analog.TvCardAnalog.BuildGraph()

2008-10-10 00:33:50.220717 [6]: Exception ystem.Exception: No audio compressor filter found
at TvLibrary.Implementations.Analog.TvCardAnalog.BuildGraph()
at TvLibrary.Implementations.Analog.TvCardAnalog.Tune(Int32 subChannelId, IChannel channel)
at TvLibrary.Implementations.Hybrid.HybridCard.Tune(Int32 subChannelId, IChannel channel)
at TvService.CardTuner.Tune(User& user, IChannel channel, Int32 idChannel)
Exception :No audio compressor filter found
site :Void BuildGraph()
source :TVLibrary
stacktrace: at TvLibrary.Implementations.Analog.TvCardAnalog.BuildGraph()
at TvLibrary.Implementations.Analog.TvCardAnalog.Tune(Int32 subChannelId, IChannel channel)
at TvLibrary.Implementations.Hybrid.HybridCard.Tune(Int32 subChannelId, IChannel channel)
at TvService.CardTuner.Tune(User& user, IChannel channel, Int32 idChannel)

 

[Bagal]

Sorry I've never had this problem so don't have an answer for you, but as you say it does look like it's missing a codec.

 

[globaldonkey]

Found a post that recommended installing WinDVR. This works. It also answers the issue of why I could not tune any channels on the analogue tuner of my card (not that I've ever wanted that function). It was the same problem stopping the card from tuning, so I've killed two birds.

There are some de-interlacing issues though..... I'll keep playing. It would be nice to know what encoder MP is looking for so I could just install (or configure) the appropriate encoder, rather than a whole capture product. The problem is all on the capture side..... the playback side is just using the standard ts splitter, ffdshow etc. I just can't work out how to use graphedit to see what's going on with the capture process.