Media Portal and Sky Set Top Box setup (1 Viewer)

[dkwitt]

Some background ...
My existing machine is quite old but has been running XP MCE for about 3 years so it should be capable of running MP (see specs below).
I decided to temporarily install Vista just before Christmas using my son's copy, to evaluate whether it was worth upgrading. Sadly, it was a complete failure and I could not get it to work, so reverted to XP MCE. Since then it has been nothing but trouble, due I suppose to missing or conflicting drivers / software etc. Problems which I never experienced before, such as a choppy TV signal, made it an embarrassment. The latest problem is a loss of TV signal whenever I press the record button, which makes it pretty useless!

I found MP and it would appear to do a better job than MCE so I have decided to go with MP instead.

I have got as far as attempting to configure MP but I cannot work out how to set up the application so that it identifies my TV signal.

I have a Sky set top box which is connected to my pc via a lead which converts the scart output to the separate audio and vid/aud inputs on my Hauppauge PVR 350 tv card.

I am prompted to manually scan for channels during setup. Initially no channels were found, then on a second attempt channel 53 was located. This appears to be bogus as it merely displays a black screen.


Could anyone confirm:
if such a setup will work with MP? if so, what do I need to set in the configuration process?
the driver versions that will work with MP and the tv card & the onboard graphics card (I believe that some versions of the drivers are specifically required by MCE but other versions may be installed on your XP MCE machine if you are not using MCE's features)?

I am not an expert in these things so am grateful for any assistance. I have searched the forum for posts but could not find any recent information.

I note that some posters here are trying to setup MP in this way, notably 'arjay' who posted some time ago that he had given up and gone to GBPVR.

I wonder if things have changed since then?


Specs are
asus pundit-r (onboard ati radeon 9100 IGP graphics card)
hauppauge win-tv-pvr350
MS remote and the rpf2link thingy which plugs into the MS remote receiver to change channels on the sky set top box

As I noted, the machine was working fine until I messed it up, so any issues I have should be software related.


Thanks very much, and even if I don't get it working with my current set-up, MP looks fantastic and I hope one day to use it.

 

[rekenaar]

I don't know the answers to all your questions, but lets try to get the ball rolling.

So it sounds like your tuner is getting the TV stream via RCA video and audio cables? If so, then I don't think you will find anything with the scan (I might be wrong). Just create your channel (or import or load xmltv) and then change the channel setup to user CVBS1 or CVBS2. Are you using the inbuilt TV engine or the seperate TV Server? If I remember correctly, there is a button to add CVBS channels.

Your initial goal should just be to get the tv picture of your single test channel (remember to map the channel to the card).

After that you can proceed with the setup of all channels and epg (electronic program guide). Please post your progress and we will assist with further directions.

Also, have a look at the wiki. You will find a lot of answers already there.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

ati radeon 9100 IGP

I have not known anyone to successfully run MP with this GPU, but if you are going to try, use the SimpleMP skin, as it takes the least amount of graphical proccessing.

 

[dkwitt]

Thanks for the info, if I make any headway I will let you know.
Thanks once again.

 

[RobertinoM]

we did it..

hi there..

we did a setup for a friend in france, he is english and wanted his sky..

we used MP 0.2.2.0 with blue two skin and a hauppauge pvr-150.

it worked fine for us .. you just had to add manually a channel that points to the video in of the PVR.-150 and it will grab the signal from the sky box. the only thing is that you have to look for is the remote...

but there is a solution that works smooth via usb.. have a look here

http://www.dusky-control.com/


everything is working smooth since month now...

regards robertino

 

[jogu]

Hi Robertino,

That sounds interesting - how do you setup MP to work with the dusky usb controller? When I tried (a while ago admittedly) I couldn't find anywhere to setup an external channel changer...

Thanks,

Joseph (of dusky-control)