MP and multiple DVB-S cards (2 Viewers)

[gdekeijzer]

Hello there.

I'm investigating the possibilities of building a MP with DVB-S. I know this can be done, but i want to use 2 cards instead of 1.
This gives the opportunity to watch and record at the same time (yes i have dual LNB).
The questions:
1) Does this work? (two floppyDTV's)
2) Can i watch and record as predicted?
3) Can i record 4 channels at once (as DVB-S receivers can with dual tuner setup)
4) Do i need 2 cam's and 2 cards from my provider (CanalDigitaal, the Netherlands), or has MP the same feature to decode pre-recorded material at other time when not using live-tv (for example at night).
5) MCE2005, MCE-Vista or MediaPortal (for use with above 'wishes')

Regards,

Gerwin

 

[gdekeijzer]

no-one can answer one of these questions??

 

[Mew]

Hi gdekeijzer

I can only partly answer your questions as I have different hardware (2 Hauppauge WinTV HVR-4000s as well as a WinTV PVR-500).

1) The 2 HVR-4000s install quite happily and MediaPortal sees all the tuners (I use TVE3). I am currently only using the DVB-S tuners so I have disabled the rest (they are hybrid cards). This was the case for both XP Pro and Vista x86.

2) I can watch a channel from DVB-S while recording another. If both are recording it falls back to the WinTV PVR-500 (but the PVR-500 is only UK analogue channels).

3) I would guess that if you only have 2 tuners you would only be able to record more than 2 programs if they are on the same satellite transponder. I haven't tried this.

4) I don't use cams as I don't think Hauppauge have brought their long awaited USB cam out yet. Whether this would work with a BSKYB card is another question.

5) I use MediaPortal because of its flexibilty. I can mix analogue and DVB-S. I am hoping to move house in the next month or two and I should then be able to receive DVB-T as well as DVB-S. MCE 2005 and Vista cannot mix the two. Other advantages I have found with MediaPortal is the support in the forums and the rate of development and bug fixes. I tend to use the SVNs to gain the new features and bug fixes but these are very beta so may crash where the stable releases wouldn't.

Some people however struggle with set-up and their hardware combinations to get MediaPortal running in a stable manner and MCE or Vista may work better for them so I would say there is no diffinative answer.

I hope this helps

Mew

 

[mruane]

Hi Mew

Just a question on your HVR4000 card. I am looking at getting one of these also. Currently I have a Nova S Plus card and want to add a second DVB-S card. Although the HVR4000 is advertised as a 4 tuner card - it is a hybrid. So how many actual tuners (that can be accessed at the same time from Media Portal) does the card have? Is it just one tuner from which you can access either DVB-S, DVB-C, DVB-T or analogue but not all at the same time? Or can you make recordings from say DVB-S and Analogue at the same time?

Appreciate any feedback that you might have.

Cheers Mike

 

[Mew]

Hi Mike

As far as I am aware you can only access one tuner at a time.

On the Hauppauge UK website it is advertised as "Quad Mode" rather than quad tuner. I believe there are only 2 tuners. There is the DVB-S/S2 and the DVB-T/analogue one. On the UK Hauppauge forums someone had tried to use the DVB-S and DVB-T tuners at the same time. I think they managed to get pictures and audio on one tuner but only audio on the other. I think Hauppauge themselves say you can only use one mode at a time.

A couple of other things to bear in mind:

1) The analogue tuner does software based encoding rather than hardware based. I think in the past people could not get this to work in MediaPortal. It is for these reasons I bought the PVR-500 as two of the main channels in the UK, Channel 4 and Five, are currently encrypted on satellite.

2) There was an issue in TVE3 grouping tuners into a hybrid card. This is necessary if you plan to use more than one of the tuners so MediaPortal recognises that only one at a time can be used. I think someone had fixed some of the problems in the last couple of weeks but I am not sure if it is fully resolved.
I am keeping an eye of this for when I move, as Channel 4 and Five, mentioned above, are available unencrypted on DVB-T and I would like to be able to use MediaPortal for both DVB-S and DVB-T. As mentioned before, where I currently live I can't receive DVB-T so I haven't tried to use this facility.

The reasons I bought the card was the flexibilty and a degree of future proofing with DVB-S2. Also the previous Hauppauge products I have had (including a 10 year old WinTv card) have been well supported.

Mew

 

[mruane]

Thanks Mew

That was very helpful. I also have a PVR500 and the Nova S Plus but my analogue signal is patchy at best. Given Media Portal's ability to record multiple channels from the same transponder, perhaps the I am better to just leave this configuration installed for the time being.

Appreciate the summary.

Cheers Mike

 

[infinite.loop]

1) Does this work? (two floppyDTV's)

yes. no problme at all.

2) Can i watch and record as predicted?

you can record show A and watch show B if this is what you mean.

3) Can i record 4 channels at once (as DVB-S receivers can with dual tuner setup)

Yes and no

the TV-Engine V2 which is integrated in MediaPortal 0.2.3.0 RC1 (and earlier) is only have to tune one channel per TVCard.



the TV-Server (TV-Engine V3) is able to all channels which are on the same frequence/transponder at the same time.

so if you have Channel A,B,C,D,E,F on the same transponder, you can record all of them simultaneously.

4) Do i need 2 cam's and 2 cards from my provider (CanalDigitaal, the Netherlands), or has MP the same feature to decode pre-recorded material at other time when not using live-tv (for example at night).

if you want that both TV-Cards are able to tune your scrambled channels, then you need a CAM and a Smartcard in every TV-Card (2 in your case).
make sure that the CAM is able to decode multiple streams at the same time, so you can use the "multitune feature" as described above, in TV-Server.

5) MCE2005, MCE-Vista or MediaPortal (for use with above 'wishes')

well, MCE2005 and ;MCE Vista do not support dvb-s nor dvb-c (only works with driver hacks).
and as far as i know, it is also not able to tune/record multiple channels with one TV-Card (on the same transponder -> dvb-t)

MediaPortal is not that easy to install if you do it the first time. but i am a very happe mediaPortal user and would never "downgrade" to MCE

 

[infinite.loop]

Just a question on your HVR4000 card.
I am looking at getting one of these also. Currently I have a Nova S Plus card and want to add a second DVB-S card. Although the HVR4000 is advertised as a 4 tuner card - it is a hybrid. So how many actual tuners (that can be accessed at the same time from Media Portal) does the card have? Is it just one tuner from which you can access either DVB-S, DVB-C, DVB-T or analogue but not all at the same time? Or can you make recordings from say DVB-S and Analogue at the same time?

as far as i know, the analog part is Hardware Encoding (so works like all the other PVR cards).
the whole card appears as seperate 4 TV-Cards in MediaPortal TV-Server and can be used as such without any "tweaking".

BUT, the drivers are still.... well.... in short, dvb-s2 is not working yet...
(hauppauge allready knows about the bug in the driver, we are waiting for new ones)

 

[mruane]

Ah, thanks Infinityloop, that is encouraging. Are you sure that the analogue tuner in the HVR4000 uses hardware encoding? If so, then that will change my view. An HVR4000 with a Nova S Plus is the sweet spot for me even without DVB-S2. Here in NZ the S2 bit is still some time away, but having 2 DVB-S tuners available via the NOVA S card and the HVR4000 lets me cover all that I need from the satellite whilst still providing access to the analogue for the one station that isn't on the satellite platform.

Cheers Mike

 

[infinite.loop]

Are you sure that the analogue tuner in the HVR4000 uses hardware encoding?

well, no

1. on the german hauppauge page you can find a note that analog is software encoding
2. on the .com page there is no info about the HVR-4000
3. and on the .co.uk they do not say anything about the encoder

i will ask dman (since he owns that card)