new Aussie with questions (hardware related) (1 Viewer)

[znelbok]

Hi all

I found media portal from playing with xbmc (again).

I am interested in upgrading my topfield SD PVR to a HD capable unit, but I thought I had better look at a solution like this first.

One of my main concerns is reliability. It needs to work, no glitching, no tweaking all the time, set it up and let it go. Those of you who ar married will know the pain that you can suffer when the handbrake can;t do something she want's to do and would normally be able to do easily if you had just gone and bought the simple little box off the store shelf.........

Now because I am in Australia, I want to make sure I get the right gear best suited for our DTV system here. I have read the supported TV cards page and tried a search here, but there is so much information now that it could take me all year to work something out.

Here are my requirements

I want to use mediaportal as a back end server for recording FTA TV. minimum twin tuners, but four is probably a good number. I opten am recording two programs at once now, with overlaps preventing others from being recorded.

I want to use xbmc as the headend unit - a media center that can play all my media files and one that the family is used to using. xbmc has a plugin for mp, so that part is not an issue (yet!). MP itself will not be playing back anything, so I dont need video capabilities as such for that purpose.

Questions

What is a good DVB card for use in Australia?

Has anyone tried running MP in a virtualised environment - if so what tuner cards were used (USB or ethernet?)

Whats the best OS to use - since I am starting from scratch I might as well do it right first time?

What is the up-time expected of a system like this - can I rely on it to keepo the handbrake happy?

What are the epg options for aussies (those in Australia will know the dilema in obtaining epg data)?

Can I generate schedules automatically based on the EPG data. I currently collect the data daily and then the software I use looks for my shows and creates a timer event based on the times and channel in the epg - I have just about everything recorded automatically just in case I miss it.

Are there any Ethernet based DVB tuners available that work with MP?

Thanks guys for any help you give - and please bear with me as I work though all of this.

Mick

 

[mm1352000]

Hi there Mick

What is a good DVB card for use in Australia?

That question is very open. DVB-S or DVB-T? PCI, PCIe or USB?

Has anyone tried running MP in a virtualised environment - if so what tuner cards were used (USB or ethernet?)

So far as I'm aware, getting any sort of TV server (eg. DVBLink TV Source, MediaPortal TV Server) to run in a virtual PC is basically impossible at this point. The biggest problem is that the hardware is virtualised, so you don't get access to PCI or PCIe tuners from within the virtual machine. You *might* be able to get a USB tuner working, but that is a big might. I really don't recommend it, and we (as a team) can't support that configuration.

Whats the best OS to use - since I am starting from scratch I might as well do it right first time?

Probably Windows 7. There would be a more clear advantage if you were running the MP frontend instead of XBMC. I'd say that this decision would be down to what works best with XBMC and the tuner/s that you settle on.

What is the up-time expected of a system like this - can I rely on it to keepo the handbrake happy?

The million dollar question
In my opinion TV Server itself is *very* reliable. Personally, I have ZERO issues with it, but I don't have a wife or kids to keep happy
Do you plan to put the system in standby/hibernate when you're not using it? Many tuners can have problems after a system wakes up. The tuner drivers are probably the biggest factor

What are the epg options for aussies (those in Australia will know the dilema in obtaining epg data)?

Generally speaking you can use:
- WebEPG = built in "plugin" that scrapes websites. Australia is in the list of supported countries, but I don't know how many channels are actually supported and I don't know how reliable the data is.
- XMLTV = built in "plugin" for XMLTV support. I guess you could pay for Ice TV (I think that is what they call themselves?), write your own scraper or use someone elses with this.
- over-the-air EIT is supported. TV Server can be made to grab data from all muxes/transponders that you have access to while tuners are idle, or from the transponder you're timeshifting on while you're watching TV )).
- as far as I know, MHEG5 is not yet directly supported. You'll have to use XMLTV as a "middle man" with something like the EPG Collector if you want MHEG 5 data.

Keep in mind that I'm only a humble NZer. An Aussie would be able to give you a better idea of the best option.

Can I generate schedules automatically based on the EPG data. I currently collect the data daily and then the software I use looks for my shows and creates a timer event based on the times and channel in the epg - I have just about everything recorded automatically just in case I miss it.

The ForTheRecord plugin is probably your best bet for this.

Are there any Ethernet based DVB tuners available that work with MP?

Are you thinking of a particular device? DVB-IP is supported if that is what you mean...

Good luck

 

[znelbok]

Thanks for the reply

DVB-T was my focus. There is not enough [free] sat stuff for english only speaking aussie and unless I am mis-informed, Austar/foxtel does not work on anything nut their own box.

My experience wth vmware would indicate that you can pass the USB devices through to the VM. How well it works for a setup like this remains to be seen. I dont know how well a USB tuner works either.

I am looking at using TV server on a server in the server room, no hibernation stand by etc, on 24x7.

Re the IP tuner, I was asking about a tuner with an ethernet interface as opposed to USB or firewire - would make virtualisation easier.
Maybe the dreambox line of receivers could be utilised in a virtualised environment. They have both DVB-t,C & S STB's available that can stream (they are built on linux) - have a look at dream multimedia if you are interested. I can stream from my dreambox to xbmc now so it should be able to stream to MP if someone wrote a plugin? for it (something I will have to search next).

Thanks again

Mick

 

[MadMagpie]

Here's the hardware I have, it all works for me with no probs (in Tassie), I am running Win7
Compro Videomate T750
Leadtek LT-DTV1000S
DNTV Live! Dual Hybrid PCIe S3
Leadtek LT-PVR2000 (for analogue cap of Aust*r)

EPG FTA can be grabbed over the air, for Aust*r EPG I use guidedigger (search the forum for it)

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again Mick

Thanks for the reply

No problem

DVB-T was my focus. There is not enough [free] sat stuff for english only speaking aussie and unless I am mis-informed, Austar/foxtel does not work on anything nut their own box.

My experience wth vmware would indicate that you can pass the USB devices through to the VM. How well it works for a setup like this remains to be seen. I dont know how well a USB tuner works either.

Regarding Foxtel etc.: that is my understanding too.

If you've got experience with VMs then you are more qualified to answer the question than me. I have only tried to set up a VM once a couple of years ago and I gave up pretty quickly when I saw this thread (I had intended to use the machine as a single-seat with a PCIe tuner). Note that at that time VM Ware Server was limited to USB 1.1 speeds. I don't know if that still applies or even if you're planning to use VM Ware.

I do know there are *tons* of *cheap* dual DVB-T USB tuners available from places like ebay and TradeMe. If you want quality and support then you might try the Tiny Twin from DigitalNow.

Re the IP tuner, I was asking about a tuner with an ethernet interface as opposed to USB or firewire - would make virtualisation easier.
Maybe the dreambox line of receivers could be utilised in a virtualised environment. They have both DVB-t,C & S STB's available that can stream (they are built on linux) - have a look at dream multimedia if you are interested. I can stream from my dreambox to xbmc now so it should be able to stream to MP if someone wrote a plugin? for it (something I will have to search next).

There is a significant difference between DVB-IP and hardware that streams TV/video via UPnP, RTSP etc. You seem to be talking about the second option...
Both are really out of my area of specialty. I can tell you that TV Server has a built in virtual DVB-IP tuner and that it uses RTSP streaming to send TV to clients in multi-seat setups. We don't support UPnP or DLNA in MediaPortal 1 yet, but we plan to add support in MediaPortal 2. One key point to be aware of is that TV Server doesn't receive RTSP streams (ie. you can't connect a the Dreambox to TV Server). Devices like the HDHomeRun that have BDA tuner drivers *are* supported. So far as I'm aware there aren't too many of those sorts of devices, but I could easily be wrong.

I guess at the end of the day all you want TV Server for is recording. If I were you then I'd just buy three cheap dual DVB-T tuners (three = assume one won't work ). The assumptions are that I would know my way around VM Ware (or whatever you plan to use) *way* better than I actually do and that I know I'm not going to run into bandwidth issues trying to put HD DVB-T through the virtual USB interfaces (which could *very* easily go wrong, especially for multiple HD streams like you would want)...