Recomendations for a good DVB-T2 HD cards in the UK (1 Viewer)

[porky996t]

Then Amp controls audio

Yeah... I can't count how many times I've tried telling the other half this....

I have just ticked the box marked Loudness Equalisation and it seems to have boosted the audio, so I'll see how this goes.

 

[Vic Thornley]

Strange this is, was leading me to my next question. Audio - is 6ch Direct better than optical have a Sherwood audio receiver that has 6ch, optical and digital coax. Looking at some mobos that have HDMI, SPDIF and 6/8 channel.

 

[porky996t]

Hi Vic,

I'm not too well up on what's available, but it would seem that most modern mobo's have optical out, and if they have on board graphics will have HDMI out. The mobo in my lounge PC must be from about 2007 or 2008 and it has optical out and on board graphics with HDMI out (although I use a separate gfx card as the on board is just not good enough for HD). For the audio I just have a optical lead plugged in and going through to the Sony cinema system - this seems to cope easily with 5.1 surround. Isn't the 6/8 channel out done via a combination of 3.5mm jacks?

Oh, BTW Vic.... Welcome!!!

 

[Vic Thornley]

Cheers.
I fancy optical as its less messy with leads. Have been watching 720p HD films on my 42in LCD TV with the wife's laptop (HDMI or VGA) and everything is good (cept when the wife wants to go on facebook . I have an old tower PC using as a test rig at mo, using on board grafix but have not put it through any serious work. Also have a much more powerful AMD quad/16gb/SSD/Nvidia rig in my upstairs studio, which I use for my Photoshop work (My great passion, photography) so am loath to move it out. but will tempo move it for a test. So am thinking of building a new Server rig and modifying an old one as a client.

 

[porky996t]

That photography rig sounds like it would make a decent server. I have just gone from a "singleseat" lounge based PC which housed the TV Cards, various disks and acted as the Media Server too, and now have a centralised Server in my basement. It really is soooo much better. The server is a 6 core AMD Phenom II Black Edition, 16Gb DDR 3 1600Mhz RAM (with 12Gb used for timeshifting), a 60Gb SSD and a nVidia GT630 which doesn't get used as the server is accessed via RDC off my laptop.

We use MP all the time for TV, and have done so for the past 3 years, and have three fixed clients and two laptop which get occasional use. I think we would be lost without the range of media services MP offers. There are over 830 films, 130+ TV series, 6000 songs and countless photo's on the server now and we can watch all these and more with online videos plugin. This MediaPortal sort of gets you, and you end up gradually upgrading bit by bit to get a great system - it's what happened to me

 

[Vic Thornley]

umm, me thinks that might also be an option, just need to get the aerial into the bedroom - just need to get my head into gear and utilise WOL so its not on all the time. could also save me a lot of wonga - and just upgrade the fans in my old rig for a client.

 

[porky996t]

The WOL is provided by the PowerScheduler ++ plugin - it sends the server to S3 sleep, and the server then awakes for EPG grabbing, or to record any TV shows. It works well and if the server is asleep the client will wake the server to access the TV Stream.

 

[Vic Thornley]

sorted, question - did you install the server TV database onto your SSD

 

[porky996t]

I just installed the TV Server part of MePo on the central server - you may have realised it is composed of two elements, one being the TV Server and the other being the Media Client.

There are several options to choose from and which installation you choose is done at the start of the install stage.