Some advice please, on DVB-S2 on a PC! (1 Viewer)

[jonm]

I have a Tevii USB DVB-S2 box and it works just fine.

 

[bcummins]

Cheers for the replies.

Regarding the TBS cards,

I'm looking at the 6920/6922 right now (main difference seems to be a blind scan feature though I have no idea what that is)
It's a single input PCIe card. I'm going to have to stick with single input as although my satellite has 2 cables only one of them seems to work. I just wanted to check - with MediaPortal TV server, if i set my HTPC up as the server, can i still use the mediaportal client on another pc in my house to watch TV? I won't want to watch it on two machines simultaneously so as far as I know this should be fine?

 

[mm1352000]

Hi and welcome bcummins

Just in response to your questions about USB vs. PCI/PCIe earlier...
These days there is really not a lot of difference. They can use the same tuner and demodulator chips as PCI/PCIe products with a different "bridge" chip to convert to USB instead of PCI/PCIe. In days gone by (USB 1 era) there were bandwidth limitations on the USB bus which meant USB tuners were inferior (couldn't stream more than half a transponder/mux with only 12 Mbps of USB bandwidth). However that problem disappeared with USB 2. USB tuners can run quite hot (and usually have power bricks if they are satellite tuners), mostly because they tend to be boxes that trap the heat inside. Also there are very occasional chipset or driver compatibility issues that result in the tuner being re-recognised by Windows each time you reboot. That is rare.

In summary: choose whichever suits you best.

I'm looking at the 6920/6922 right now (main difference seems to be a blind scan feature though I have no idea what that is)

Blind scan is the ability to scan for channels without knowing where exactly to find them. MP (like most other software) doesn't support that feature but you won't have any problem getting by without it.

It's a single input PCIe card. I'm going to have to stick with single input as although my satellite has 2 cables only one of them seems to work. I just wanted to check - with MediaPortal TV server, if i set my HTPC up as the server, can i still use the mediaportal client on another pc in my house to watch TV? I won't want to watch it on two machines simultaneously so as far as I know this should be fine?

Yes, it will be fine. You can stream TV to as many clients as you like. It is the simultaneous viewing/recording which is limited by the number of tuners that you have. To be honest I'd really recommend investing in getting that cable fixed if you can afford it and you intend to use MP for recording. Note that if you're only going to get one tuner then you could also go USB and keep your video card as you originally planned.

mm

 

[bcummins]

Hi and welcome bcummins

Just in response to your questions about USB vs. PCI/PCIe earlier...
These days there is really not a lot of difference. They can use the same tuner and demodulator chips as PCI/PCIe products with a different "bridge" chip to convert to USB instead of PCI/PCIe. In days gone by (USB 1 era) there were bandwidth limitations on the USB bus which meant USB tuners were inferior (couldn't stream more than half a transponder/mux with only 12 Mbps of USB bandwidth). However that problem disappeared with USB 2. USB tuners can run quite hot (and usually have power bricks if they are satellite tuners), mostly because they tend to be boxes that trap the heat inside. Also there are very occasional chipset or driver compatibility issues that result in the tuner being re-recognised by Windows each time you reboot. That is rare.

In summary: choose whichever suits you best.

Thank you very much for that clarification, it's a shame that kind of information isn't readily available when scouring the search engines! In the end I've opted for a different configuration because of the cost vs. performance implications. I went with the AMD APU (A8-3870K) because the IGP is as good as the nvidia low profile card I purchased. This has freed up the PCIe slot on the motherboard so I can opt for an internal solution purely for the 3 reasons that it is cheaper, cooler and tidier.

Blind scan is the ability to scan for channels without knowing where exactly to find them. MP (like most other software) doesn't support that feature but you won't have any problem getting by without it.

I opted for the cheaper card without Blind Scan in the end and as I plan to use MP I'm glad I didn't pay the extra in that case!

Yes, it will be fine. You can stream TV to as many clients as you like. It is the simultaneous viewing/recording which is limited by the number of tuners that you have. To be honest I'd really recommend investing in getting that cable fixed if you can afford it and you intend to use MP for recording. Note that if you're only going to get one tuner then you could also go USB and keep your video card as you originally planned.
mm

This is excellent news. I had gathered from my searches looking for problems that it probably wasn't going to be the case but it is good to confirm. In the end I opted for a single input card. I appreciate the point it's worth getting the cable sorted but, I factored in my usage. Never in my time of using Freesat have I seen something in 2 channels at once and had that "wish i could watch 1 and record 1" dilemma (only that I want to record something I miss due to being away) so I don't really think it's necessary. I also would only ever watch 1 tv at a time (although I did hear if channels are in the same "group" or "banding" I could actually watch/record simultaneously through 1 connection; is that something you've come across?

Thanks again for the excellent reply

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again

A very brief response...

I also would only ever watch 1 tv at a time (although I did hear if channels are in the same "group" or "banding" I could actually watch/record simultaneously through 1 connection; is that something you've come across?

Yes, and TV Server supports that feature. The requirement is that the channels are on the same transponder or multiplex. In practice it is certainly useful to be able to do that, however a dual tuner is the only guaranteed way to be able to watch one channel while recording another.

mm