Thought I would treat myself... (2 Viewers)

[porky996t]

Hi Guys,

I recently treated my self to a couple of new tuner cards...oooohh... shiny, shiny..(see photo's). They got here quicker than I thought they would, and I now need to finish off the cabling

I'll keep this thread updated with the install.

 

[porky996t]

Just to update the above.

I sorted all the cabling out from the terrestrial aerial and ran two lengths of 'shotgun' cable from the quad LNB to the server. This was the difficult bit as I had to pass through floor joists and along pipe runs and has taken most of the day.

I fitted the two cards into the server, and then installed the drivers and that was it. Painless really. No problems at all.

The two cards showed up in MP TV Server as DVBT/T2 Tuner A, B, C and D, and DVBS/S2 Tuner A, B, C and D. It was then just a case of doing a scan on each tuner, combining the channels etc. The cards are fast to tune and work really well.

I can now say that my Media Server is now complete for hardware, I'll probably keep fiddling about with it though - or 'fine tuning' as I say to the GF.

 

[radical]

I'm very curious how that will work with Mediaportal.
Hope you share your experience. Maybe with a little review?

 

[erichzann]

porky996t, since you are UK based like me, a couple of questions (I love the tbs products by the way!!!):

1. What device do you use for splitting the DVB signal? I use the following:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SLx-27820R-...F0/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1352316692&sr=8-12

It is a great bit of kit since it amplifies as well but it is ultra sensitive. Depending on where it is positioned behind the TV the signal is either non-existent or good. At the moment I am having trouble positioning the splitter to get a good signal.

2. What aerial cable do you use?

3. Do you have any problems getting the weaker channels like Dave and Quest? I can get them through the TV but have real problems through mediaportal and I think it could be an interference problem again.

Thanks

 

[porky996t]

Hi Erichzann

porky996t, since you are UK based like me, a couple of questions (I love the tbs products by the way!!!):

1. What device do you use for splitting the DVB signal? I use the following:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SLx-27820R-...F0/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1352316692&sr=8-12

It is a great bit of kit since it amplifies as well but it is ultra sensitive. Depending on where it is positioned behind the TV the signal is either non-existent or good. At the moment I am having trouble positioning the splitter to get a good signal.

I don't use an amp at all. I'm 900 ft above sea level with a direct line of sight to Winter Hill transmitter, which is about 6 miles away. The TBS Quad card comes with a small link lead, so I just feed the aerial into the input for the first two tuners, and the link lead then feeds the RF input for the next two tuners.

2. What aerial cable do you use?

It is just a generic coax I think. A good pal called around this morning with it; he fits aerials and satellite dishes for a living and just reeled a load out of the back of his van, and he did the same with the shotgun cable too. I had to get his lunch though!

3. Do you have any problems getting the weaker channels like Dave and Quest? I can get them through the TV but have real problems through mediaportal and I think it could be an interference problem again.

Not now, I did at first and this was due to faulty coax which I installed when I built the house. Now I have new cabling in, all is well. Apart from the dodgy cabling, I did have problems at digital switchover when they put one of the muxes on low power[DOUBLEPOST=1352317870][/DOUBLEPOST]Hi Radical,

I will put something together, although there really isn't much to say. It was the easiest install I have ever done.

 

[porky996t]

Just a small comment on the new TBS tuner cards.

I previously used 1 x Hauppuage DVB-T dual tuner, 1 x Peak DVB-T dual tuner and 1 x TBS 6981 DVB-S/S2 dual tuner. I have set the new DVB-T/T2 tuners higher in the TV server priority list than the DVB-S/S2 tuners. This means that for the HD channels in the UK I now use T2, instead of S/S2. There seems a marked difference in the quality of the picture on HD now, and this is also true on DVB-T (SD) transmissions too. There seem to be less artifacts, and a sharper picture on the DVB-T transmission of Sky News. One of the worst offenders for this reduced picture quality was the "Yesterday" channel. I originally put this down to a lower bandwidth broadcast, and whilst this is possibly true, the picture now is much, much better.

It is clear that the TBS DVB-T/T2 card is far better than the Peak & Hauppauge ones, and this is possibly due to the previous cards being of a much older design. So far I cannot fault the Quad card at all.

 

[Vic Thornley]

Am thinking of adding a dual DVB-S2 card in my server, I have a Sky dish which I used with an Mvision PVR sat set top box (so hope it will still pick up the HD channels still), in order to utilize the dual tuners could I fit a different LNB on the dish or do those splitters work ?(Sky issue and Sky installed). Also I have heard that these amplifiers are not worth it, but do they actually 'clean' up the signal as well.

PS - whats 'Shotgun' cable ----- (noob)

 

[porky996t]

Hi Vic,

The 'shotgun' cable is just two satellite co-ax cables physically joined and it looks like the double barrel of a shotgun. ( See here )

I think the easiest solution would to be fit a Quad, or Octo LNB, they're about £4 on eBay, and just run a new length of cable from the LNB to the DVB-S/S2 card. This should enable you to use your existing Sky box and new tuner simultaneously. It is what I did when I first went over to the HTPC and a full house solution. I kept the Sky box connected up to act as a backup for 'er indoors, just in case of a failure with the HTPC.

EDIT - This is the style of quad LNB I went for >>here<< as I'm pretty exposed where I live and this LNB has a small plastic shroud that pulls down and covers the cable connectors thus shielding them from the rain.

 

[jonm]

The cards are fast to tune and work really well

Apologies for replying to an oldish thread... but how long does it take to change channel on the DVB-S2, please? I have a dual TBS card and channel changes are really slow, would like to improve on it.

 

[porky996t]

Hi Jon,

On my DVB-S/S2 card, over a gigabit network, I get channel changes of about 2-3 secs on Sat channels. I also have a T/T2 card which takes about 4-5 secs. All cards stream to a RAMdisk for timeshifting.