TV Server, Colossus, and DirecTV (1 Viewer)

[toricred]

I am a SageTV refugee looking for a replacement. I am trying to setup a sample to decide if MP is for me. The first step is setting up my Capture Cards. I have a Colossus, 4 actually, connected via HDMI to DirecTV H21 receivers. I tune using a command-line interface. I can't figure out how to add the capture card so I need some basic help.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi and welcome toricred

The Colossus will appear as an analog tuner in TV Server ("Colossus crossbar" or something like that). After you've got your four cards recognised, the next step is to add channels. This is going to be the most tedious and frustrating part for you I think. The only ways to add channels to TV Server are:
1. Scanning. The Colossus is not a tuner so you can't do that.
2. Schedules Direct plugin. I don't think this will help you because I don't think they have DirecTV EPG data.
3. Database script that you create for yourself.
4. Manually using the "add channel" functionality in the TV Channels section.

If I were you I'd create a handful of channels manually and then see if you think it is worth the effort to create the rest once you get MP working. The procedure is:
0. Go to the "TV Channels" section in TV Server configuration.
1. Click "add" to create a channel.
2. Enter channel name in the top field.
3. Click "add" to add a tuning detail.
4. Select "analog" and click OK.
5. Enter the channel number of the channel in your DirecTV STB in the "channel" field - this is the number that your command-line application will be given when you set up the blaster.
6. Leave "frequency" as 0.00.
7. Select "cable" as "input type".
8. Select USA for country - guessing here.
9. Select "HDMI #1" for "video source".
10. Select "SPDIF #1" for HDMI audio or "SPDIF #2" for the actual SPDIF input.
11. Click OK, then OK again.

That is one channel done.

Next step is to create a channel group for organising the channels. Click "add", enter a name, click OK. After that select all the channels, right click on them, and use the context menu to add them to the channel group you just created. The group is a tab beside the "all channels" group. You can view and reorder the channels in a group in the group tab. Not that important when you're only testing.

Once you've created your channel group you need to link your channels to one or more Colossus cards using the mapping section. This tells TV Server that it can use certain devices to receive certain channels. Select a device that can receive the channels in the top drop-down field, then move the channels that you want to allow that device to tune from left to right. You can select all the channels and move them in one go.

After that, time to test the channels. Fire up MediaPortal configuration and ensure you have set your codec preferences. The Microsoft DTV-DVD video decoder is a good choice for h.264 and MPEG video. Monogram should work fine for AAC and MPC audio should be okay for MPEG / AC3 audio (you might need to change that out later). Click OK to save and close MP config.

Now open MP, go to the TV Section, and you should be able to see your channels when you select "channels". Select one and see if you get video and/or audio.

That is probably a good start for now. If you can get to that stage then we can start talking about blaster setup...

mm

 

[toricred]

Schedules direct actually does have DirecTV and I have it already configured so I shouldn't need to go through that level of pain. I can see all my tuner/capture cards so I'm good there. When I did the initial install I said to set it up as a dedicated server since I will be having PC clients connect when this is done. How do I add the client interface now? Do I have to completely re-install?

EDIT:

OK, I can't figure out how to use the Schedules Direct plugin to add channels so I tried manually entering one and everything seems to work within TV Server. The particular Colossus I'm using is actually Component (I chose RGB#1) with RCA Audio (I chose Line In#1).

I'm going to uninstall MediaPortal right now and re-install choosing Client and Server so I can finish this test.

EDIT 2:

OK, I reinstalled using the one click installation and everything looks good. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to get the Schedules Direct plugin to work, but I guess next is to get tuning working properly. I use a commandline that will need the channel number as a parameter. It would also be good if I can give it some predefined parameters on the command line. This will tune the receiver using http and is extremely fast.

EDIT 3:

I found my problem with the Schedules Direct plugin, I put the .dll in the wrong folder. I now have all my channels listed, added to a group, and mapped to a device.

EDIT 4:

I just got the HDMI working on that card.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again toricred

Schedules direct actually does have DirecTV and I have it already configured so I shouldn't need to go through that level of pain.

Excellent - that will definitely save a lot of time!

How do I add the client interface now? Do I have to completely re-install?

Yes.

...but I guess next is to get tuning working properly. I use a commandline that will need the channel number as a parameter. It would also be good if I can give it some predefined parameters on the command line. This will tune the receiver using http and is extremely fast.

Won't be a problem.

The next thing to do is install IRSS. The installer is -->here<--. You'll also need a patch from -->here<-- for MP 1.2.1.

After that it should be relatively smooth sailing if you follow the guide -->here<--. I've never used IRSS myself but I'm 99% certain that you can specify an external application for each button and customise the command line parameters to your heart's content.

Let me know if you have any trouble with that.

mm

 

[toricred]

OK, tuning is now working. I was missing the patch. I'm not seeing any data in the TV Guide. Did I miss a step? Also, is there any way to import my favorites from either SageTV or NextPVR? Finally, where do I put my videos to import them into the list of recordings.

Thank you so much for your patient help. This is moving along far smoother than I had anticipated based on my attempts to understand the TV Server configuration.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again

I'm not seeing any data in the TV Guide. Did I miss a step?

If the channels were created with Schedules Direct then the data should be there - it should "just work". You could try to enable the "Force guide update on next TvService startup" option (in the SD plugin settings) and then restart TV Server to trigger that. Give it a few minutes to do the job as there will be a lot of data to pull in. If that still doesn't work, please use the import/export section to export a copy of your channel list so I can take a quick look at them.

Also, is there any way to import my favorites from either SageTV or NextPVR?

I'm not familiar with either of those applications, so what exactly are your "favourites"? I'm guessing schedules maybe...

Finally, where do I put my videos to import them into the list of recordings.

It is not quite so straightforward as that. The recordings database is kinda special because it holds metadata about when the recording was created, what channel it was recorded from, what season and episode number it was etc. Without getting into too much of the nitty gritty detail, you need that information in Matroska format XML files to make it possible to import the recordings. If this is important to you then I'm told there is a plugin for Sage that can spit out XML files from their recording database. Those XML files would have to be converted into the format that TV Server understands before you could import your recordings.

So a little complicated there. May I ask what the purpose of adding the recordings is? Most people add their video folders to the videos section and use plugins like TV Wishlist to manage TV recordings... I think.

Thank you so much for your patient help. This is moving along far smoother than I had anticipated based on my attempts to understand the TV Server configuration.

No problem - I'm happy to be of service.

mm

 

[toricred]

Favorites are my recurring recordings. I have 141 TV series that I record so I can add them manually if necessary.

My interest in recordings is to combine TV series I recorded previously with new recordings so I can see them in the order they originally aired.

 

[toricred]

I waited almost 15 minutes and still nothing in the guide. Attached is the export file.

 

[remintola]

Just thought I would post to see if anyone has tried using the Satellite Guys EPG grabber in MP?
from EPG Collector | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

Thanks!

 

[toricred]

I just got my EPG working. Somehow I didn't get one of the .dll files installed and that was preventing the updates to the database. Next I need to work on setting up recurring recordings.