Where do I find the latest MyBlaster? (5 Viewers)

[Marcusb]

when I bought my tv card, it was spec'ed as PAL, so I guess the tuners are specific to the market. There may be cards that will do both, technically it's not hard to do.

There are external converters, but they tend to be expensive.

marcusB, I noticed you run twin Compros. Same as me, along with the PVR-150. Great card in my opinion. I'm in Melb as well, and my 'real' name is "MarkB", so it's like the twighlite zone reading your posts....

It's probably mostly cost vs marketing. TV makers love to slap a big "NTSC Playback" sticker on PAL TVs and VCRs so people know that they can play tapes sent to them by relatives overseas. Putting the same functionality into a TV card will do nothing for sales and add to the cost.

I love the Compros. I worry that sometimes I sound too "fanboy"ish, but they are great and cost less than most of the other popular ones and you also get AV in and Analog tuners. I also have a Dvico Lite but don't like it anywhere near as much. Funny thing is that the Lite was more expensive and has a lot less features. It's in the upstairs test machine as a result.

Funny about the names

 

[iq938]

i am hoping to get a radeon 9550 256mb soon aswell and replace my 64mb card which should make a difference to quality, they are only around £35 now...

Here is my tv card guys:
http://www.leadtek.com/multimedia/winfast_pvr2000_1.html

tell me what you think it was quite expensive when i bought it a few 1 or 2 years ago but its got excellent quality and features...

i checked the specs and it supports ntsc/pal and secam...

 

[winsys11]

looks like a good card.

from the specs : (note the keyword "or")

NTSC, PAL or SECAM TV Tuner
NTSC, PAL I/DK, PAL BG/DK, PAL M/N, SECAM LL, SECAM, BG SECAM DK for respective model

"for respective model" means just that, the standard is dependant on which tuner is fitted.

So, like most (all?) other cards, this one also has different models for different tv standards.


the radeon 9550 is a great card, especially for the price. I run them in my desktop pcs. The only reason I didn't use one for my MP is that MB is PCI-Express not AGP.

 

[arjay]

Guys - re connectors. Not sure why you are having to splice leads?

I have a bog-standard haup pvr150mce card. It has an svideo socket, a composite socket, plus left and right audio sockets. I therefore connect via a scart on the stb (pace digibox) that splits into three leads - composite (yellow), left audio (red) and right audio (white).

The output is from my radeon 9550's svideo socket to an svideo input on my standard crt tv (this is usually for plugging in a digital video camera or whatever).

I also have an svideo-to-scart lead that could run from the video card to one of the tv's scarts. (BTW, anyone trying this, make sure you buy a cable that feeds the right way unless you are into soldering connections. The first lead I bought was scart-output to svideo-input - not very helpful I guess that's what being a newbie means. :lol:

Does this make sense, or have I misunderstood your situations?

 

[Marcusb]

The low profile 150s have a phono in, I think. The larger cards have room for the bigger connectors.

Good point about the scart, although most of the ones I have seen nowadays either have all the connectors or they have an "in/out" swithc and you can choose which config you want.

Guess there are still some older or cheaper ones floating around though.

 

[winsys11]

my '150 is low profile, so it has a 3.5mm jack for audio.

arjay, I guess you're in the UK. SCART is pretty much a non entity here in Oz. Some Euro gear we use has it, but by and large it doesn't rate.

 

[arjay]

OK - some further progress on channel changing (small but steady) :roll:

1. I added the "forceport 2" lines to my mediaportal.xml file as per posts here, and changed my single bud over to port 2 on the ir receiver.

2. I re-ran blaster.exe and re-trained the stb remote 0-9 numbers - each time changing the port number on the right of the dialogue box to port 2.

3. I moved my bud (which was directly over the remote command light on the stb) a couple of centimetres to the left, exposing the stb remote command light. The ir receiver just happens to be sitting on the top of the stb. I have left it there. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing :?

4. Right - the upshot of all that, is that now with the test button, my receiver, stb AND bud all flash. That is the first time that I have ever got the bud to flash as well. Presumably that is a good thing. I see from some posts that people report the bud flashes, and "channels change on the stb" when using the test button?? I don't see anything happening other than the three lights flashing and a muted clicking sound from the computer??

5. Anyway - the next bit of progress is that, following the stuff I did in points 1-3 above, I find that when running MP, if I choose a program in the EPG, MP will change to that channel and start showing the correct program. The same happens if I choose a program to record. At the appointed time, MP will change to the correct channel and start recording. This is a MAJOR step for me as before I had to choose the program to record and then change the channel manually with the stb remote.

6. I also find that if I use the +/- channel change button on the mce remote, it will cycle up and down through the available channels - changing them on the stb.

7. Bad news - however, using the buttons on the remote produces very little - the channel numbers appear on the top of the fullscreen mytv picture as they are pressed on the remote, but the channels do not actually change. It is as if the blaster exercise has not taught MP the stb numbers. The other buttons on the remote works fine but not the numbers.

Can anyone add to this - or can smirnoff/anyone put up the *dat file for a pace box that they have found works?

Cheers

RJ

 

[iq938]

my pvr2000 has a 3.5mm audio in, so if i have 2 phono's for audio they need to have a twin phono > 3.5mm jack which is what i used. I was told this will only give mono sound output and for stereo i had to run the two phonos through a twin phono adapter or something and then to the twin phono > 3.5mm plug.

This might be a silly question but i haven't had a radeon card before, is the 9550 dual output or can only one of the two outputs be used at a time. Also i noticed that video can only be played on one display at a time, is there a way around this.

Arjay what method are you using to connect STB to TV Card again, is it composite or RF.
Also doesn't a scart > s-video lead work both ways, depending on weather you plug it into scart in or scart out?

 

[arjay]

This might be a silly question but i haven't had a radeon card before, is the 9550 dual output or can only one of the two outputs be used at a time. Also i noticed that video can only be played on one display at a time, is there a way around this.

My apologies - I gave you the wrong info - my card is actually a 9250. It has a serial connector for a monitor, an s-video out and a dvi out. But I believe it can only do one display at a time, although I am looking into this. I don't have a second monitor available at the moment so cannot check directly. I'll look in the help files for you

Arjay what method are you using to connect STB to TV Card again, is it composite or RF. Also doesn't a scart > s-video lead work both ways, depending on weather you plug it into scart in or scart out?

I am using a scart attached to the stb with three leads going to the tuner card - a composite-in (yellow), right audio-in (white, and left audio-in (red).

As to your second point, someone might correct me but when I bought my first scart/svideo lead, it had a tiny arrow on the scart showing "in". I didn't notice until I had bought it. I then bought one that was scart/out to svideo/in to go from the stb to the tuner card. I then found that it still would not work with MS MCE (which I was using at the time). My PC supplier advised me that the svideo-in on the pvr150mce card would not work under MCE. That's when I changed to a scart to composite lead. Of course, now that I am playing around with MP and GBPVR, I guess the scart-to-svideo will work. At the moment I am pre-occupied with trying to get channel changong on the stb to work so am not up to trying other leads :lol:

 

[winsys11]

RJ - glad to see it's coming together for you. I never use the numeric buttons to change channels - i'll go and have a play and let you know what happens.

iq938 - the 3.5mm jack will almost certainly be stereo. The best idea is to take your lead and plug to your local tv tech/mate/whatever and get the 3.5mm plug soldered on. It's a 5 min job. Adaptors, patch leads etc just make a mess that ends up being unreliable. BTW the kind of plug/socket that is yellow/red/white is called "RCA".
'Phono' is short for phonogram (anybody actually remember record players?) which used that type of connector.

The 9250 and 9550 are definately dual monitor capable chipsets. Make sure the version (ie manufacturer) you get has both outputs. May also have tv out.

With the ati drivers you can run both monitors independantly or 'clone' the same image on both. The 'TV out' function if available is used instead of the 2nd vga, ie pc monitor and tv together.

The 9250 is usually 2 x vga, and the 9550 is usually one vga and 1 dvi.
If you want to use 2 vga witha 9550, make sure the dvi connector can take a dvi-to-vga adapter. Some versions of the 9550 use a DVI-D instead of DVI-I

see:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Digital_Visual_Interface_DVI_Bus.html