which setup

[gari]

hi all, thinking of setting up a system at home (living room and two bedrooms). got a standard dish on side of house, but no idea about what box to buy or what i need to do, once purchaced ? been floating around this site for a couple of days now trying to pick up ideas and" the lingo". Any advice would be much appreciated. ps_not very good with computers either, so keep it simple. cheers guys

[Rob van der Does]

OK, a simple advise then:
1- make sure you choose Enigma2 compatible receivers;
2- make sure the main box (in the living) has as many tuners as possible (preferably built-in, but USB tuners may also be possible, at the risk of a hassle during the set-up);
3- for the secondary receivers: no sat-feeds are required. Use the RemoteStreamConvertor plugin for using the main box for watching live TV and mount the main box to all secondary boxes to be able to watch all recording.

To summarize: spend time and money for the primary box (and the feeds), and choose the cheapest possible for the secondary boxes.

[Del Boy]

hi all, thinking of setting up a system at home (living room and two bedrooms). got a standard dish on side of house, but no idea about what box to buy or what i need to do, once purchaced ? been floating around this site for a couple of days now trying to pick up ideas and" the lingo". Any advice would be much appreciated. ps_not very good with computers either, so keep it simple. cheers guys

Hi Gari, I only started investigating all this about 12 months ago. The guide that gave me the most confidence can be found here http://www.world-of-satellite.com/showthread.php?16973-In-need-of-help-%29 , Nevertheless it is now quite outdated as setting up bouquets (channel groupings and frequency) is now an automated feature.

My current setup is 2x VU DUO (one living room & one Master Bedroom), both have individual twin tuners connected to one sat with 8 LNB's and I record back to my Synology NAS box. THAT SAID, I learn something new here all the time and have just read the link by Rob van der Does reference RemoteStreamConvertor Plugin. Guessing this works best over CAT5 as does my playback from the NAS box?

I am going to write a fully detailed instruction guide for newbies as I went through a steep learning curve but it's like anything, once you've set a few of these up for you and your friends, family, work colleagues etc then it becomes second nature and this forum is excellent. The guys you see posting most frequently mustn't sleep :-)

If you need any help with the basics then ask away. You most certainly wont regret the move. To be able to watch single recordings in different rooms, not have to run series of cables, individual family folders for recordings etc is fantastic.

[Rob van der Does]

........THAT SAID, I learn something new here all the time and have just read the link by Rob van der Does reference RemoteStreamConvertor Plugin. Guessing this works best over CAT5 as does my playback from the NAS box?.....
CAT5 or not: make sure the complete lan (including connectors, switches, routers) is 100Mb full duplex capable. Unless going for Gb-lan boxes (currently only the Solo2 as far as I know, but surely there will be others shortly), then higher standards should apply.

Using the RemoteStreamConvertor all services/bouquets of the main box are copied to the secondary box, allowing to watch TV and zap as if the local tuner is in use. Such a stream is handled by the server box the same way as a recording. Actually my bedroom box doesn't even have a tuner.
And mounting the server box (or the NAS if the server box records to NAS) means all recordings can be watched as well. And in a very convenient way: when watching the same movie in the bedroom you stopped watching on the main box, you'll continue on the time you stopped playback.
And eve remote timers can be set, if you come across an interesting event.

So yes: an ideal setup would be a box with as much as possible tuners (to avoid tuner-conflicts) and a large storage device; it can be placed in the cellar or wherever you want it, and all TV's in the house should have a simple STB, connected to your LAN.

[gari]

thanks for the advise guys its much appreciated, followed the link from del boy. Found it to be interesting but like reading a foreign language in places.lol
Going to spend a few days digesting this info and mulling over if i have the technical ability to pull this off. Dont fancy spending money on box and then spending countless hours looking at computer screen not knowing what the hell the problem is (as in link). but that said, would be good to learn something new.

[judge]

Can you get a satellite & network feed to each of the bedrooms?
How many feeds do you have going into the living room?
As Rob says, the more feeds going into the main box the better, if you can also get a feed into each of the bedrooms, all the better.
Plenty of options for recording & watching then.
Setting remote timers/streaming a spare tuner to another box when a feed is being used for something else will be a doddle then.
Maybe consider 3 of the same makes as you are new & it can be a bit of a learning curve for some people.
Solo2 & 2 original Solos
Duo & 2 original Solos
TM2T & 2 TM Singles
GB Guad & 2 GBSE

Lots of options at the moment.
Also, do you want to play various media formats downloaded from the web?
Extrend in my experience currently handle these the best.
Saying that, a single tuner Extrend will play various downloads easily from a HDD in any other networked box.

[Del Boy]

thanks for the advise guys its much appreciated, followed the link from del boy. Found it to be interesting but like reading a foreign language in places.lol
Going to spend a few days digesting this info and mulling over if i have the technical ability to pull this off. Dont fancy spending money on box and then spending countless hours looking at computer screen not knowing what the hell the problem is (as in link). but that said, would be good to learn something new.

I spoke to Phoenix today who published that guide I pointed you too. I've offered to attempt to update for which he has given the go ahead. Give me a week or so - it will be done using the solo2, and new auto bouquet setup, however, Once you've installed Vix on one box the hardware, as long as compatible, is not a problem

[Allthegearnoidea]

I will not lie the boxes are complicated, but with a lot of reading on here I have managed to get mine up and running (it took a few hours this weekend). I still have no idea what I am doing but with a bit of experimentation and trial and error I'm starting to get there .....currently looking how to set up my twin tuners which is how I stumbled across this thread.

The guys on here do also give you a good steer Judge and a couple of the others have already helped me out! :)

I bought the solo 2 because indications were it was going to be one of the easier ones to use. If I can give a simple bit of advise I would reccomend buying a box with Vix preinstalled, which is what I did. I dont think it is particularly hard to do but when there is so much other new stuff to learn I thought it was well worth the money. - You know you have a sound starting place then.

Anyway back to my tuner setting.....which I will follow by a search for Setanta! (Anything to avoid the proper stuff I should be doing!)

[Allthegearnoidea]

Tuners now set up!

[zenith]

i myself have vu duo in main room and xp1000 in dining room and use vu duo hdd to view recordings and to record.
fantastic boxes and no stuttering when playing on either tv too!:)