babychunder
22-11-10, 19:52
Hi
I've just finished installing a new setup and thought it might be of interest to someone, hence this post.
Previously I had only a 45cm Sly Dish which was a bit dodgy especially when raining. I'd been messing about with the DVBLogic toolset and decided I wanted to do this properly once I'd figured out how all the hardware and software worked. Here are the steps I followed.
1. PC Tuner Cards. I had a DigitalEverywhere Floppy DTV. Installed this in my living room PC together with DVBServerNetwork Pack, TVSource, DVBLink. Connected up to the 45cm dish, tuned in Sly, managed to share all the free-to-air channels round the house :D
2. Satellite Equipment. I bought a VU+DUO and cabled up Channel A to the 45cm dish. Tuned in and got CCCAM working on it with the ViX 1.1 image. It was a bit difficult setting up the EPG but eventually I got the CrossEPG to work well, with 95% of channels having a listing. The next item was installing a good UK Bouquet, so after trying a few out I settled on B16MCCs one which is quite intuitive. You can punch the Sly channel numbers directly using this, which is a big WAF. Next I upgraded the VU+ with a 1.5TB 5400rpm WD disk. Then I loaded the Picons on to USB, tweaked the software and hey presto nice logos against every channel :cool: Finally installed HADU on the living room PC client's TVSource Plugins directory, and could then see all of the channels I have on the VU+ :whistle:
3. Satellite Dish. Looking at the KingOfSat website, I checked out which sats offered which channels. Very much a matter of personal interest this, but having originally considered a motorised set-up, I realised that 90% of the channels I wanted lived on three satellites - 13E, 19E, and 28E. So I plumped for the Inverto Multiconnect system with three LNBs and a fixed 85cm clear dish. After some guddling around with the instructions, I pointed the dish (ie the middle of the three LNBs) at 19E to tune in the first satellite. This website http://www.uksatellitehelp.co.uk/2007/08/12/satellite-alignment-calculator-v2/ was very handy to tell me where to site my dish to miss obstructions and to find the right magnetic bearing to get started. Connected a single cable direct to the LNB. As I only had a basic sat meter, a compass and the Satfinder setting on the VU+ were invaluable to finding the right bird. Optimised signal by moving dish azimuth and elevation for peak signal strength around 90%. Next I cabled up the two side LNBs in turn and moved them on the multi arm to tune in 28E and 13E. After a few false starts I managed to get them both around the 70% signal strength at mid-band.
4. DiSEqC Switches. My dish has three dual LNBs, and I was intending to switch between them so that all my tuners could see all the birds. But my signal just vanished when I connected the LNB via the switch. :mad: I figured I had a duff LNB but then thought it unlikely when I got the same result with the other one. After some heavy googling, to no avail, I decided to slog through all of the permutations on the VU+ "Advanced" tuner configuration screen. Found out that a BA and a BB command sequence did the trick on my DiSEqC 1.0 switch. ;)
5. WHS Server. I bought a Digital Devices Cine DVB-S2 Dual Tuner Card from Germany. Then a Technotrend Budget S2-3200. I already had a Blackgold TV Tuner and a DigitalEverywhere Floppy DTV. I installed all of these in my Windows Home Server which is on 24x7. So now there are six tuners in there, two with Sly, two which switch between any of the three 13E / 19E / 28E, and two which handle terrestrial digital TV. Installed DVBServerNetwork Pack, TVSource, DVBLink once again. Set up each source with the various headends, tuned in, chose channels, merged channels etc. That gave me a resaonably good server installation.
6. PC Clients. Tough one this. WHS Server doesn't include Windows Media Centre, so you can't do a single set up and send it to all the clients (at least I couldn't suss that out). So I installed the DVBLink virtual tuners on WMC on each PC client, and got all the channels working from all of the birds on all of the PCs.
7. EPG. I am still messing around with this on my first PC client. WMC doesn't have all the channels (even for Sly) in its feeds so I have some gaps. I've bought a copy of Digiguide, which gives good coverage of UK. I then use a utility to grab that XML file and import it into BigScreenEPG. BSE allows you to populate the WMC EPG directly, even to the point of channel numbers, genres etc. It's a paid for app but pretty cheap. So far I have got one client with a very good UK EPG in WMC and that's about it. There's another program MyChannelLogos which although time consuming to set up allows you to make the WMC guide look more appealing.
I am very happy with my installation apart from the EPG. Anyone has any tips let me know. The right SW bits are available but I didn't set out to do a system integration project. :confused: There must be a demand for a better solution. I've also tried hacking the XML from ViX on the Rytec feed but no joy there either as the format seems different. Time spent on project - 24 hour research, 24 hours build, 48 hours setup.
I've just finished installing a new setup and thought it might be of interest to someone, hence this post.
Previously I had only a 45cm Sly Dish which was a bit dodgy especially when raining. I'd been messing about with the DVBLogic toolset and decided I wanted to do this properly once I'd figured out how all the hardware and software worked. Here are the steps I followed.
1. PC Tuner Cards. I had a DigitalEverywhere Floppy DTV. Installed this in my living room PC together with DVBServerNetwork Pack, TVSource, DVBLink. Connected up to the 45cm dish, tuned in Sly, managed to share all the free-to-air channels round the house :D
2. Satellite Equipment. I bought a VU+DUO and cabled up Channel A to the 45cm dish. Tuned in and got CCCAM working on it with the ViX 1.1 image. It was a bit difficult setting up the EPG but eventually I got the CrossEPG to work well, with 95% of channels having a listing. The next item was installing a good UK Bouquet, so after trying a few out I settled on B16MCCs one which is quite intuitive. You can punch the Sly channel numbers directly using this, which is a big WAF. Next I upgraded the VU+ with a 1.5TB 5400rpm WD disk. Then I loaded the Picons on to USB, tweaked the software and hey presto nice logos against every channel :cool: Finally installed HADU on the living room PC client's TVSource Plugins directory, and could then see all of the channels I have on the VU+ :whistle:
3. Satellite Dish. Looking at the KingOfSat website, I checked out which sats offered which channels. Very much a matter of personal interest this, but having originally considered a motorised set-up, I realised that 90% of the channels I wanted lived on three satellites - 13E, 19E, and 28E. So I plumped for the Inverto Multiconnect system with three LNBs and a fixed 85cm clear dish. After some guddling around with the instructions, I pointed the dish (ie the middle of the three LNBs) at 19E to tune in the first satellite. This website http://www.uksatellitehelp.co.uk/2007/08/12/satellite-alignment-calculator-v2/ was very handy to tell me where to site my dish to miss obstructions and to find the right magnetic bearing to get started. Connected a single cable direct to the LNB. As I only had a basic sat meter, a compass and the Satfinder setting on the VU+ were invaluable to finding the right bird. Optimised signal by moving dish azimuth and elevation for peak signal strength around 90%. Next I cabled up the two side LNBs in turn and moved them on the multi arm to tune in 28E and 13E. After a few false starts I managed to get them both around the 70% signal strength at mid-band.
4. DiSEqC Switches. My dish has three dual LNBs, and I was intending to switch between them so that all my tuners could see all the birds. But my signal just vanished when I connected the LNB via the switch. :mad: I figured I had a duff LNB but then thought it unlikely when I got the same result with the other one. After some heavy googling, to no avail, I decided to slog through all of the permutations on the VU+ "Advanced" tuner configuration screen. Found out that a BA and a BB command sequence did the trick on my DiSEqC 1.0 switch. ;)
5. WHS Server. I bought a Digital Devices Cine DVB-S2 Dual Tuner Card from Germany. Then a Technotrend Budget S2-3200. I already had a Blackgold TV Tuner and a DigitalEverywhere Floppy DTV. I installed all of these in my Windows Home Server which is on 24x7. So now there are six tuners in there, two with Sly, two which switch between any of the three 13E / 19E / 28E, and two which handle terrestrial digital TV. Installed DVBServerNetwork Pack, TVSource, DVBLink once again. Set up each source with the various headends, tuned in, chose channels, merged channels etc. That gave me a resaonably good server installation.
6. PC Clients. Tough one this. WHS Server doesn't include Windows Media Centre, so you can't do a single set up and send it to all the clients (at least I couldn't suss that out). So I installed the DVBLink virtual tuners on WMC on each PC client, and got all the channels working from all of the birds on all of the PCs.
7. EPG. I am still messing around with this on my first PC client. WMC doesn't have all the channels (even for Sly) in its feeds so I have some gaps. I've bought a copy of Digiguide, which gives good coverage of UK. I then use a utility to grab that XML file and import it into BigScreenEPG. BSE allows you to populate the WMC EPG directly, even to the point of channel numbers, genres etc. It's a paid for app but pretty cheap. So far I have got one client with a very good UK EPG in WMC and that's about it. There's another program MyChannelLogos which although time consuming to set up allows you to make the WMC guide look more appealing.
I am very happy with my installation apart from the EPG. Anyone has any tips let me know. The right SW bits are available but I didn't set out to do a system integration project. :confused: There must be a demand for a better solution. I've also tried hacking the XML from ViX on the Rytec feed but no joy there either as the format seems different. Time spent on project - 24 hour research, 24 hours build, 48 hours setup.