Newbie advise on DVB-S and latest software please?

[suityou69]

Hi there, firstly im sorry if this is in the wrong place.

Last night (13th Nov) I installed the latest avalable trail version of Sage on my Windows Media Centre Pc, its a Sony XL100 and is fitted with a Twinhan CI 1034 Pci DVB-S card and a Hauppage USB DVB-T device.

After a lot of reading thought id take the plunge and attempt to get the Twinhan card going on 28e for the avalable Sky programming before the trial period was over to improve on the woefull abilty of Media Centre

Ran through the install and all went well until I got to the card/device setup section, ive BDA drivers for the pci card, and this showed in the avalable device along with the usb reciever, selected the BDA Tuner and carried on, this was where id got confused, there was no option for Satellite. I assumed this was becuase I was running a DVB mapper which was making windows think my satellite card was a dvb-t card. So i carried on and after the channel scan was able to recieve a few channels.

My question is have I misunderstood the avalability of DVB-S support at present and what ive done is the only way to currently view Satellite through Sage, or because I have the dvb mapper installed its played fowl with the setup?

Thanks for reading

*edit* its the SageTV Version 6.0.14 Beta that ive used

[Mark SS]

Have you installed the latest version from the Beta forum which was released on Monday?

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21317

[suityou69]

Yes thats the thread id downloaded from, and thanks for the super quick reply

[Mark SS]

I did alot of the testing for DVB-S with a Technotrend card but I haven't had chance to install the latest beta yet so shooting in the dark a bit....

Can you be a bit more specific about what you ended up with after the scan i.e. which channels were found and added to the epg, which were added to the epg but won't tune etc. If you could attach the PreDefinedScanSat.frq and the frq for the Twinhan card as well, probably called something like Twinhan1034-DVBS.frq.

AFAIK the mapper utility for MCE shouldn't be affecting anything but if you can disable it and all MCE services before scanning it wouldn't hurt. You haven't mentioned if you have a CAM installed with the DVB-S card for your Sky subscription card to plug into? Again I don't know if the Twinhan API for the CAM interface is in the beta yet.

[suityou69]

Hi again, the only channels it picked up were the FTA ones on the following freq.

12032 H 27500-2/3

Ideal World 7200 2304 2306 E

QVC UK 7230 2313 2315 E

Bid TV 7250 2311 2312 E

Speed Auction TV 7251 2326 2327 E

Price-Drop TV 7252 2328 2329 E



From what I recall it went along the lines of what id expect a DVB-T tune to go like as apposed to a typical satellite scan but as ive not used sage before that could be a red herring on my part. There is no epg info on any of the channels so i hope that points to where the problem may lie

Id disabled media centre starting/running following a couple of posts id found in the forum before running the install, and im not using a cam at the mo, i thought id try the fta channels first before i got too advanced.

Im going to disbale the mapper for now and start the install again too see what happens. Ive attached the following zip file with the 3 predefined scan files id found in the sage directory to see what that may gleem

Thanks again

[Mark SS]

The PredefinedScanSat.frq file is empty, might of been accidentally ommitted from the beta release I guess.

I'll dig mine out from testing with the last beta and post it here this evening.

[suityou69]

Thanks for having a look and your advise, just to add this avo i reinstalled from scratch and still came to the same issue. It sees it as a DVB_T device still even though the mapping isnt enabled.

Ive tried it out with MyTheatre and a open source media centre replacment and they both work with the bda drivers but would dearly love to get it going with sage before the trial runs out as it seems far more suitable and user friendly

[Mark SS]

Try the attached file (obivously needs to be renamed to .frq). Its not complete but will do for a test and you can always fill it out further using info from www.lyngsat.com.

[suityou69]

Ok tried that and still no joy, im just not seeing an option within the source settings wizard that gives me a satellite option. I assume that the sage software is seeing the BDA Driver as a DVB-T device and hence only giving me the option for antenna or cable and allowing me to follow through on those install routes.

I think i need to find some way of telling sage what the device is as apposed to letting it auto decide and getting it wrong or finding/modifying another driver somehow in order to get it talking perhaps?


It seems that the mapper was allowing me viewing but , sage only sees it as a dvb-t device


Drat and double drat

[Mark SS]

I don't think the code is at the stage where you choose a satellite yet. From what I remember from setting it up:

- Add source
- Select card, in my case 'Technotrend DVB' or something
- Select tuner, just showed 'Digital tuner' so click that
- Scan channels

Nothing referring to satellite was shown AFAIK.

[suityou69]

Dang, in that case then im well and truely snookered - thats what ive done, since i removed the mapping option it doesnt scan for more than a couple of secs and as such doesnt pull anything in.

Will have to wait for the next beta and keep my fingers crossed

Thanks for looking into it for me, really appriciate it

[Mark SS]

Submit a bug report with logs which cover you setting up the card, much better chance of it being fixed that way

[suityou69]

Ok will give that a try, thanks again