Sky digibox with PVR-150

[brewston]

Hiya

I've finally had it confirmed that I can't get Freeview at my house without chopping down lots of trees and spending a fortune on an aerial so now I'm trying to hook up the signal from my Sky (Freesat) digibox into Sage

Anyone have this working ?

My first issue is that the IR blaster won't change the channels. I've followed this thread : http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=5013 and tried the beta release linked to there but still no joy. The IR 'eye' blinks red when im running the tests, so I'm assuming the device is seen OK in windows. The only think I've not updated it the ir receiver binaries (as they work!) are they linked ? The 'eye' is currently taped near the SKY logo (I couldn't find any details on the web noting where the IR receiver is located on the digibox)

Once (if ever) I get the blaster working, does anyone have any experience on getting the RF signal out of the back of the digibox ? (Its an Amstrad DRX 550 by the way)

Thanks

Tim

[brewston]

Forgot a bit...

I guess I'm wasting my time trying to take the cable from the wall straight into the PVR-150 ? The sky signal is encrypted right ?

Tim

[Mark SS]

I've used a Digibox and PVR-150 with a USB-UIRT which works perfectly, not tried any other blasters.

Support for DVB-S cards is being added in the current beta and is 90% working. Channel changing isn't reliable enough for me to ditch my current setup yet but its not far off.

For this I'd suggest a Technotrend S2-3200 DVB-S/S2 card, CI add-on and T.Rex CAM module. With this arrangement you plug the satellite feed straight into the card and benefit from much better picture quality as a result.

The various components can be bought from www.dvbshop.net, though I'd probably suggest you should wait until you see someone confirm everything is working fully in the beta before buying. Keep an eye on the following thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21524

[brewston]

Mark

Thanks for the reply, looks like some HW investment required so I will follow that thread. Are you using Alan Birtles xmltv tool for the EPG ? or can it decode Sky's ?

Do you happen to have the Amstrad DRX 550 ? If so, where do you place the blaster ?

Tim

[Mark SS]

Birtles XMLTV. There doesn't appear to be a solution anywhere for decoding the Sky EPG. I've found what you might call a proof of concept piece of code written in C that claims to decrypt the stream but thats a long way off a useable solution.

Don't have that Digibox myself. If you can see an LED flash on the box when you press a key on the remote, thats most likely where the sensor is. I stuck the blaster next to this on mine.

[brewston]

Hiya

Im getting somewhere with this, slowly

I sorted the IR blaster thing (needed to be accurately placed on the front of the sky box) I connected the RF output into the PVR 150

I can see my Sky channels through wintv2000 - i added RF channel 68 as an aerial source and then added the Sky channels 101, 102 etc as IR blaster sources

But I can't get it working in Sage (6.0.16) - I select the tuner channel 68 source (but the preview shows no TV) I then configured my xmltv lineup as normal (after re-running xmltv GUI to add some Sky channels)

I tried remapping to physical 101, tried remapping to logical 101 (whats the difference ?) but still can't see any TV. Tried without an EPG service (it then finds me 999 channels) and looked around the 101, 102 area and still nothing

the fact that wintv2k works suggests to me that I'm pretty close, any ideas what I'm doing wrong ? (its 3:50am and I'm worn out!)

Thanks

Tim