DVBLogic and SageTV

[jaminben]

http://www.geektonic.com/2010/10/sag...port-with.html

Found out about this today (thanks Plucky for the link) but not sure what its all about just at the moment but maybe we'll be getting interactive services via the red button or even iPlayers

Anyway thought I'd share just incase anyone else hasn't seen it yet.

Cheers

Ben

[Mark SS]

Basically, an alternative to DVBE4Sage and LM Recorder for those of getting Sky via NDSCam. Hoping to give it a try over the weekend. Only bit missing compared to DVBE4Sage is the NIT interpretation i.e. the bit that maps SIDs to "real" channel numbers.

[brewston]

But doesn't DVBE4Sage give multiple virtual tuners per physical one ? (or did i miss understand) I don't get what advantage DVBlogic has other than being a network tuner and one that can support cards that Sage may not natively. Have I missed the point ?

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by brewston

But doesn't DVBE4Sage give multiple virtual tuners per physical one ? (or did i miss understand) I don't get what advantage DVBlogic has other than being a network tuner and one that can support cards that Sage may not natively. Have I missed the point ?

I did a bit more reading and came to the same conclusion..... I don't really see the point or any advantage in this.... if they could somehow use the interactive services which DVB offers then I'd be all over it......oh well.

Cheers

Ben

[Mark SS]

But doesn't DVBE4Sage give multiple virtual tuners per physical one

It does but its not much use for the typical 2 tuner scenario in the UK.

I don't get what advantage DVBlogic has other than being a network tuner and one that can support cards that Sage may not natively. Have I missed the point ?

DVBE4Sage isn't entirely stable for everyone, me included. Thank god Michael (the author) got it as far as he did or I wouldn't be using Sage at the moment but he hasn't had time to work on it since early this year. DVBLogic is supposedly much more stable and is under active development.

[Bacon2002]

Hi,

I am also playing around with the DVBLogic application and so far have found it to be very good, admittedly I have only tried it for a days or so.

Another advantage seems to be the plugin support and additional flexability (Xbox, Dreambox, IPCAMS etc).

DVBE4SAGE is a very good application and lets not forget it is free which is great and the developer has been very helpful getting people like me up and running with it but it has limited plugin support and the biggest problem I found was that whilst it works well for occassional use, if you run your SageTV 24/7 it isn't reliable for more than a couple of days. That is to say not for me running Windows 7 64 bit, I know others say it is rock solid but it just isn't for me and my PC is normally very stable and runs 24/7 without any other problems.

I invested a lot of time setting up DVBE4SAGE, I have tried it with multiple tuners which I found to be problematic, with more than one tuner the video glitched when recording more than one channels and the plugins failed in no time at all.

Fingers crossed that the DVBLogic application turns out to be stable and continues to be supported, my only current reservation is that the DVBLogic forums do not appear to be as good as the SageTV forums.

David

[Mark SS]

Looks like DVBLogic may give us a few more options. Hadn't looked at AVForums for months but after a quick scout around today it looks like OSCam is working for lots of people.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/12995023-post253.html
http://www.avforums.com/forums/12775335-post146.html

Bonus being that entitlement updates are processed!

[Bacon2002]

Mark SS,

I had been looking at Oscam but I hadn't realised there was a windows version, great news as this could offer an improvement over fausto and of course save having to manually update every month or so, I just need to get it working with windows 7 64 bit now.

After some more playing with DVBLogic I have to say I am vey impressed it, looks to be working perfectly and unlike other solution it appears to be a logical set up process.

Thanks,

David

[Whitey]

Last time I spoke with Michael, he was looking into integrating OSCam with DVBE4Sage for a complete package but obviously with emigrating to Oz he's not finished it. It would be great to get EMM updates which NDSCam doesn't support

Whitey

[damian.flynn]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

It does but its not much use for the typical 2 tuner scenario in the UK.



DVBE4Sage isn't entirely stable for everyone, me included. Thank god Michael (the author) got it as far as he did or I wouldn't be using Sage at the moment but he hasn't had time to work on it since early this year. DVBLogic is supposedly much more stable and is under active development.

Hi guys,

I am responsilbe for this soultion, and as a DVB4Sage user suffered a lot of problems with stability. I spend a fair amount of time from home and when i am not around the very worst always occured and that crucial show would not work and i would be welcomed home with far from pleasant welcome back greetings.

As i had some experience in the TAP cycle for Windows 7, I became aquainted to the team in DVBLogic and found thier implemention of DVB support to be amazingly solid. Even with some really poor win7 builds the DVBLogic software would reamain solid and reliable. The guys also spent a fair amount of time focusing on ensuing that the plugin support for some channels did not effect thier products ability to remain HA.

So, I had been pestering the SageTV teams to add support for the virtaul DVB cards which DVBLogic offer, and they delivered. Which opened the door to turning off the DVB4Sage system - and yes This means i lost the ability to have multiple streams from the same transponder, but looking back on my logs and usage the number of times that DVBlogic acutually used this feature for me on Astra 28 was pretty damn rare. I added 2 TBS 6980's to the server which provided me with 4 S2 feeds and this has worked well for me so far.

Currently the deployment is quite similar to the DVB4sage implmenetion, however we are now working on the next steps which will vastly change the playground. DVBLogic has built in support for EPG Grabbing from the sat streams in the next build, and will allow you to use thier configuraiton tool to inject this out the virtual tuners. - SageTV on the other end will then support the new Epg broadcast and generate an over the air guide. so we can drop the need for all the extra steps of tweaking sage to map up egp to channels. which is nice given that sky for example are always changing shit.

if you have IP cameras, IPTV services, HRPVRs, dreamboxes etc, then the currently version of the solution will suck in all these sources and also broadcast thier content also as TV channels for sageTV to tune.

So - what I am really saying - today the solution is similar to what we get with any of the network streaming options, except that i personally find it far more stable - now running 6 weeks since last service restart - with 4 tuners darn busy.

But, as we move forward, tighter integration in SageTV with DVBlogic will premit this software to become a natural extension of SageTV to address many of our DVB issues which the sageTV team based in the US can not really test fully, however the DVBlogic team can, and have so far.

I have enjoyed working with Michael and the DVB4Sage software he has kindly created, but with all his personal changes this system has some needs which are already addressed by a professional company whos main focus is DVB integration.

I invite you to test it out guys, the steps are simple, and I initially was able to just stop the DVBe4sage services while running the DVBLogic solution so that i can swap between technologies.

Lots more on my blog - www.damianflynn.com which the guys have kindly blogged about.

Damian

[Bacon2002]

Damian,

Now there appears to be a real and supported solution that has a future I am much happier, I was fast approaching the point where I felt the need to look at alternatives to SageTV, having invested money and time in SageTV I didn't want to have to start all over again with Windows MC or similar (although I do like the idea of using an Xbox as a media extender).

SageTV is great but in the UK I believe you need DVB-S natively supported (or at least CAM support) and without it or a reliable solution like DVBLogic it was becoming too much of a liability, I have had enough of making excuses to the wife and family for missed or incomplete recordings.

In a way I am glad that you and others also experienced problems with DVBE4SAGE (not because I do not like it), I kept getting feedback that other people had achieved fault free DVBE4SAGE performance. I can only assume that they were running SageTV on an occassional basis or restart their systems everyday or so.

Unless you know otherwise the IPCAM support within DVBLogic seems to be very limited to say the least, hopefully they will address this as it would be great to be able to have Webcams as channels within SageTV.

Your blog and your work with DVBLogic is very much appreciated, so thanks,

David

PS what drivers are you using with your TBS6980, I couldn't get it to work with DVBLogic

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by Bacon2002

Now there appears to be a real and supported solution that has a future I am much happier, I was fast approaching the point where I felt the need to look at alternatives to SageTV, having invested money and time in SageTV I didn't want to have to start all over again with Windows MC or similar (although I do like the idea of using an Xbox as a media extender).

Having come to SageTV from Windows Media Center (note the username:-) I cannot imagine why you would want to use a howling beast like the Xbox 360 as a media extender. The HD200 & HD300 are far superior as extenders.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by Bacon2002

SageTV is great but in the UK I believe you need DVB-S natively supported (or at least CAM support) and without it or a reliable solution like DVBLogic it was becoming too much of a liability, I have had enough of making excuses to the wife and family for missed or incomplete recordings.

Surely DVB-S is supported natively? It is no surprise that CAM support for the UK is lacking as there are no NDS CAMs to use for BSkyB & this applies just as much to Windows Media Center as to SageTV. You will only ever have unofficial hacks that enable you to decrypt Sky channels. I gave up on that long ago as TBH it was just all too much hassle & there are quite sufficient channels on Freesat for me.

[starfire]

Originally Posted by Bacon2002

SageTV is great but in the UK I believe you need DVB-S natively supported (or at least CAM support) and without it or a reliable solution like DVBLogic it was becoming too much of a liability, I have had enough of making excuses to the wife and family for missed or incomplete recordings.

DVB-S is natively supported and I agree yes CAM support would be great.

But I don't want to have to use another solution for better DVB-S support, I would rather Sage improved what they provide (eg. better EPG & channel configuration) - one of the reasons I purchased it because it has native DVB-T & DVB-S support. Also having to add on further things like DVBLogic just makes the whole setup more complex especially for new comers to Sage where it will probably just put them off.

I must admit so far DVB-S has worked great for me without any missed or incomplete recordings, maybe I have been lucky.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by damian.flynn

Currently the deployment is quite similar to the DVB4sage implmenetion, however we are now working on the next steps which will vastly change the playground. DVBLogic has built in support for EPG Grabbing from the sat streams in the next build, and will allow you to use thier configuraiton tool to inject this out the virtual tuners. - SageTV on the other end will then support the new Epg broadcast and generate an over the air guide. so we can drop the need for all the extra steps of tweaking sage to map up egp to channels. which is nice given that sky for example are always changing shit.

The EPG features you mention, does that include interpretation of the NIT (as DVBE4Sage does) so we don't have to map SIDs to channel numbers?

[rickgillyon]

How much is dvblogic?

[Bacon2002]

Hi,

With regards cam support, I should clarify that there is some existing CAM support for DVB-S already within SageTV but it only works with FireDTV-S2's and I can confirm that you can use a CAM solution with UK digital TV, I know this as I also have a couple of these running with CAMs at the moment.

The problem is that Digital Everywhere who made the FireDTV tuners are no longer trading.

David

[MCE-Refugee]

The point about CAM support is that there are no official CAMs for any UK digital TV service. The only official one ever available was for TopUpTV but now their business model has changed & they no longer provide the option of a subscription card for use in a CAM in your own receiver or TV. No official or supported CAMs are available for use with subscription cards for Virgin cable or BSkyB satellite TV service. So it's no surprise that Sage don't want to go down the route of working with unofficial CAMs & hacks which enable legitimate subscription cards to be used outside of the providers set top box. They would probably be stepping onto dodgy legal ground if they were to endorse any of these unofficial solutions. Leaving this potentially troublesome area to 3rd-parties like DVBLogic seems sensible. One of the great beauties of Sage is the API & the ability for others to add functionality to the core system & I for one am very happy to pay a little extra to use e.g. Stephane's XMLTV importer. If I were interested in viewing encrypted channels I would happily pay for DVBLogic. It is nice to see that you can actually buy this product with attendant support for however grateful we are to enthusiastic amateurs for software like DVBE4Sage if personal circumstances prevent further development then there is little that one can do about it.

[damian.flynn]

Originally Posted by Bacon2002

Damian,

Now there appears to be a real and supported solution that has a future I am much happier, I was fast approaching the point where I felt the need to look at alternatives to SageTV, having invested money and time in SageTV I didn't want to have to start all over again with Windows MC or similar (although I do like the idea of using an Xbox as a media extender).

SageTV is great but in the UK I believe you need DVB-S natively supported (or at least CAM support) and without it or a reliable solution like DVBLogic it was becoming too much of a liability, I have had enough of making excuses to the wife and family for missed or incomplete recordings.

In a way I am glad that you and others also experienced problems with DVBE4SAGE (not because I do not like it), I kept getting feedback that other people had achieved fault free DVBE4SAGE performance. I can only assume that they were running SageTV on an occassional basis or restart their systems everyday or so.

Unless you know otherwise the IPCAM support within DVBLogic seems to be very limited to say the least, hopefully they will address this as it would be great to be able to have Webcams as channels within SageTV.

Your blog and your work with DVBLogic is very much appreciated, so thanks,

David

PS what drivers are you using with your TBS6980, I couldn't get it to work with DVBLogic

Hi, sorry over at a wedding in manchester so not having my fourm time.

The 2.0 drivers for dvblogic need the new 3.2 versios of dvblogic, or you can do as I have and stick with the 1.8 drivers. I think (not at home) I am 1.0.9 for some reason that's stuck in my mind

Thanks a million for the kind words. If its any value I have been down win7 mc route with dvblogic. Its stable and works well, but sagetv extenders are impossible to beat (at the moment, - there is some win7 embeded with media ter options been prepaired).
-d

[damian.flynn]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

Surely DVB-S is supported natively? It is no surprise that CAM support for the UK is lacking as there are no NDS CAMs to use for BSkyB & this applies just as much to Windows Media Center as to SageTV. You will only ever have unofficial hacks that enable you to decrypt Sky channels. I gave up on that long ago as TBH it was just all too much hassle & there are quite sufficient channels on Freesat for me.

- the dvb-s support has just ok, and the sagetv guys know that, since all dev work is in the us. But with this relationship with world will be a better place .

in respect to decoding. The solution offered within dvblogic is rock solid, now 7 weeks and no reboot.