Sky HD how to?

[starfire]

Hi,

I see various threads on here about using Sage with Sky HD but nothing describing an overview of how to set it up.

Could someone go over the high level items needed, for instance how do you tell Sage that the channel needs decryption and to speak to the card reader for instance?

Also, with a card reader like say an Omnikey will that be enough to record multiple Sky channels at the same time?

Will my Nova HD S2 cards be sufficient?

Any help appreciated!

Thanks!

[Bagal]

These two threads on AVForums should give you an idea of the setup involved:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/windo...sky-setup.html
http://www.avforums.com/forums/windo...art-4-a-7.html

I'm not sure whether you can natively decrypt Sky channels through SageTV as I've never personally tried it, but you can do it through 3rd party tuner/decoders such as DVBLink, which is what I use (though only v3 works with SageTV).

[starfire]

I'll check out those links, the new one looks new and useful got a feeling I looked at the second one before.

I would rather do this all natively using Sage rather than 3d party tuners if it's possible, less software in the chain means less chance of something failing.

Cheers.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by starfire

I would rather do this all natively using Sage rather than 3d party tuners if it's possible, less software in the chain means less chance of something failing.

I know Bacon2002 does it natively with Anysee DVB-S2 cards which have CAM support and Oddity does it via DVB4SAGE however I know he had some success natively via OSCAM + ACAMD but only on Windows 32bit.

I have the same willing to work on that as soon I have sorted out my instability issues with the TBS6984 tuners. I'm also quite willing to contribute to the ACAMD opensource project to definitively make it working with SageTV in native mode, so hopefully it will happen, eventually .

Eddy

[starfire]

Well I have ordered a card reader and run Win XP 32bit on my server so once the reader turns up I will see what I can figure out and post on here.

The part I don't understand is telling Sage it needs to decrypt the data from the DVB-S2 cards but maybe that will become obvious once I start trying.

Cheers.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by starfire

The part I don't understand is telling Sage it needs to decrypt the data from the DVB-S2 cards but maybe that will become obvious once I start trying.

You need the ACAMD .DLL and its DirectShow filter that SageTV will use to make the DirectShow graph.

Basically, once the filter is loaded into sage, (I forgot the procedure, but I have it somewhere), Sage will use the filter every time it has to make the graph to decode the encrypted stream (DirectShow automatic pin connection magic!). The ACAMD DLL is the Software CAM that the filter will use in order to emulate the CAM by implementing a softCAM protocol (I forgot the name), then the OSCAM is the software that allows you to read the physical card and interfaces with ACAMD.

It sounds complicated, but it isn't, the difficult part is to configure OSCAM to read your card.

Eddy

[starfire]

OK, thanks for that add's to the knowledge.

Looks like you may need to use MDAPI to help build the directshow graph for Sage to use.

Starting to make a bit more sense now.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by starfire

Looks like you may need to use MDAPI to help build the directshow graph for Sage to use.

Yes, that is the fella...I need to dig up the procedure to load the MDAPI.ax filter into sage at startup...

I know the theory, but practically I never done it before, so this thread is quite a good idea to gather all the info needed...

Eddy

[routerunner]

@starfire:
Please have look HERE for instructions on how to register the MDAPI filter, also don't worry about the "FFDecsa.dll" mentioned, use the ACAMD.dll or CSC.dll which provide the same services.

Eddy

[starfire]

OK thanks, once my card reader turns up and I find some time I will have a bash to see what I can accomplish

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by starfire

OK thanks, once my card reader turns up and I find some time I will have a bash to see what I can accomplish

Which card reader are you using by any chance? I have the USB infinity and apparently is very good, but haven't used yet

I'm very interested to hear your result, also please don't forget to install the DVB-S Importer plugin to keep your FRQ files up to date

Eddy

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by starfire

I would rather do this all natively using Sage rather than 3d party tuners if it's possible, less software in the chain means less chance of something failing.

I used to think that way too, but doing it natively was just too unreliable.

I've ended up using DVBLink (you can get a downgrade key to use V3) with ACAMD and OSCAM and it just never misses a beat. See the guide for instructions

John

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I used to think that way too, but doing it natively was just too unreliable.

Can you please elaborate more what was unreliable? Do you recall when did this happen? There is the possibility that things might have improved since you tried...

Eddy

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Can you please elaborate more what was unreliable? Do you recall when did this happen? There is the possibility that things might have improved since you tried...

Eddy, distinctly probable that things have changed, it has been a while.
I started with trying to use the native TS Filter support back with 6.3.1, but that would only work when not running in service mode and I don't recall ever getting it to work consistently.
Then I moved to using DVBE4SAGE, but the way the NZ satellite is configured DVBE4SAGE kept changing it's configuration to use the SD transponders rather than the HD transponders in addition to crashing on a fairly regular basis.
I've now been using SAGETV/DVBLink/ACAMD/OSCAM for 2 years and in all that time I've never missed a recording.

John

[starfire]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Which card reader are you using by any chance? I have the USB infinity and apparently is very good, but haven't used yet
Eddy

Omnikey CardMan 3121 is what I have

Got oscam reading the card so far...

[starfire]

Well, cannot get acamd to speak to oscam.

oscam is working a it reads the entitlements and has a port open which I can telnet to and it reports, so clearly acamd is not connecting to it.

Sage is loading the filter, mdplugins folder created automatically but it just won't connect.

I suspect the issue is I run Sage in service mode as I've seen a few comments around that.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by starfire

Well, cannot get acamd to speak to oscam.

oscam is working a it reads the entitlements and has a port open which I can telnet to and it reports, so clearly acamd is not connecting to it.

Sage is loading the filter, mdplugins folder created automatically but it just won't connect.

I suspect the issue is I run Sage in service mode as I've seen a few comments around that.

Stupid question, have you registered the MDAPFilter.ax with regsvr32?

Please have a look at this http://sourceforge.net/projects/mdapiplus/

It looks like that this filter super seed MDAPI...and doesn't use ACAMD

Eddy

[starfire]

Yes its registeted.

already tried mdapi plus but no joy with that either.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by starfire

Yes its registeted.

already tried mdapi plus but no joy with that either.

What I would personally do is to make a proof of concept without Sage this way you can discriminate your result. Therefore I would get an encrypted transport stream and I would build a DirectShow graph with Graphedt including the MDAPI filter, then I would try to see whether I can use the software CAM client to talk with the software CAM server (OSCAM).

There are people in this forum that made this successfully working and I wonder whether they will contribute to the discussion.

I know for sure that Bacon2002 is using the Anysee DVB-S2 tuner cards which have the physical CAM interface and therefore he doesn't use OSCAM, but it will most definitively use the MDAPI filters.

I'm pretty sure there is Oddity that had make it working.

Eddy

[starfire]

It all takes times unfortunately and when people want to use Sage & Sky it makes it even harder

Any input from others using acamd / oscam / mdapi would be appreciated.