Any excellent satellite DVB cards on the market?

[vorius]

(that should be "excellent" - the L key got stuck)

I get a channel on satellite (using a smart card) which has several other Free-to-air channels as well. I view these channels alot and so far it's been channeled into my PVR 500 via S-Video so I cannot use XMLTV because they are all clumped into one channel on SageTV and I need to then use the satellite receiver remote to flip among them.

I'd like to put an end to this, I need a satellite tv card that supports smart cards...

know of any that would be highly recommended?

[Lucas]

There's not that many models that have CI/CAM(for inserting your subscription smart card) support. You should make sure that there is a separate CAM for the encryption system used by your sat package.

Some sat packages have proprietary receiver for their smartcards and CAMs are not available for watching the package in other receivers.

Technotrend makes some popular models, the S1500 and S3200 which can also be paired with an addon CI module for inserting a CAM.

I have the S3200 which also support DVB-S2 for future compatibility.
Also DVB-S is very beta on SageTV right now, it sort of works but some issues need to be worked on hopefully by the full V6 release.

[vorius]

Like what are some issues with DVB-S with SageTV?

And I tried searching for this card seems I cant buy it anywhere in USA? Only found a German web site that's selling them. How's the PQ ?

[Lucas]

DVB-S has only been made available in V6 beta. As such it is very new functionality. The issues I referred to relate to how the initial setup of the channels is performed, tuning etc. At the moment some channels don't show. These are issues that will need to be fixed.

Once a channel shows properly though pic quality is excellent!

[mikesm]

Does Sage fill the EPG from the data received from the card? I am interested in a setup to receive US FTA DVB-S programming, and I don't think the normal EPG setup will work for that...

thanks
Mike

[Lucas]

At the moment SageTV gets the standard DVB current and next show EPG info from the card. Where a full week's epg is available, it's usually done in non standard ways via another sat transponder and used in proprietary receivers. This needs specific per package configuration and I suspect it is unlikely it can be easily done for SageTV.

I am experimenting for getting the EPG info from XMLTV sources. I think this may be the easiest way of getting multiday epg with DVB-S.

[vorius]

yeah one good thing is I noticed the satellite channel I am most interested in has an XMLTV source I can use, though I will have to learn how to setup XMLTV

[mikesm]

Is there a Sage compatible DVB-S card that has DisSEqC motor control support? Mediaportal just added this feature http://www.team-mediaportal.com/news...r_support.html, and it's handy for FTA applications, where you want to be able to talk to many transponders.

Thanks,
Mike

[Motofreak75]

If your using BDA drivers then your out of luck, there is no spec for DisSEqC motor control in BDA drivers. Only DisSEqC Switches so far for some DVB-S cards. What card do you have ?

I have to use WDM drivers for my rotor

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

If your using BDA drivers then your out of luck, there is no spec for DisSEqC motor control in BDA drivers. Only DisSEqC Switches so far for some DVB-S cards. What card do you have ?

I have to use WDM drivers for my rotor

No card yet. I am planning on using HDHomeRun's for QAM and OTA, but there are a bunch of channels that are DVB-S FTA that I would like to get, that are not carried by comcast. So I have complete flexibility here.

To get all these channels, I need to talk to a bunch of satellites, so that's why the motorized option is so appealing. Would using multiple LNB's in a T90 style dish be supported?

Thanks,
Mike

[Motofreak75]

I run a rotor and I have no choice but to use WDM drivers due to the lack of support for rotors in the bda drivers. And Sagetv so fars supports only BDA drivers. I have no choice but to use MT plugin with Sage.

And most of FTA channels in N/A is on C-band, so unless you have a BUD, you wont be getting a lot of channels. I think there is about 80 or so FTA channels on Ku band ( non English channels& 20 english channels) and you need atleast 30+ inch dish. But on Cband there about 60ish + english channels in various compression and few good free HDTV channels but you need the 6 foot BUD +

[mikesm]

Good point. I have enough room for a T55 or T90 dish, and I think the T90 has an effective gain of 38 inch dish, so it should be able to pick up most of the lower power transponders, but I need to do some math for that... :-)

Thanks,
Mike