Freesat HD TV Card for My Dell Studio Slim

[2scoops]

Two questions really, I have two feeds for my SKY HD Box, is their any way to split them so my SKY HD Box and a freesat HD TV Card can both use them.

And

Whats the best Freesat HD card to use with my low profile Dell Studio Slim, I assume it won't take a full sized card. Am i limited to the USB version?

[mossym]

you can't really share sat connections. each deicce needs it's own lnb. you could connect the two fo them, but you would have to make 100% sure that only one was ever powered on a time, i.e. if using your htpc, then the sky box would have to be powered off completely. The box sends information back up the line to control the lnb, so if you have two devices trying to do that then things can go wrong..

if you have sky hd you ahve a quad lnd anyway, just run two extra cables from the lnb's and use them instead with your htpc, unless you are using them already

as for your second question, blackgold do a low profile pci-e tuner card, but there are a lot of complaints in the thread on it here

[2scoops]

Thanks, The two other feeds are in use upstairs.

Can the Freesat HD cards compete with SKY HD for usability and quality?

Are the usb ones any good?

[mossym]

there is no such thing as a freesat Hd card. you get the channels, but you don't get the epg or any of the other functions. for hd, you'll only get bbchd and itvhd(when it is on). quality will be no differnt, can even be better if you start messing with decoder settings. but you will need to get an epg from somewhere and a front end for recording. mediaportal, dvbviewer, vmc, are all used here and there is a ton of information in this forum about setting them up.

[andy1249]

Can the Freesat HD cards compete with SKY HD for usability and quality?

Are the usb ones any good?

In terms of ease of use , no , Sky HD and The Freesat boxes have the EPG's as mentioned and they are way better than anything you are going to get with a DVB-S card.
I have tried Mediaportal , Mediacenter ( with TV pack hack ) and DVBviewer and DVBviewer is by far the best , but still does not give the same user experience of the sky EPG or the freesat one.

In terms of quality they can be set up to give an excellent picture. This will take some setting up though , and it will depend entirely on the quality of hardware you have in your PC. BBC HD in particular can take an age to set up so that the PC handles de-interlacing properly.

You definitely cannot split lines from the dish between two receivers , I wouldnt even risk it in the " Only one unit powered up " configuation either as you risk some major damage to your equipment. Sat boxes provide power and control to the LNB , even with one box turned completely off , a split line means putting power on a terminal where its not supposed to be.

If you have sky HD or Sky + , the best thing to do is to run extra lines from your LNB as the chances are you have a quad LNB and there is most likely to connections free.

[mossym]

Originally Posted by andy1249

I have tried Mediaportal , Mediacenter ( with TV pack hack ) and DVBviewer and DVBviewer is by far the best , but still does not give the same user experience of the sky EPG or the freesat one.

i'd argue there, i find mediaportal much easier to use/record with, and the quality just as good. and if the pc is a true htpc, for movies and music too, the total integration of mediaportal is far superior.

Originally Posted by andy1249

In terms of ease of use , no , Sky HD and

You definitely cannot split lines from the dish between two receivers , I wouldnt even risk it in the " Only one unit powered up " configuation either as you risk some major damage to your equipment. Sat boxes provide power and control to the LNB , even with one box turned completely off , a split line means putting power on a terminal where its not supposed to be.

100% agree. however the last time on here i posted the powered done option was wrong it was jumped on straight away. the only safe way i can think of splitting it is to have a switch that completely isolates the second receiver when not using it. of course this causes it's own problems.
1)the box that is isolated can not record.
2)when yous witch back it has no idea what state the lnb is in, so it may not know it has to change it to start a recording. resulting in the wrong thing being recorded.

[Phil W]

If you have a quad lnb and they are all currently in use you can replace it with an octo lnd...4 more lnbs for you to play with!


They seem to be going for about £20 on ebay at the mo...

Phil

[andy1249]

i'd argue there, i find mediaportal much easier to use/record with, and the quality just as good. and if the pc is a true htpc, for movies and music too, the total integration of mediaportal is far superior.

If you have a good solid background in PC tech and have plenty of time to spare you should give mediaportal a go , however , fair warning here , it is not ready to go as is and is riddled with bugs.
Getting it stable is a lot of work , and keeping it stable is even more work.

Experienced IT people who are fans of Mediaportal tend to overlook the amount of work involved in setting it up.

The hardware side of things is another issue , while PC resolutions have been way more than HD resolutions for a long time , handling a HD feed from a Sat card ( or indeed any HD content ) and displaying it properly will require one of the latest graphic cards.

[Stephen Neal]

Vista TV Pack will now drive DVB-S (but not S2) cards, and with a hacked H264 decoder will receive BBC HD, ITV HD and Luxe TV HD, integrated into the EPG. (Though the ITV HD EPG would be for ITV SD - so only useful if you KNOW the show is HD)

If you have a Firewire socket - then the FireDTVS2 external tuners are expensive but effective - and the FloppyDTVS2 internal firewire model is also quite compact - though I don't think they are low-profile. USB2 models may be OK - though I've no experience of them.

Think most DVB-S2 tuners are full height PCI/PCI-e - the Hauppauge Nova-S2 HD is.

[scaryjones]

MossyM - I see you're from Ireland and I was reading this thread and if everyone will forgive the thread hijacking I have a quick question.

I'm going to build a HTPC (HD4850 GPU, intel core 2 duo 7850(i think) with 4 gigs RAM, Hauppage HVR 4000) - meaty enough to handle HD broadcasts.

I'm going to put Vista MCE on it and will put up a sat dish in my back garden with the aim of getting Freesat / Freesat HD channels.

My question is, with the above set up should I get all the Freesat channels and the HD ones easily enough? I know I'll miss the Freesat EPG but with a clean Vista install and the TV pack applied, would the Vista EPG more or less substitute for the freesat one?

I'm still learning here but am keen to start building the PC, but want to know it's worth while before starting!

THanks!

[MartinH32]

Originally Posted by andy1249

If you have a good solid background in PC tech and have plenty of time to spare you should give mediaportal a go , however , fair warning here , it is not ready to go as is and is riddled with bugs.
Getting it stable is a lot of work , and keeping it stable is even more work.

Experienced IT people who are fans of Mediaportal tend to overlook the amount of work involved in setting it up.

The hardware side of things is another issue , while PC resolutions have been way more than HD resolutions for a long time , handling a HD feed from a Sat card ( or indeed any HD content ) and displaying it properly will require one of the latest graphic cards.

I agree it does take some setting up, but thats because you can do so much with it. I use it on XP after junking MCE. Media Portal lets me use HD-DVd, Bluray, music videos, music, DVDs (including ISO images that I can select from the hard drive) and pictures.

It's also not full of bugs and it's free!

[Stephen Neal]

WRT to the Freesat EPG - this has now been reverse engineered in both MythTV and in Windows. It can now be sort of used in DVB Viewer apparently - though AIUI it is still following a download model (i.e. you tune to the EPG transponder, download it and load it once a day?)

Sky HD has some huge advantages over all the PC satellite systems at the moment (broadcaster triggered recording being a major one for me) - but is also quite expensive, and doesn't allow for off-line HD archiving (well not without a Hauppauge USB HD PVR and a Sky HD box with component outputs - and a quality loss)

[mossym]

Originally Posted by scaryjones

MossyM - I see you're from Ireland and I was reading this thread and if everyone will forgive the thread hijacking I have a quick question.

I'm going to build a HTPC (HD4850 GPU, intel core 2 duo 7850(i think) with 4 gigs RAM, Hauppage HVR 4000) - meaty enough to handle HD broadcasts.

I'm going to put Vista MCE on it and will put up a sat dish in my back garden with the aim of getting Freesat / Freesat HD channels.

My question is, with the above set up should I get all the Freesat channels and the HD ones easily enough? I know I'll miss the Freesat EPG but with a clean Vista install and the TV pack applied, would the Vista EPG more or less substitute for the freesat one?

I'm still learning here but am keen to start building the PC, but want to know it's worth while before starting!

THanks!

sorry for teh delay, but yes, you'll get all the freesat channels. no epg as you mention, but that is easily downloaded, either from radiotimes for the major channels or there are tricks to pul it from satellite itself. you'll get bbchd and itvhd, in fact looking forward to man u vs celtic in itvhd tonight on my 108" screen!!