Curly99
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This thread is a continuation of this thread http://www.avforums.com/forums/wind...-howto-sky-through-dvb-s-card-within-mce.html
Thanks to nigelbb for starting the original thread.
For reference: First post
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Thanks to nigelbb for starting the original thread.
For reference: First post
I have been in contact with various people on this forum regarding getting DVB-S & in particular Sky working within MCE. There are also a number of threads with discussion of DVB-S within MCE but I thought that I would start this new thread as I have made a breakthrough at the weekend. I can now confirm that running within MCE I have UK Sky TV decoding automatically & to forestall a lot of questions I will try & describe in detail the procedure here.
I use a Technotrend TT-budget S-1500 DVB-S card with add-on CI daughter card
http://shop.technotrend.de/shop.php...sid=e8909ae0b43b65f072a2e12cdd06e4d5&s=&id=12
http://shop.technotrend.de/shop.php...sid=e8909ae0b43b65f072a2e12cdd06e4d5&s=&id=27
The CAM that I use is the only one to support NDS (the Sky encryption method) it is called the T.Rex but was formerly called the Dragon. Technotrend's own software is very good & the decryption is totally transparent. Note that decryption of Sky channels requires a legitimate subscription card & there is no question of piracy here. One caveat is that it is possible that Sky will change something about their encryption that would mean that the CAM would no longer work with Sky. You need a programmer for the CAM (I have a CAS3) to load it with the Predator firmware as it will be supplied without. You can find the latest version of the Predator firmware 3.31 here http://www.satnet.ch/file/download.php or any number of other satellite sites on the Net just do a Google.
Technotrend supply their MCE Tools that in conjunction with their BDA driver give you control of CI & DiSEqC so you can switch between up to four dishes. You can download the TT software, BDA drivers & MCE Tools from here http://www.technotrend.com/english/download/download.html When you install the tools a detailed User Guide in PDF format is installed.
To work within MCE the Technotrend driver pretends to be a supported DVB-T (Freeview) card. You use the DVB-T Mapper application to map satellite transponder frequencies to DVB-T MUXes. You then edit the channels & add back all the encrypted channels which by default are not displayed in the EPG. Then you can change the channel order so e.g. BBC1 was channel 1, BBC2 channel 2 etc
Technotrend's first CI implementation within MCE allowed you to select a channel on a transponder to be decrypted & then you hit the 'Decrypt' button which was OK but now they have an application that automatically decodes when it detects a programme change to an encrypted channel. For these encrypted channels you use the Technotrend provided tool & map the SIDs to the channel numbers which creates an XML file that you can edit. You can get full listings of satellite transponder frequency & SIDs for each channel at http://www.lyngsat.com/
To get a full Sky EPG after setting up MCE as DVB-T you need to edit the registry & change the headend number to a valid one for Sky then do an EPG download & then map EPG listings to the channels. The registry key for the headend ID is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\Service\EPG but if you just do a Find on headend there is only one entry.
DVB-S within MCE works very smoothly & decrypts transparently. It is very stable & has great picture quality when compared side by side with an MCE system with a Sky+ digibox feeding a Hauppauge WinTV PVR250 card by s-video.
There is one outstanding problem in that unattended recordings of encrypted channels fail as the TT_CI_Autodecoder process does not kick in when the channel changes for an automatic recording. Scheduled recording while tuned to a channel that is already being decrypted works OK as of course does recording of Free To Air channels. Technotrend are evidently aware of the problem & have promised a fix.
I bought my CAM & programmer from this German supplier they have very good prices & rapid cheap delivery by DHL http://www.dvbshop.net/ They also have a good forum that has some discussion of using the Technotrend card within MCE http://www.dvbshop.nt/forum/ I have also found one or two Dutch or German forums where DVB-S in MCE is discussed. The Germans are very keen to get this working as they of course have many FTA satellite channels plus Technotrend is a German company.
I know that there are a couple of other MCE DVB-S experimenters on this forum so let's pool our knowledge & get Sky working within MCE in top quality.
Perhaps this thread could be made a Sticky?
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Great news everybody! Looks like we are one step closer to loading custom EPG in Vista TV pack 2008 and Windows 7. Microsoft have published the XML schema for the guide listings.
The Green Button - Media Center Guide Listings
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