Freesat and Freeview together?

[flopstocks]

I currently have a Vista based media centre with freeview cards installed. I live in a new house and the wires are all in place to fit a Freesat dish. Just wondering if it would be possible to run DVB-T along side DVB-S giving the best of both worlds. I'm too tight to pay for sky.

 

[jameson_uk]

I currently have a Vista based media centre with freeview cards installed. I live in a new house and the wires are all in place to fit a Freesat dish. Just wondering if it would be possible to run DVB-T along side DVB-S giving the best of both worlds. I'm too tight to pay for sky.

Not sure about using Vista Media Center (think you need to install the TV pack) but you certainly can with MediaPortal. That said there is not much difference between the the two. Freesat has a load of channels you will never watch plus BBC and ITV HD (as well as a few + 1 channels) and Freeview has Sky Sports News, Dave, Fiver, Five USA and possibly one or two others that are not free to air over satellite. Other than that the channel lineups match pretty much

 

[Cafe Racer]

Yep - you need Vista + the TV Pack (which was an unsupported add-on to Vista) to enable Hetrogeneous Multi-Tuner support (which is what MS Call it).

OR Windows 7 (7MC) which has it in as standard.

The TV Pack might be hard to find now, and it reduced the number of tuners of each type down to two. 7MC supports four of each type, mixed (so you could have four DVB-T and four DVB-S).

 

[Stiggy]

I currently have a Vista based media centre with freeview cards installed. I live in a new house and the wires are all in place to fit a Freesat dish. Just wondering if it would be possible to run DVB-T along side DVB-S giving the best of both worlds. I'm too tight to pay for sky.

If you're not too tight to upgrade to Windows 7 you will have a much better experience than Vista. The hacks to make DVB-S and HD work properly can be fiddly.

 

[flopstocks]

I'm probabay going to upgrade to Windows 7 soon, I've got a hiper low profile case. So I need a USB DVB-S card to work wih Visa/Windows 7.

Does anyone know of a suitable device?

 

[rwttm001]

Does it need to be USB? I use a Hauppage Nova HD-S2 PCI card, works a treat.

 

[rwttm001]

Ah, low profile case Jameson has been experimenting with something similar so started a tuner thread - http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-entertainment-pcs/1167380-tuner-experience.html.

 

[flopstocks]

There is only one slot in the case, and with a card that place it's very crampt. Also the machine gets very hot, so I have fitted an exhaust blower. Works a treat, but means my only option is usb. I'm thinking about trying this

Compro VideoMate S500 DVB-S Tuner USB Box - Ebuyer or maybe

USB 2.0 DVB-S Digital Satellite HDTV TV Receiver Box T4 on eBay (end time 05-Feb-10 08:52:19 GMT)

 

[Cafe Racer]

You need to keep that those "cards" support Windows Media Center. If they don't, you might still get them working with DVBLink (or whatever it's called now), but native VMC/7MC support is easiest.

 

[bryanchicken]

I've got a Nova DVB-S usb that works fine with windows 7 media centre.
Make sure you get the latest drivers from the hauppuage website though.

 

[Ten98]

Sounds amazing. I have a Win7 MC setup which has a dual-tuner terrestrial DVB card. I just moved into a block of flats and there's a satellite socket behind the TV that runs from a shared dish on the roof, so I'm excited about the prospect of adding a second card to give me Freesat HD to compliment my Freeview setup.

My question is how does Win7 Media Center handle having the same channel on 2 different tuners?

Freesat has much better picture quality than Freeview so natrually I'd prefer to watch the feed from the sat card whereever possible.

So for example, I'd have 3 tuners available with BBC1, 1 sat and 2 terrestrial. Lets say I'm not recording anything and select BBC1. Will it be smart enough to take it from the Sat card first, or will I have 2 BBC1's on my channel menu?

And what happens if I'm watching something on BBC1 through the sat feed, but during the programme something I've scheduled to record on BBC HD comes on, will it understand that it has to flip me to one of the available Freeview tuners so that it can record the HD feed???

I can't imagine a MS product being quite so amazing somehow...

 

[bryanchicken]

I just wrote a load of what turned out to be rubbish coz i can't read properly and have deleted it.


I think that win7 is as clever as you said. You can set tuner priorities and it will know that HD is only available on one of the tuners and should adjust itself according.
I've never had it happen but you'd probably get a "tuner conflict" thing come up like you get with Sky+ when you're recording 2 things and trying to switch the channel onto something else.

 

[Ten98]

Wow, I look forward to trying this out

 

[Cafe Racer]

The above is exactly how it works, although it does get it's knickers in a twist sometimes.

If you set up your highest priority source first (DVB-S in your case) it'll put that at the top of the Source Priority list and use that first, then it that tuner's in use, it will use the next one down (DVB-T#1 in your case), and then try DVB-T#2 if DVB-S and DVB-T#1 are both in use.

Sometimes it seems to "favour" a particular tuner, though, so even though you've told it DVB-S is the #1 tuner, if for some reason it's started to use #2 then it seems to carry on using #2 for a while.

If you're watching on the DVB-S tuner and it has to turn over to record something for which there are no more free tuners, it will pop up the conflict screen and ask you what other thing you want to stop recording. Occasionally, though, it will turn over without asking first! I think there is a flaw in the logic somewhere that gets "exploited" - it's the same logic that messes up the back to back recordings (if you have two shows set to record back-to-back, it ends one early in order to start the other EVEN if there are spare tuners available).

If you want to change the priority order of the sources, or remove a source (say you have a weak freeview signal on one transponder, for example) for a particular channel you can do.

 

[Ten98]

Well, I can put up with a little bit of erratic behaviour, considering I'm adding HD channels for a little over £30!

 

[imilne]

Freesat has much better picture quality than Freeview so natrually I'd prefer to watch the feed from the sat card whereever possible.

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. HD channels aside, Freesat doesn't have a much better pic than Freeview - or vice versa. On the whole, they're pretty much the same, but some channels *will* look better via one method than the other.

There's a site somewhere that lists all the bitrates (if you want to use that as a basis for how good the pic is likely to be). I can't remember specifics, but a couple of (potentially wrong ) examples off the top of my head...I think ITV is better on Freeview, whereas Film4 is better on Freesat. The differences may also be down to resolution rather than bitrate too.

 

[Ten98]

Invariably I find that Freeview has a much poorer picture than Freesat, even in high signal-strength areas.

Ignoring signal dropouts and interference, which is a lot less common on Satellite, The main factor in terms of picture quality is bitrate.

Most Freeview channels (with the exception of a handful of BBC channels) have a theoretical maximum bitrate of between 2 and 3 Megabit, and an average bitrate somewhere below this.

One problem is that the bitrate for an individual channel is shared between all other channels on its multiplexer, so if there is a lot of motion and high-bitrate video on the other channels on the same multiplexer as the channel you are watching, video quality will suffer.

Satellite channels in general have a bitrate of around 4mbit, which is generally sustained and does not vary or get shared between other channels on the same transponder. There are channels with lower bitrates but these either do not appear on Freeview or are the same or lower bitrate on Freeview.

Additionally, 720x578 is a far more common resolution on Satellite than Freeview, which has most channels on 544x578, making 16:9 look pretty rank on large screens.

 

[Stiggy]

Invariably I find that Freeview has a much poorer picture than Freesat, even in high signal-strength areas.

That's not always true. ITV1 is much worse on satellite than Freeview. However, many of the +1 channels which are rubbish on Freeview are pretty good on satellite.

I live right next to the 'mighty' Sandy Heath transmitter, so my Freeview signal couldn't be stronger!

 

[Ten98]

Possibly true, I tend to disable the ITV channels as I'd rather be poked in the eye with a hot needle than watch anything on them.

Anyhoo, I've installed my Sat card in the 7 MCE machine and I was slightly disappointed to find that in fact it does not combine the same channels on different tuners, in fact it gives me 2 x BBC3s, 2 x Film 4s, 2 x E4s, etc etc on my program guide.

It's a cheap card, so the difference in picture quality isn't all that impressive truth be told so I've simply disabled all the Freesat channels I already have on Freeview, so I've boosted my channel count by about 20, 10-odd music channels, BBC HD and a few interesting-looking random channels.

 

[bryanchicken]

i'm sure there is an option to merge channels somewhere.
I'm not sure where though as i've never used it.

 

[Habanos]

It took me a while to find it, and only found it by accident, but essentially, you need to change the guide listings data, not go into the more logical Edit Sources.

Presumably you've got the Freeview channels such that BBC One is on 1, BBC Two on 2 etc and then the Freesat channels on 101, 102 etc.

Say you want to merge BBC One Freeview and BBC One Freesat:
1) Find channel 101 (Freesat BBC One) in the Guide
2) Right click on it and choose Edit Channel
3) Go to Edit Listings (not Edit Sources)
4) Find 'BBC One' in the listings. One of them should have a number 1 next to it. Select this one.
5) You will be asked if you want to Combine or Copy the listings. Choose Combine.

You will now have one entry for BBC One which uses both Freeview and Freesat as possible sources.

Always do this for the channel you want to move, not the place you want it to be in. So for ITV1, change the listings for channel 103 to use channel 3, for Channel 4, change the listings for 104 to use 4 etc.

Also, don't forget to rescan the satellite transponders. Some of the Freesat channels are missing from the default pre-scanned lineup. Unfortunately you will have to filter out the dial-a-tart channels and anything else not of interest.

 

[Cafe Racer]

Yeah, that's right.

It WILL automatically combine channels, but unfortunately only where the channel name matches exactly (and sometimes they don't auto combine). Channel 4, ChannelFour and Channel4 are all good examples.

There is a tool called "GuideTool" which does speed up combining channels and changing guide sources if you have a LOT to do. I find it easier anyway, because you can sort the list by channel name and see the channels that ought to be combined. If you do have a channel with missing guide data, it even allows you to choose guide data from a different source - Sky for example.

Also, there's an "Autoselect" option in 7MC - that's useful because it runs through ALL channels/sources and checks for a signal then disables the ones where there is no signal. It helps stop "No signal was found..." messages.

 

[jliero]

I have a slightly different variation on this problem. I live in a "border region" - BBC/ITV West regional news actually covers where we live. However we get BBC West Midlands and ITV Central on Freeview, (& ITV west on analogue!); whereas to get BBC and ITV West on digital we have to use DVB-S satellite.

If I merge Freeview BBC1 W Midlands with Freesat BBC1 West & ITV Central/West etc, will I get a problem, given that the regional programming differs slightly?

 

[Cafe Racer]

Not at problem as such. It'll work, but where you merge different regions it will potentially try to record/play a program that's not on a certain frequency. So if BBC WM is showing a certain program, it could well record off the Central frequency and you'll miss the program (if it's not on Central).

If it's a big problem (not often now that the schedules are different) you can disable a tuner from that channel. Alternatley, if you keep the channels separate, if you try and record a program on the WM tuner, then use that tuner to watch something else, it will reschedule the recording and will probably record it off the Central tuner.

If that makes sense.

 

[Ten98]

Brilliant, thanks Habanos! Will be trying this when I get home tonight!