PCIe/PCI-e DVB-S2 Satellite Cards

Well the card has arrived in under 24hours despatch from Germany!

Opened up my PC but have hit another snag :(

I ordered the optional power cable for the card but my machine has no legacy floppy of IDE drive power leads and thus I guess without power it will not work.

Searching around with Google I have found an adpater which I think will do the job.
StarTech.com LP4 to SATA 15 Pin Power Adapter F/M with Floppy Power: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

Thus I will try again after this arrives this Friday.

HummerUK

Huh? You ordered the power adapter but you don't have any free Molex power plugs?
The adapter should be a Molex to floppy power converter and the power plug on the card is a floppy power plug.

Didn't you check that you had some Molex power connectors when you ordered the power cable from dvbshop?
 
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I must admit I did not check for a spare IDE Molex power socket, I thought all machines had those but it seems no more...

Anyway my cable arrived and plugs on to the one spare SATA power connector and goes direct to the SAT Card.

Drivers installed before card as suggested by install guide, card fitted, machine powered up, found new hardware, ran MCE, TV Guide setup which saw the dual card and Astra/Eurobird and all seems well.

Only thing missing is any guide data/channels for CBS Freesat channels e.g. CBS Action.

BBC HD works okay and so far no crashes.

HummerUK
 
Just to add my 2c

I've also got a TBS 6980 Dual DVB-S2 card working in a Fedora 13 x64 box with MythTV.

No problems on reception and have often been recording both BBC HD and ITV HD channels simultaneously without any issues.

Not tried it with a CI unit yet but that's next on my to do list.

Hi just discovered this thread....

What software are you using to watch BBC HD?

I presume this is on freeview and not Freesat?

Adrian


Right

I have just been reading more of the thread ...

I currently have a black-gold PCL-express card for capturing Digital free-view and a DVB satellite card currently not being used. This is a normal PCl card.

I would like to maintain two channels for DVB-TV (ie free-view) but another card to record free-view BBC-HD even from my satellite feed BBC HD

My HTPC is equipped with Windows 7

So can support two different capture cards; hope I am making sense

Adrian
 
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So can support two different capture cards; hope I am making sense

Not really! ;)

First, you can't get BBC HD via Freeview HD yet as there are no DVB-T2 cards available.

You can get BBC HD and ITV 1 HD via 'freesat' (actually free to view satellite) using a DVB-S card. Windows 7 Media Center will allow you to view and record these. You just need a dish pointing to Astra 2D, the same satellite as Sky.

Yes, you can have Freeview and freesat tuners in the same HTPC. Windows will show all the channels in the Guide.
 
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I have a hypothetical question for all Sat & computer enthusiasts. If a hypothetical company would bring a hypothetical card to the market that would integrate 4 (yes, four) DVB-S2 tuners in a single PCIe x1 form factor, would this be of interest to you?

The hypothetical card would only deliver the pure basics, i.e. tune a signal (or 4 at the same time) and put the resulting MPEG2 Transport Stream on the PCIe bus for the computer / application such as MythTV or MediaPortal to do whatever it wants with it: e.g. stream the TS over the network to somewhere else, store it on the hard disk, send it to a graphics chip for decoding and displaying on your TV, transcode for viewing on mobile devices etc...

Given these specs: what would be the price point an enthusiast such as yourselves is willing to pay for such a card?


This would be interesting as I am looking for a sloution to do just this actually. Would the .TS contain all the subtitles also?
Also, is it possible to record more than one sky (paytv) channel over a single tuner?
 
This would be interesting as I am looking for a sloution to do just this actually. Would the .TS contain all the subtitles also?
Also, is it possible to record more than one sky (paytv) channel over a single tuner?

The TV program/recording application will usually give the option to record in different formats. If you select TS transport stream and ensure that everything you want from the TS is recorded then it can contain multiple audio streams and often two forms of subtitles including teletext text based subs which can be easily converted to srt subs.

When recording transport streams you can record the whole TS which includes all channels and data being transmitted on that transponder.

You should always record the TS rather than program streams such as Mpeg2 because the TS contains important timing information which allows the recording to be checked and any sync problems corrected.

For Sky TV you would need a CI slot and Cam to decode the Sky channels. But this is where my knowledge of CI/Cams becomes limited because I don't use them. I would of thought that the whole transponder which contains a number of channels, would be decoded and then the wanted channels could be recorded. Someone who has tried it would have to confirm this.

I think you should forget about ever finding a PCI-e card with 4 Sat tuners on it because I don't think it will ever happen. For the limited amount of people who need that they can buy two dual tuner cards.
 
The TV program/recording application will usually give the option to record in different formats. If you select TS transport stream and ensure that everything you want from the TS is recorded then it can contain multiple audio streams and often two forms of subtitles including teletext text based subs which can be easily converted to srt subs.

When recording transport streams you can record the whole TS which includes all channels and data being transmitted on that transponder.

You should always record the TS rather than program streams such as Mpeg2 because the TS contains important timing information which allows the recording to be checked and any sync problems corrected.

For Sky TV you would need a CI slot and Cam to decode the Sky channels. But this is where my knowledge of CI/Cams becomes limited because I don't use them. I would of thought that the whole transponder which contains a number of channels, would be decoded and then the wanted channels could be recorded. Someone who has tried it would have to confirm this.

I think you should forget about ever finding a PCI-e card with 4 Sat tuners on it because I don't think it will ever happen. For the limited amount of people who need that they can buy two dual tuner cards.

Ok that sounds good because someone on a different thread told me that I couldnt record .TS and therefore not be able to extract the subs, however I have actually seen a subtitle text file extracted from Sky Sports 1.

Do you know where I could find out about the CI/Cams? and could you recommend a dual tuner?

Cheers dude.
 
Hey guys, I'm after a cheap DVB-S2 PCI-E card form my media center can anyone point in th ecorrect direction?

I'm using DVB Link software to load the channels and EPG into Media Center so if anyone is interested check it out.
 
Ok that sounds good because someone on a different thread told me that I couldnt record .TS and therefore not be able to extract the subs, however I have actually seen a subtitle text file extracted from Sky Sports 1.

Do you know where I could find out about the CI/Cams? and could you recommend a dual tuner?

Cheers dude.

If it's transmitted by Sky then it can be recorded providing the broadcast is decrypted. Some software such as Microsoft media centre might not allow recording of the transport stream, they seem to use their own file formats. I don't use media centre, I hated it and it didn't last long on my PC so I know about recording using it.

Many other softwares can record the TSs. I use DVBViewer and that allows the selection of which portions of the broadcast to record, which channels and video, audio and subtitle tracks to record.

I started extracting the teletext subs from it because they were considerably easier than the graphic subtitles that are broadcast on formats such as Freeview. I made a little program to convert to srt format so they could be imported into subtitle software such as subtitle workshop.

I won't recommend the card I have which is the Mystique dual tuner card because the drivers are absolutely crap. I have had to stay with a very early driver version to do what I need which is be reliable and provide a usable signal quality and strength reading and those drivers don't support the CI interface which was released after them. They only work on the V1 card as well so the latest card doesn't have the option available.

Before even thinking about this card check the dvbshop forum! I just had a look and someone started an English thread and someone else replied in German and then the support person replied to the German reply and totally ignored the English thread starter.

Piles of people where the card doesn't work because of the motherboard chipset and lots more where features don't work as they should. I just use it as it is ATM and it doesn't look like I will get a CI interface because drivers that support it as worse than the ones I use.

Some people have had good results with the TBS 6980 but I cannot see how it can use a CI/Cam because there doesn't seem any way to connect one. But overall it seems fairly good and cheaper than the Mystique.

TBS 6980

The Mediapointer card is virtually identical to the Mystique card, well it's the other way around because the Mystique is based upon the Mediapointer card. Not recommended!

Cerona Networks XpressVu which looks a lot like the Mediapointer card but has never been seen and availability might be difficult. It could be a pro card meant for higher end use.

NetUP Dual which is another pro card and it would be difficult to get one. The Price would probably be high.
 
Yeah I use DVB Viewer also but I have only been dealing with DVB-T thus far.

Are you telling me that all the FTA channels on satelitte have teletext subtitles? I have spent a lot of time trying to figure a way of OCRing digital subpic subtitles from terrestrial. This could of saved me a lot of time..

The thing is I am trying to create a large database of television transcripts for research purposes and need to record a lot tv. I am setting up a server computer that can record all the terrestrial multiplexes using standard hauppaugue DVB-TD dual cards and now looking to add satellite. The satelitte needs to be .TS obviously.

The NetUP dual seems good and might be able to decript (so they tell me) if used in conjunction with a "t-rex" CAM. Either way I can probably get most of the stuff I need through FTA satellite.

The thing is would the NetUP dual really give me an advantage over other cards as it costs $900 + $90. Seems pretty expensive to me.
 
Yeah I use DVB Viewer also but I have only been dealing with DVB-T thus far.

Are you telling me that all the FTA channels on satelitte have teletext subtitles? I have spent a lot of time trying to figure a way of OCRing digital subpic subtitles from terrestrial. This could of saved me a lot of time..
Yes :) I used to do the the OCR with Freeview subtitle data a long time ago and it was so much trouble and time consuming that the idea of doing it again didn't appeal to me. Then I noticed that FreeSat broadcasts had teletext subtitle data and after a little messing around with it I made a program that converts that the teletext data to srt format very quickly. It's only changing the formatting and making it srt compatible. Any timing correction still needs to be done but that is fairly quick using subtitle workshop.

The thing is I am trying to create a large database of television transcripts for research purposes and need to record a lot tv. I am setting up a server computer that can record all the terrestrial multiplexes using standard hauppaugue DVB-TD dual cards and now looking to add satellite. The satelitte needs to be .TS obviously.

The NetUP dual seems good and might be able to decript (so they tell me) if used in conjunction with a "t-rex" CAM. Either way I can probably get most of the stuff I need through FTA satellite.

The thing is would the NetUP dual really give me an advantage over other cards as it costs $900 + $90. Seems pretty expensive to me.

The NetUp is very expensive which is why it's not really practical for most people. It's meant for more professional use hence the price. It also looks like there are only Linux drivers. I cannot see any Windows drivers available for it.

The Mystique/Mediapointer cards can use CI slots but I regret wasting money on mine. I purchased primarily because of having the option of a CI slot although I had no immediate plans to use it. The initial drivers were very buggy and there were problems with the cards. A v2 was released and that has timing problems with newer motherboard chipsets plus various other problems.

My biggest dislike is the way they changed the signal quality reporting. FreeSat has many repeated channels, such as regional BBC1 and ITV. On my current dish which is a tiny bit larger than a Sky minidish and the quality on those minidishes is quite poor, especially during anything but clear weather. My dish gives me quality from about 70% to 85% depending upon the channel during clear skies with many of the important channels being around 80%. That is where I have the biggest problem with the Mystique/Mediapointer drivers because on the early drivers they reported the quality properly with a linear quality report. But after the driver I am using ATM which only works with V1 cards they started reporting anything over 70 something percent as being 100% quality and only providing a linear quality report for anything under that. So if I use a regional channel that has a quality of which is just inside the range which is reported as 100% quality and I start recording. I don't know whether there will be errors if it starts to rain because I don't know what the real quality is because it is being reported as being 100% when it is not. The Mystique support say that anything over 80%?? quality has no errors as far as the decoding is concerned so that is why they report it as being 100%. But the quality isn't the same and means no account can be taken for a worsening signal quality. If I can see the real quality I could record from a higher quality regional channel than one which is lower and give me a wider margin for signal deterioration due to weather. But with any of the newer drivers, including any that can use a CI slot I cannot do this! I have expressed my opinion many times to the Mystique support who only repackage the Mediapointer drivers but they are not interested in restoring proper quality reporting or even answering or responding to my requests. That's why I will never recommend anyone use these cards. That is before the other problems which can be quite severe are considered. My first card was faulty when I received it and had to be returned due to packet loss. A seller that despatches a faulty item is liable for any return costs. They sent me the card so I asked them whether they would refund the return fees and the main man said yes they would. But after returning it he would not respond to emails about the return costs so I never got it repaid. Plus they sent me a card without a full height bracket so I couldn't even use the card and that took more than a month to get a bracket out of them. They did claim that they had sent it but they didn't and they claimed it had been returned to them for unknown reasons which was a lie. A total disgrace of a company! Check their forum and see that they only respond to posts that suits them and they want to answer. If it's anything they don't like they will not respond to it.

You wouldn't have to mess around with Sky and purchasing CAMs, CI slots and have all the trouble of getting it working if you can get what you need from FreeSat. The teletext Subtitles are a lot easier to work with than the graphic subtitle data for obvious reasons.

The TBS card seems fairly good but I don't know whether it can work with encrypted channels because I cannot see how a CI slot can be used with it. Someone claimed it could but there is no evidence for that. The company might be the best source for such information.

[EDIT] I took a look at a few card makers sites and saw that TBS are planning on introducing a dual tuner dual CI card in the near future and their cards have had some satisfied customers so far so it might be one to watch out for. I have updated the first post with a few additions and alterations, removing a few dead links to eBay and pointing out where to find the current TBS cards.

Excuse the rant about dvbshop but they are not people who honour their word and their actions are not excusable IMO and they do make me mad.
 
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Thanks for the info, have you made your own script to extract teletext subs then? would you mind sharing it with me, or can projectx do the trick just as well?

So you don't know of any freesat dual cards that are reliable? preferably with their own hardware decoder as i will need to use a few of them together.
 
Thanks for the info, have you made your own script to extract teletext subs then? would you mind sharing it with me, or can projectx do the trick just as well?
ProjectX will extract the teletext subs from the stream and can even do it from AVC video if the video demuxing is disabled because it's only meant to work with Mpeg2 video. It will only extract the text subtitle file but that is not usable on it's own because it's not compatible with any regular subtitle formats such as srt.

I wrote a program that converts the text file to a srt format file so it can be imported into programs such as Subtitle Workshop where the start and end times can be adjusted to sync them to the video. I was using ProjectX to demux the teletext subs, even from AVC video at times so maybe the timing was messed up because of having no video present, I didn't demux that because it would of slowed it down and taken up more space.

Daveyboyc said:
.....I am trying to create a large database of television transcripts for research purposes....
May I ask what type of research? Is it personal or professional? Via PM if necessary.

Would you be using the subtitles or just the text? Is the timing information important or the character who is speaking?

So you don't know of any freesat dual cards that are reliable? preferably with their own hardware decoder as i will need to use a few of them together.

In a reasonable budget, nothing I can recommend ATM. I did have a brief look at the latest cards which I have added to the main post. TBS are about to introduce a new dual tuner dual CI card fairly soon and the people who have purchased other TBS cards have been quite happy with them from what I have seen. That indicates that the earlier TBS cards don't have CI capabilities like an earlier poster suggested. But other cards do sometimes have USB CI slots so maybe something is possible but whether it will work without driver support I don't know, because the stream has to be decoded before it can be recorded/viewed.

I don't know whether anyone managed to get Sky working with TV cards after Sky changed their encryption at the end of last year/beginning of this. At one time it was possible but I don't know whether it is now. I know that people were initially having problems but I thought that it might of been resolved. There is a thread on this forum about it I believe which I did have a brief look at, but didn't see whether it had been successfully resolved.

Found it here>
http://www.avforums.com/forums/windows/1265186-howto-sky-through-dvb-s-card-within-mce-part-3-a.html
 
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I don't know whether anyone managed to get Sky working with TV cards after Sky changed their encryption at the end of last year/beginning of this. At one time it was possible but I don't know whether it is now. I know that people were initially having problems but I thought that it might of been resolved. There is a thread on this forum about it I believe which I did have a brief look at, but didn't see whether it had been successfully resolved.

Found it here>
http://www.avforums.com/forums/windows/1265186-howto-sky-through-dvb-s-card-within-mce-part-3-a.html
It is possible with a white Sky card & a Diablo CAM 2 or 2.3 and Underworld firmware, but people seem to prefer a Dreambox or smartcard reader setup now.
 
It is possible with a white Sky card & a Diablo CAM 2 or 2.3 and Underworld firmware, but people seem to prefer a Dreambox or smartcard reader setup now.

That might give Daveyboyc something to work on. He does seem to want to use a PC and others probably do as well.
 
May I ask what type of research? Is it personal or professional? Via PM if necessary.

Would you be using the subtitles or just the text? Is the timing information important or the character who is speaking?

It is going to be for a type of market research, the transcripts will be searched for various mentions of what could be a celebrity, brand, company name, news story etc. Therefore just text with timecode are necessary as they wont be remuxed. If the timing isn't way out that won't be a problem neither.

The thing is with freesat though is by looking at the channels available on each transponder, alot of the channels which are going to be important to me are on differnet transponders, whereas in freeview a lot a multiplexed together very convienently so I will almost definately still use the script to OCR the subs on those.

Sky sports 1,2,3 are all on the same transponder however and this would be useful. But then, they are encrypted:thumbsdow. Still as jenrow said the daiblo card might be a decent bet, but with that will i be able to record for example, skysports 1, 2 and 3 all on same tuner (when needed)?
 
mr fantastic,,,can you upload your old driver for the satix dual card...the one that shows the signal levels......i have been trying every new driver since that one and there all crap.....please...
daveyboyc im very tempted to give the tbs card a try..cant be any worse that the satix..
 
Oh yeah, the TBS looks good btw, you reckon I should go for this one for freesat?
PCI-E DVB-S2 Dual Tuner TV card [TBS6981] - US$158.99 : BuyDVB Online Store
also sorry about all the spelling and grammar mistakes, looks as if i've suddenly become illiterate. :0

To a complete Sat TV Numpty/Novice can I ask a couple of questions?

1) How you get the Freesat menu/guide after installing a card like this into your PC?

2) Re above how do Tuners get the EPG's, are the EPG codes written onto the card or is it somthing from the computer/OS/additional program? (I hope this question makes sence!)

3) If you record Freesat HD stuff, like BBCHD, can you only play the content on that PC or could you watch on a second PC?
 
To a complete Sat TV Numpty/Novice can I ask a couple of questions?

1) How you get the Freesat menu/guide after installing a card like this into your PC?

2) Re above how do Tuners get the EPG's, are the EPG codes written onto the card or is it somthing from the computer/OS/additional program? (I hope this question makes sence!)

3) If you record Freesat HD stuff, like BBCHD, can you only play the content on that PC or could you watch on a second PC?

1) If you are using Windows 7 Media Center then there is a channel Guide

2) The Guide data is downloaded from Microsoft over the Internet

3) Yes, you can view content on another PC unless the content is copy protected.

You'll get more answers in the Home Entertainment PC forum.
 
sorry dont have any experience with freesat, thats why i've been asking.
 
It is going to be for a type of market research, the transcripts will be searched for various mentions of what could be a celebrity, brand, company name, news story etc. Therefore just text with timecode are necessary as they wont be remuxed. If the timing isn't way out that won't be a problem neither.
After looking at ProjectX and making an adjustment to the settings, it can make a srt file and convert from teletext to srt itself so the program I wrote isn't needed. :( But even if the video and audio are also demuxed, I still cannot get it to align the timecodes correctly. It would of made it easier if it would correct the timecodes and make them start at the beginning of the programme rather than starting at zero for the beginning of the recording and counting up even when a new programme begins.

The thing is with freesat though is by looking at the channels available on each transponder, alot of the channels which are going to be important to me are on differnet transponders, whereas in freeview a lot a multiplexed together very convienently so I will almost definately still use the script to OCR the subs on those.
I don't really understand what you mean about using the script to OCR. Are you talking about using Freeview?
How many PC's do you intend using? You could probably run 2 or 3 dual tuner cards per PC. With a Satellite dish with a Octo LNB that would allow 4 cards to be run off it.

Sky sports 1,2,3 are all on the same transponder however and this would be useful. But then, they are encrypted:thumbsdow. Still as jenrow said the daiblo card might be a decent bet, but with that will i be able to record for example, skysports 1, 2 and 3 all on same tuner (when needed)?
That's a good question and one which I cannot answer. I don't know how Sky sells their packages so it's difficult for me to say whether one CAM would decode a whole transponder or whether it can only decode one programme/channel. If you can have Skysports 1 without 2 or 3 then it might only decode one channel at a time.

The Mystique/Mediapointer cards did have some feature with their cards which was "supposed" to allow decoding more than one channel per Cam but I have to take whatever they say with a pinch of salt because most of it doesn't work.

The timing problems with the Mystique/Mediapointer cards was meant to be with the latest Intel Chipsets I believe, older chipsets such as Core 2 were meant to be okay. But that doesn't mean that there won't be other problems. The last thing you need is to be spending time diagnosing BSOD's and none functioning tuners because it's not good for the hair....tearing it all out in frustration.

Oh yeah, the TBS looks good btw, you reckon I should go for this one for freesat?
PCI-E DVB-S2 Dual Tuner TV card [TBS6981] - US$158.99 : BuyDVB Online Store
also sorry about all the spelling and grammar mistakes, looks as if i've suddenly become illiterate. :0

If I was you I would shoot them an email and ask about the new cards and when they expect them to become available. Mention that you need them for the work you intend doing and say you need a number of cards to complete what your doing. But it looks like you would have to purchase separate Cams for each tuner which would add to the cost.

Remember that if buying from the US that you will probably have to pay VAT and duty.

mr fantastic,,,can you upload your old driver for the satix dual card...the one that shows the signal levels......i have been trying every new driver since that one and there all crap.....please...
daveyboyc im very tempted to give the tbs card a try..cant be any worse that the satix..
I'm using driver 1.0.1.9 which was the last one which provided linear quality reporting. It will only work with the first V1 card so are you certain it will work on yours? If so I can upload it for you. I have a fairly basic setup with nothing special, no DiSEqC or anything ATM. I have been wanting to fit a new dish which would make 2 dishes and I think I might be asking for problems trying to use both and selecting between them with the Mystique card.

3) If you record Freesat HD stuff, like BBCHD, can you only play the content on that PC or could you watch on a second PC?
To expand upon Stiggy's reply, yes you can, there are no problems with BBCHD with regard to playing it back because the BBC are not currently allowed to encrypt their channels. You can record it without a problem.
 
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I'm using driver 1.0.1.9 which was the last one which provided linear quality reporting. It will only work with the first V1 card so are you certain it will work on yours? If so I can upload it for you. I have a fairly basic setup with nothing special said:
yes my card is v1 .i would be very greatful he you upload it..

many thanks
 

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