Setup MediaPortal with Sky/Freesat and DJBlu's amazing EPG Grabber in just 30 minutes!

Dear MonkeyJug, many thanks for this thread. Im am going to attempt it this weekend. I have bought the following card and plan to use it with Media portal server in my HP N54L Microserver running windows home server 2011 . The feed is from my Sky dish.

DVBSky S952 PCIe card with 2x DVB-S2 tuner , CD with: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

My plan is to then use MP XBMC Plugin to watch live FTA TV (including the Freesat HD channels)on my varous xbmc boxes. Can you see any potential problems with this plan. Thanks
 
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No, you shouldn't have any problems - I use the XBMC Plugin for my XBMC client in the garage (alleviates treadmill boredom!). However, you may require slightly different settings in step 4 due to it not being a TBS branded card:

4. Disable and move to the bottom all those that you don't want or need. Highlight each of your remaining TV tuners and click edit. Tick: Enable Cam, allow card to be preloaded and pause card, then click save.
 
Thanks for the tips. Fingers and toes crossed as I have never attempted this before.

Also to confirm. Channel switching can be done from within xbmc right? I don't need to use the ir sensor connected to the server end?
 
Actually, I missed the bit where it's going to be running WHS2011. MediaPortal only supports these OSs.

We support Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.x (32/64bit).

It may install in WHS2011, but I'm don't know for sure...
 
I've spent the last couple of days updating MePo :mad: . A couple of tips - never use registry clean in ccleaner or other similar programs (though I suspect that many of you know not to do it!).

MePo uses MySQL and if you uninstall this and then "clean" the registry, when you try to reinstall MySQL it throws up unhandled exceptions. This basically lead to me having to reinstall Windows, which is never a quick or fun experience.

As it's been a while since I installed MePo, I followed your guide and the first part is very straightforward - much easier than it has been in the past. However I seriously struggled on the MDapi part. The problem seems to have been something to do with permissions, but whatever I tried I couldn't get it to work. After several hours, I managed it get it working after following some of the steps in robbos old thread - sorry I can't tell you which bit was the solution because I don't actually know, but I got there in the end.

It might be worth adding an extra point to the guide about Windows Defender. Once I had completed my install, I was getting tiny glitches every few seconds even on FTA channels. I remembered that this was caused by Windows Defender and the solution is to add all the MePo related folders (program folders as well as recordings and timeshift folders) and MePo services to the Windows Defender exceptions list. Problem solved!

It's also worth looking at StreamedMP if you want a new skin because imo it looks really nice and it also has great plugins built in such as MovingPictures. I found a great extension on the MePo forum that automatically transferred my MovingPictures library between installs automatically as well, which is something which has always taken me hours in the past.

I'm just waiting for the android client box to arrive now, so I can get that running.
 
StreamedMP has always been my skin - check out my own personal setup here. It's quite an advanced MePo install, that I've been honing over the years! :

MediaPortal 2014 - YouTube

You don't need any programs to move libraries either. Setting up a client literally only takes about 5 mintues. On my Master MediaPortal install, I have it point to all the media folders (movies, music, tv shows and photos) on the network rather than the local paths, ie. //Server/Movies, rather than D:/Movies. Then, I just copy the database files that are created on the master to each client and, hey presto! that's it! There is literally zero configuring to do...

After a reinstall of Windows, so long as you keep the old database files, you can reinstall MePo and just drop them back in the correct folder again and it automatically configures paths etc...

You are correct about Windows Defender though - I remember having to do this, but it was so long ago that I last installed the OS on my Server. I will add it to the guide, thanks...

I'm not sure why you had problems at the MDapi part - I think a few people have used the guide and nobody has mentioned it before. When you launched the Command window, did you do so as the Administrator? If not, that sounds like it might affect permissions...?
 
I always run everything as admin. I even re-tried everything with MDapi using admin cmd prompt. Every install I struggle with it, so there's obviously something that I do wrong.

Thanks for the tip with MovingPictures I'll give that a try next time - the app is doing something similar to what you are doing, except it puts a small file in each movie folder, which is then picked up on reinstall and adds the data to the database. I guess your solution is far more direct!

Out of interest, do you ever get glitches on MTV/music channels? My MePo runs flawlessly except on Music channels I often get a 2 second glitch every 5 minutes or so. It's lucky that it's music channels or it would be a deal breaker, but it seems weird it only happens on these channels. (It's always happened and is still happening on my latest install).
 
Never had a problem with any glitching, although I never listen to music channels - I'm 41 and my kids are too young at the minute. Besides, we have Sonos in all the rooms!. Could it be related to the refresh rate or something of that nature, where it drops a few frames every few minutes? I think I remember reading something about that with LAV, or MadVR or something. But it seems weird that it is only one type of channel... Can you turn the refresh rate notification on to see, or I think if you press F1 or CTRL+J on MePo, it will tell you the refresh rate on the display...
 
updated for mediaportal 1.12
 

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