Vista MCE & Sky UK - Setup Guide & Tool - Draft release for comments

julianmclean

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Updated the download to a newer version of the document and spreadsheet. Used in setting up from clean OS with no problems.

Also added in:

- A Post Processor script (fix_chan_cats.lua) for XMLTV GUI that I wrote to add categories to programs. It can either just add categories to programs that don't have them, using a default value for each channel, or it can override the categories with the default for each channel, giving a EPG filter similar to that of Sky with each channel having one category for all programs. add this to the scripts directory in the "C:\Program Files\XMLTV GUI\scripts" directory and enable in Post Processors in in XMLTV GUI.
- The Bladerunner categories.txt file that fits with the script above, defining the categories to something a bit simpler. Put this in the "C:\Windows\ehome\BladeRunnerPro\QuickGuide\EPGXMLWriterParts" directory, overwriting the other one.
- A scheduled task (BladeRunnerScheduledTask.xml) to be inported to automate Bladerunner guide update daily. Go into Windows Scheduled Task Manager and import.
- The grabguide.bat script that is used by Bladerunner to call XMLTV GUI.
- The xmltv.dtd file in case any one is missing it - put it in "C:\Windows\ehome\BladeRunnerPro"

---

Ok, attached an early draft of a document detailing how to setup MCE to work with Sky UK, using a hardware satellite tuner such as FloppyDTV. Also included in the .rar file is a spreadsheet tool that I use to generate the various config files such as ExclusionList, ChannelInfo.xml, and to process the prefs.xml file to change channel order, visibility and names en masse.

(I'm afraid it had to be a .rar file as the file size limit on .zip files is too small! If any moderator wants to raise this limit for me, would be happy to post a .zip instead. For now, you need WinRAR to open the archive and get to the document and spreadsheet.)

I haven't run through the guide step by step myself, so it is likely to be slightly incorrect at the moment, and there will probably be uinintended omissions too, however, I have used the process in the doc and the tool repeatedly (and I mean repeatedly) to rebuild my Vista MCE machine with some success. Once all the isntallation and initial setup is complete, I can usually rebuild the MCE guide and channel setup to exactly how I want it in about half an hour once the channel scan is complete.

Anyway, take a look, use what you want, ignore the rest. Post any comments on either the doc or spreadsheet in this post, and I will do my best to answer or make changes, however I don't intent to spend my whole life on this! For the keener ones amongst you, if you want to add comments/track chanegs to the document directly then feel free and PM me the updated version back.

The guide and tool are directed at Vista setups, but I think virtually everything applies to MCE 2005 too - you're on your own there as I'm not regressing my setup just to see if it works! Also, I can't be held responsible
for this guide or tool messing up your system - you use these at your own risk!

Final point - the spreadsheet was put together mainly in Excel 2007. I seem to recall that earlier Excel versions were pickier when handling VLOOKUPS in that data needs to be sorted correctly. It uses these formulas alot, so if you see any problems in earlier Excel versions then this may be the issue.

Good luck...
 

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  • Vista MCE & Sky Setup Guide.rar
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Julian,

That's a fantastic guide (the best I've seen anywhere to date!), but now you've pulled together all the the individual steps & clearly explained them in a comprehensive document, I can now finally see just what an ordeal it actually is to get Sky working well in Vista (whereas before I'd only suspected it might be a pain).

I've just put my HTPC on Ebay & will now take up knitting instead.

Well done & thanks......:thumbsup:
 
The only thing that concerns me about this whole Sky decrypting without an official Sky box is that it can and almost certainly will be stopped by Sky/NDS at some point in the not too distant future. They are not happy at all about decrypting of their channels on non official hardware.

What probably concerns them the most is that cardsharing of Sky is rife across the whole of europe using the Dreambox, and even with a DVB-s card on a PC with the right software. As cardsharing of Sky has been around for a couple of years now alot of people in the cardsharing community find it very suprising that no action to counter CS and the Dragon cam has been taken to date.

There is today some talk on non public satellite forums that Sky will at sometime this summer change all cards to a different version and also make the camcrypt more secure with RSA encryption, making it alot harder for the same thing to happen again. Alot believe this action by Sky/NDS is long overdue. Of course it could all be BS, time will tell!

Make what you will of this post, I wrote it in good faith as I believe this risk should pointed out at the very top of any tutorial.
 
hi i just thought of something. Say you manage all of this and it works in MCE. Doesn't sky have this annoying policy that your sky box must be connected to a phone line at all times?

would this mean i'd need a 56k modem as well? or doesn't it matter? would i need to call sky if replace my sky box with my pc?

edit>
and something else, someone has mentioned that, we're screwed if sky changes its encryption. Say they do this, would this mean a new software hack? or completley new hardware?
 
That's a great piece of work. In particular I haven't seen the XMLTV/Bladerunner setup described in such detail anywhere else. The Excel spreadsheet which outputs the entries for the Exclusion list plus other useful stuff is also really good & I must have a play with it soon.

With MCE 2005 using the provided EPG was a bit flakey at times with channels coming & going particularly part-time ones like BBC Three but I this is much improved with Vista. If you are just using FTA/FTV channels then the easiest setup is just to use the DVB-T EPG & map the listings to the channel names. Alternatively editing the headendID in the registry to get the Sky listings instead of Freeview works OK. I suppose the great advantage of XMLTV/Bladerunner is that you have total control over channel listings so that you can add in all those missing +1 channels.
 
There is no technical reason why a Sky digibox needs to be connected to a phone line but Sky like you to do that so that you will order Box Office Movies on impulse because you are too idle to go to Blockbuster & rent the movie cheaper. They also require a telephone connection when you have a multiroom subcription to check that your digiboxes are actually at the same address.
 
If you just use DVB-S cards for FTA TV in MCE then that is a far better solution than hooking up a digibox & TBH most of the channels that I am interested in are FTA (BBC1/2/3/4 ITV1/2/3/4 etc). Other channels that I am interested in like BBC HD aren't available in MCE. The ability to decrypt FTV (C4, five, five Life, five US & Sky Three) or subscription channels is a bonus. Sky/NDS support in the Dragon/T.Rex CAM is also just a bonus as most people buy them for decrypting other channels or for use with other official subscription cards.

I doubt that Sky are too worried about use of legit sub cards in PCs. I doubt that they are very worried about card-sharing either as it's only a handful of geeks doing it & all those outside the UK can't subscribe & even those within the UK probably wouldn't subscribe in any case. What they would be worried about is pirate cards or blockers or enabling FTV cards for all channels or any of the other breaches of their encryption security that they had in analogue days.
 
BTW I know little about card-sharing but my understanding was that those using a Dreambox didn't use a Dragon/T.Rex CAM in any case.
 
Alternatively editing the headendID in the registry to get the Sky listings instead of Freeview works OK. I suppose the great advantage of XMLTV/Bladerunner is that you have total control over channel listings so that you can add in all those missing +1 channels.

Can you give a little more info on editting the headendID in Vista - can this give the majority of Sky channels from a natural EPG source? What headend value should I be using to get this? To be honest, I've been pretty harsh with my channel selection, removing anything that I would normally ignore, and even the getting rid of the +1 channels (partially as was having some issues with XMLTV/Bladerunner for these), so if the natural EPG gives most things then this may be a simpler setup. Would like to add this option to the guide too, if you can give some more info...
 
Just use regedit & search for headend or navigate down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\EPG

To use the Sky EPG you need to know what the headend is for your postcode then change that for the Freeview one. For a Chelmsford poscode the headend is 210059 (decimal). This will give you the same EPG as if you were using Sky via a digibox & analogue TV capture card which means no listings for radio but most of the rest are there (hundreds!!)
 
BTW I know little about card-sharing but my understanding was that those using a Dreambox didn't use a Dragon/T.Rex CAM in any case.

That's correct, the point being that the hack appeared on the Dreambox first and was then ported to the Dragon cam. If they do target CS with a new camcrypt then the Dragon cam will also die - fact.
 
Just use regedit & search for headend or navigate down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\EPG

To use the Sky EPG you need to know what the headend is for your postcode then change that for the Freeview one. For a Chelmsford poscode the headend is 210059 (decimal). This will give you the same EPG as if you were using Sky via a digibox & analogue TV capture card which means no listings for radio but most of the rest are there (hundreds!!)

Thanks - does Chelmsford mean you get London channels? I might try this out tonight. I don't really care about the guide info for radio stations to be honest as I generally just flick to the usual ones I know and see what is playing, so if this has all the major channels, that will probably be fine for me. If its good enough, then setting up Vista MCE & Sky could be really quite simple, as would have no XMLTV or Bladerunner to configure.

I'll try it out and perhaps make it an option in the guide as to which route to take.

One final question - I'm sure I read somewhere that using XMLTV/Bladerunner means you can't do series linking properly. Is this true, and if so, does using the normal EPG fix this?
 
I doubt that Sky are too worried about use of legit sub cards in PCs. I doubt that they are very worried about card-sharing either as it's only a handful of geeks doing it & all those outside the UK can't subscribe & even those within the UK probably wouldn't subscribe in any case. What they would be worried about is pirate cards or blockers or enabling FTV cards for all channels or any of the other breaches of their encryption security that they had in analogue days.

No offence but perhaps if you did know a little more about cardsharing you would know that it's not just "a handful of geeks" as you put it. Some people have made it into a business and run commercial cardservers and sell Sky on.

A dealer friend of mine recently had a visit from NDS security just because he sells the Dreambox. You can carry on burying your head in the sand all you like but do you really believe Sky/NDS will let this carry on indefinately ?
 
Thanks - does Chelmsford mean you get London channels? I might try this out tonight.
ITV London on 103 with ITV Anglia on 993 & BBC One East (W) on 101 & BBC One London on 974 So you can attach whatever programme listings you want to your particular channels.

One final question - I'm sure I read somewhere that using XMLTV/Bladerunner means you can't do series linking properly. Is this true, and if so, does using the normal EPG fix this?
It works mostly in the normal EPG if the broadcasters have actually put that data in. I don't think that it does work with XMLTV/Bladerunner as that just has the programme details without the series information.
 
Have just tried switching my system over frm XMLTV/Bladerunner to using the normal EPG with headend 210059. The switch over seemed to work fine by just tweaking the registry key back, stopping KeepKey and then setting up again.

Hwever when I have downloaded the listings, I have a bit of an issue in the Change Channel Order screen. Although in Edit Channels there are only 91 channels (big exclusion list :eek:), in Change Channel Order, I have over 400. Looking at prefs.xml, the others are guide info for all the other channels I'm not interested in. Having these 400+ channels in this screen makes things a bit unwieldly again. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

Anyway, XMLTV UK_RT is back up an running again so I'm switching back for the moment as I like the control it gives me.
 
I was going to have a pop at your Bladerunner solution, but if series link doesn't work it's a non starter.

The Vista headend registry hack sounds like the way to go, but we need someone that knows more, to produce an equally worthy tome outlining how to wrestle the plethora of channels into some kind of manageable form?
 
Sorry but the guide download is an all or nothing thing. It's the same with Bladerunner but there of course you are specifying which channel listings get loaded by XMLTV in the first place.

There is no easy way to handle the hundreds of channels when editing the channel order. The best way that I found & I mentioned in one of my early posts in the Sticky is to only scan those transponders that you really want to have in your EPG e.g. leave out all the Shopping etc. I also realised that it saves time if the transponders are scanned & channel numbers automatically allocated in roughly the order that you want them to appear in the EPG. This requires that you don't just take the FloppyDTV default but set up a Personal Transponder Configuration as they call it.
 
This is a great bit of work, thanks.

This thread should be made sticky. Are you listening, mods?

regards,
Paul
 
Mods-sticky please-before this disappears to past pages! Hard work like this needs rewarding-especially now more people are going to revert to vista over time!
 
Cheers for the comments everyone. Have been spending some of the weekend connecting up the new Xbox 360 as an extender to the setup. Can report that its all working fine - absolute doddle to setup, and everything appears to be working fine as far as TV is concerned. I need to sort my music library out a bit. Can someone remind me, does MCE automatically add the contents of your Media Player library, or do you also need to add the folder to watch list? Also, should xbox 360 as extender automatically see the same library, or do you again need to add the watch folder?

Anyway, back to the guide, it would be good to get the information on a wiki or something. I will try to update the guide with any comments people have and re-release, but now that I have nearly finished my setup, I'm probably not so keen to keep ripping it up every few days - especially not if the plans to rollout across whole house with more extenders and ditch the Sky+ box are going to be accepted by the missus! I have no problem with the guide being copied and pasted into a wiki if someone has the skills, time and resources to do so - that way, everyone can contribute to keeping it up to date, and more options could be covered such as setting/sorting transponders and using the native EPG instead of XMLTV/Bladerunner.
 
I have no problem with the guide being copied and pasted into a wiki if someone has the skills, time and resources to do so - that way, everyone can contribute to keeping it up to date, and more options could be covered such as setting/sorting transponders and using the native EPG instead of XMLTV/Bladerunner.
I was about to PM you & ask if it was OK. I have been planning for some time now to set up a site to cover satellite TV in MCE & more specifically getting Sky working. I would love to use your guide as the basis of a wiki that we can all contribute to as the Sticky here on AVforums has been very useful & informative (I hope) but is now over 1 year old & 1000+ postings so is somewhat unmanageable to any newbie finding it. It's hard enough even for me to find links & references in it:)

We did discuss setting up a site with a wiki over in another thread. So give me a week or so & I will set up a site & with this guide as a basis I will create a wiki. I would also like to use some of the other postings that we have had in AVforums. I know solamalee has produced a FTA Technotrend guide & I think that there are one or 2 others. I will email those that I have an address for & PM others.

I do have server space & while I could re-use the semi-dormant www.nigelbarker.com that might appear a bit vain:) So does anyone have suggestions for a snappy domain name to register? Something like sky2mce or dvbs2mce?
 
Sounds great - it will be alot easier for us all to contribute when it is in a single location.

Now what would be really nice would be if someone with some XML and web development skills could knock up way of producing the necessary config files to replace my spreadsheet. I'm thinking of a centralised list of channels, with grabber and tuning IDs, and you can go on the site, choose the channels you want, and it spits out an Exclusion List, ChannelInfo.xml (for Bladerunner), userchannels.txt (for XMLTV), and anything else that is needed. Editing prefs.xml is a bit of a tricky one to be honest and the logic in the spreadsheet is fairly...errr...fuzzy...let's say. But having played around with it enough, I know what works and what doesn't, I just don't have the programming skills any more (said like I think I ever had ;o) to put it together in anything other than Excel - its not really the right tool for it though. Any programmers out there who think they could put this together if I provided the information in a human-readable manner?
 

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