Satellite upgrade at last...

[Captain Gadget]

Tomorrow, my ancient, inherited single-LNB satellite TV installation is to be upgraded to an Octo LNB with the cabling directed as follows:

2 x to living room
2 x to study
1 x to each of 4 bedrooms

I have been forced into this by the imminent arrival of a loft insulation man who is going to fill my attic with about 40cm of fluffy stuff and make continued access to the roof space very difficult - if not impossible.

I'm currently using a secondhand Sky box in the living room and this will have to continue for the near term as the Financial Controller (aka Mrs Gadget) will not sanction further spend on entz gear at present; however, there's no harm in looking, and - determined as I am not to further line Mr Murdoch's pockets - I'm now contemplating whether to go down the Freesat+ route in the living room, or down the Media Center route in the study with an extender (probably the Linksys DMA2200) in the living room.

My PC is a Dell Inspiron 530 with 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad CPU and 4GB RAM, running Vista Ultimate SP1 - so no slouch. It already has a Hauppauge HVR1200 Freeview/Analogue TV card - but Freeview is patchy where I live, hence the investment in satellite.

I have several questions:

1. I have obtained (but not yet installed) the Media Center TV Pack, but I have heard mixed reports about its usability on established systems. Of course, I could recover the PC to a 'clean install' of Vista Ultimate SP1, but if I am going to go this far would I be better off installing Windows 7 RC with its version of Media Center?

2. Supplementary to 1. above: apparently the protocol (H264?) required to receive BBC HD was in the TV Pack beta, but dropped from the final version. Did it make it into the W7 version of Media Center?

3. Any recommendations as to PC cards? If I went down the Media Center route, I would want 2 satellite tuners to give a full PVR capability. Having a Hauppauge card already, I am drawn to the Nova-S2, but what do you guys think about alternatives? (I would prefer HD capability, but perhaps only on 1 card).

4. Anyone got any experience of/comments on using the Linksys DMA2200 Media Center Extender for streaming TV over a wireless N network?

Thanks in advance (your cue, Parapunter!)

Gadget :ok:

[Sprogget]

First off, if you want to use either the DMA21 or 2200, you better hurry as Linksys have discontinued them.

Tv pack is lush to use, but not necessarily all that reliable. See http://www.pprune.org/computer-internet-issues-troubleshooting/376426-little-sleuthing-please-experts.html

However, if you don't trust it, then take a disc image of your os before installing it & then if it doesn't work for you, simply restore your pre-tv pack system. That or install it on a fresh, non critical hdd, so as you can play with it. You cannot uninstall tv pack once it's in Vista...

Win7 has native h264 support. I believe tv pack in Vista can be hacked to support h264, but don't quote me on that. So far it's all saying win 7 huh?


I have always used Hauppauge cards & found them just fine. As always be sure to do your reading before you buy as mistakes are easily made. For standard def Virgin boxes for example, the digital signal is converted to analogue output by the stb itself, so you must use an analogue tv card such as the HVR900 to process the signal. Also, if you intend to use the card to record shows whilst also watching something on another channel, you must use a dual tuner card & I'm not sure if skyboxes permit that or whether you would require a 2nd sky stb hooked up to allow simultaneous channel processing.

I have a DMA2100 over a powerline network & it's just fine for streaming tv. However, I have read that users have struggled to get enough bandwidth to do same with HD streaming. Again a bit more reading will determine the best route. Certainly a wired rather than wireless network will give better performance. The DMA2200 does support H264 though. Of that, I am certain.

[tony draper]

If you plan to run HD on your puter you may need to upgrade your graphic card,Bro Draper lives next door has the same Broadband as me but his kit will not run anything in HD,well it runs it but it's rubbish tiz my experience that store bought puter generally have rubbish graphic cards or graphic chips on the motherboard, I gig ram fast graphic cards are quite cheap these days.
:)

[Captain Gadget]

Thanks for the replies so far - all food for thought. Incidentally, Drapes, my video card is an ATI Radeon 256MB. How do you reckon that would cope with HD?

And Parapunter (Media Center [sic] guru and general good egg), where are you when we need you?

Gadget :ok:

[Parapunter]

I agree with everything Sprogget said:)

[Sprogget]

FFD Show is a great bit of kit. Core avc had had finger waving directed at it for causing vista ui to pop out of focus. 12 tuners!! How much tv do you watch??!! Or is it for multi room big family stuff?

I guess you would be severely limited on most mobo's in terms of available pci slots for much more than two or three TV cards. As for seven, it is miles infront of vista in terms of the plumbing & the user experience. However, I can't get surround sound in it no matter how hard I try. This time it's drivers. Chop chop creative.

[Sprogget]

I wonder how you'd plug them all in! I have four in mine & it's getting a bit complicated round the back with that lot.