SageTV and DVB-S(2)

[B00ne]

Hi,
currently I am testing SageTV and it is looking pretty good compared to the competition. However, I am having trouble with the TV part of SageTV. I am using A Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-HD-S2 card to receive TV via Astra 19.2°, I am situated in Germany and asked pretty much the same quaestions in the German board - but to no avail.

Now to the problems - in short: Tuning, channel sorting, HD channels, Audio streams, teletext, adding channels manually, Audio(Radio) channels (in no particular order)

Now the long version:
Tuning: SageTV does tune channels, however it seems that there are channels missing - in particular the (few) HD channels that I could receive (ArteHD, AnixeHD) I tried to add them manually, but sage is asking for a channel number - afaik satellite channels do not have numbers but frequencies and polarisation and data rate and some other values - which are also the values that are asked when manually adding channels in other programs (Power cinema, DVBviewer).

Channel sorting: I havent found a method to distinguish between encrypted, and audio(radio) channels - are those found, I dont know. Now weeding through some 700+ channels to find the unencrypted is kinda lengthy and tiring. I couldnt find a method for sorting either - except for giving channels a new logical channel number, which is ok for like 20 channels but not for 50+. Isnt there a way to just move channels up and down the list?

Audio streams: Many channel offer several audio streams (Dolby, stereo or several languages) - how do I set which audio stream I want to use. is that possible at all? If not - why?

Teletext: I couldnt find any way to display teletext - is there one?


If somebody has answers to any of those questions I'd be very gratefull.

Let me just take one aswer out: I tried Stephanes network encoder but couldnt get it to work - and DVBvier, while getting lots of things done, is jumpy at best and the interface is abysmal. I also dont want to bother with XMLTV EPG just yet, the DVB provied EPG is working just fine.

Btw, I am new to this whole DVB and satellite thing. I could live with most of the shortcomings but I'd like to at least be able to tune all channels and be able to watch HD channels too, especially considering that in the future there will be less and less SD.

Thanks alot

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by B00ne

Now the long version:
Tuning: SageTV does tune channels, however it seems that there are channels missing - in particular the (few) HD channels that I could receive (ArteHD, AnixeHD) I tried to add them manually, but sage is asking for a channel number - afaik satellite channels do not have numbers but frequencies and polarisation and data rate and some other values - which are also the values that are asked when manually adding channels in other programs (Power cinema, DVBviewer).

Channel sorting: I havent found a method to distinguish between encrypted, and audio(radio) channels - are those found, I dont know. Now weeding through some 700+ channels to find the unencrypted is kinda lengthy and tiring. I couldnt find a method for sorting either - except for giving channels a new logical channel number, which is ok for like 20 channels but not for 50+. Isnt there a way to just move channels up and down the list?

Audio streams: Many channel offer several audio streams (Dolby, stereo or several languages) - how do I set which audio stream I want to use. is that possible at all? If not - why?

Teletext: I couldnt find any way to display teletext - is there one?

Let me have a try.
Tuning:
I agree with you that currently scanning and sorting is difficult.
The only sure way is to scan via SageTV and then go through, disable all channels and then enable and sort the ones you want.
For DVB-S2 channels, I believe that your difficulties may be due to your card. SageTV doesn't support DVB-S2 on all cards.
I have a FireDVBS2 and it works very well for AnixeHD, ArteHD etc
I also have a TT S3200 which is similar to you Nova HDS2 for which DVB-S2 is not supported. I am going to request and work with SageTV to try to get this to work.
You should also contact SageTV support for this and the scanning and sorting issue.

Channel Sorting: Radio channels are not kept. There is no way to know which are FTA or encrypted. Just visit www.lyngsat.com to find out from there.

Audio Streams: This works well. When your watching a channel, press the "Options" button on the remote and there will be a selection to bring up a list of the available audios from which to choose.

Teletext: I believe it is not supported.

Hope this helps

[B00ne]

Thanks for the help - Yeah audio stream selection is actually working really well.

However I am still wondering why those HD channels are not working. My Nova-HD-S2 card is actually listed in the compatibility list. But those channels are not even found on a scan.

Doesnt anybody know a method of manually adding channels?

I guess I could ask SageTV support, but perhaps I should buy it first. But what if I buy and it turns out that HD-TV just isnt supported...

[Lucas]

In that case I would strongly recommend that you send an email to support asking if DVB-S2(not just plain DVB-S) is supported on your card.

[mr_lore]

For DVB signal I think your best bet is to run an external app like DVBDream, and then use a network endcoder plugin to create an external tuner.