DVB S cards

[motobarsteward]

Ok, this may sound like a daft question to someone with more knowledge than me but...

If I plug my sky dish into my HVR 4000 (on the way from dabs as we speak) and tell the card to tune from within Sage, will it just find the Freesat channels or will it find all the Sky channels as well?

If it does pick up the Sky stuff as well, I guess that I can just go through and delete all the encrypted channels?

Or is it the case that the Freesat channels are on exactly the same frequencies and channelisation parameters as the ones received by the Sky box?

[doc]

Your scan will pick up some 600+ channels including the Sky ones.

You then have to go through them one by one and delete the ones you don't want.

Its a bit of a pain the first time round but shouldn't take that long.

If it helps here's my frq file, but you may want a few more channels than I use.

Don't forget to do the registry fix that john mentioned in this thread otherwise you'll get the dvb-t tuner but not the dvb-s one.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28147&

[jaminben]

I don't want to put a dampener on your new purchase but I would send that card back asap. Its a really poor card in that its driver support is bad and you can only use one of the tuners at any one time. I bought mine awhile ago and ended up removing it as its caused me nothing but grief.......others may disagree and you may have better luck than me which I hope you do.

Just my thoughts on this card.

[doc]

Yes you can only use one tuner at a time, but I bought mine as I wanted another dvb-s tuner, and this was only a couple of pounds more expensive than the nova-s2-hd - plus you get the extra tuners.

The quality for both dvb-t and dvb-s is just as good as my other tuners.

Mine was supposed to go into my desktop PC so I could do scans on it and then alter my frq files as and when without messing up the live pc, but its somehow worked its way into the box.

Ebuyer prices
Nova-S2-HD = £88.80
HVR4000 = £90.92

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by doc

Yes you can only use one tuner at a time, but I bought mine as I wanted another dvb-s tuner, and this was only a couple of pounds more expensive than the nova-s2-hd - plus you get the extra tuners.

The quality for both dvb-t and dvb-s is just as good as my other tuners.

Mine was supposed to go into my desktop PC so I could do scans on it and then alter my frq files as and when without messing up the live pc, but its somehow worked its way into the box.

Hey Doc,

Does yours not loose DVB-S after a few weeks? For some reason mine will work fine for weeks at a time then all of a sudden it'll stop working. Its happened quite a few times (10+) and thats the main reason I woundn't recommend this card. The other reason is the above mentioned registry fix, not a major hassle but still something that shouldn't need to be done. I aslo had issues selecting the card within Sage after doing the registry fix but thats probably down to me.

I can only speak as I find and for my money the Nova S2 has performed 100% of the time, it never fails unlike the HVR4000.

[doc]

My Nova S2 cards have worked flawlessly since I got them. They're great.

I haven't had any issues that I know of with the 4000 but I have it set as the lowest meritted encoder.

I'll knock it up above the Nova S2 cards and see how it gets on and let you know if it plays up at all.

The only reason I got it was because of the extra tuners for a couple of quid. I'm still debating getting another Terratec Cinergy 2400i as they're great and I have 2 spare outputs from the aerial amp, but as I live alone and have never had a recording conflict its a little hard to justify!

My mobo has 2 pci-e and 4 pci and I have one free slot for each........

[Whitey]

I'm trying to find a dual DVB-S2 PCI-e card. It seems a few are appearing, but info seems small. This one looks interesting:

http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6980.html

Whitey

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by Whitey

I'm trying to find a dual DVB-S2 PCI-e card. It seems a few are appearing, but info seems small. This one looks interesting:

http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6980.html

Whitey

Mmmm, that does look good. Couldn't find any UK prices for that one, only the single tuner version. Found some on ebay from the US @ $96.

[motobarsteward]

SageTV quote the HVR-4000 as supported.

My concern was mostly about the old restriction that one input could only ever be used on a card. I understand that I can't, for example, record/watch the DVB-S input whilst recording/watching the DVB-T input on the same card at the same time (that is why I've bought 2 cards!).

I was also trying to work out how long/difficult the switch from my current MCE-500 system with external Sky boxes to the internal card system was likely to take. When I do the frequency scan, do the frequency files contain any channel ID information (like BBC1, CH4 for example) or do I have to map some references to the actual channel name?

I asked SageTV about the card and they did not mention any problems and offered to support me if I do have any.

I'll keep you posted.