Prof 7301 DVB-S2 PCI Satellite Tuner Card

[FriscoJohn]

This is how I got the Prof 7301 to work with SageTV V7 on a Win7 64 bit system.

I highly recommend this card as it is cheap (about $70), gets S2 transmissions as well as regular DVB-S, and is extremely sensitive (receives things that my SonicView 8000HD doesn't even know exist). There is also good support available on Rick's Satellite Forum (which you can support in turn by buying from Rick, a very nice and reliable dealer who is just as inexpensive as anyone else I found.)

SageTV support wasn't able to give me much help on getting this card to work as it is "not supported". Fortunately, I found some very helpful info posted by 3dOptics on the Ricks Satellite Wildfeed and Backhaul Forum which put me on the right track. (Search for his post, "SageTV and dvbs/s2"). He is talking about another card, the TBS 6920 PCI-E card (costs about twice as much) but much of his info applies to the Prof 7301,

First of all, assuming you are in North America, you have to replace the "PredefinedDVBs.frq" in the SageTV directory with the one of the same name modified by 3dOptics. (This can be downloaded from his post.) This will give you the North American Satellites instead of the European ones. I wish SageTV would provide this as surely their North American customer base is significant.

Now proceed to setup your Prof 7301 card. Go to Setup, Setup Video Sources, Add New Source. Select the Prof 7301 then select Digital TV Tuner, select Continue-Device Input to Use: Digital TV Tuner. The next screen shows available Providers, i.e., the North American Satellites. According to 3dOptic, SageTV will let you select as many as four. I only selected one, AMC21, since I was only interested in PBS. There are some 12 different PBS channels on this satellite, several in HD. You haven't seen real HD until you have seen it coming direct from the satellite! Remember, these are all FTA (i.e., they are not scrambled and there is no subscription required--but I hope you kick in your annual donation to your local PBS station since they need the money to keep producing these outstanding programs. Moreover, if a lot of people go to satellite and kiss off their local PBS station (i.e., don't donate to it), PBS will be under pressure to scramble their satellite feeds.) What I do is contribute to my local PBS station and send a note saying I am contributing in part because PBS lets me watch their satellite feeds, which give me a much wider range of programming than I can get from the local station alone.

You will find that 3dOptics has only included in his .frq file a partial list of the available PBS channels on AMC21. You can look up the missing channels on Lyngsat.com and add them to your lineup by using "Option 2" in his post. This involves copying the "Prof 7301 Video Capture-0-DVB-S.frq" to a new file with the same name but a different file extension, i.e., ".scn". You can then manually add channels using the information provided by Lyngsat.com. Then run a new channel scan for the Prof 7301 tuner. SageTV will import the new channels from the .scn file.

I will post my .frq and .scn files in the downloads section so you can see what I ended up with after I want through this.

The only problem remaining is how to get EPG data for these channels. It is possible to find it on the internet, e.g., TitanTV.com, but how to get SageTV to reference this in the EPG is beyond me as a SageTV newbie. I wonder if I used the XML import option if that might provide a way. Hopefully somebody more knowledgeable than I can comment.

Hope this helps.

By the way, I am very happy with my SageTV--HD200. I hope they sell a million of them (so they will stay in business and continue their support and development). All kidding aside, it is a tremendous system and I highly recommend it. However, it looks like this forum will have to shoulder a large share of the support function, for now. So I hope this post is useful.

[FriscoJohn]

P.S. I posted the files under "Guides and Tutorials" in the download section.

[FriscoJohn]

There is a paragraph missing in my head post. After paragraph 4 should be the following:

You will be asked for some configuration data for your LNB. For me, with a fixed satellite setup and a linear LNB (standard for free to air satellite reception) it is as follows:

LOF1 10750
LOF2 10750

Leave the other LNB parameters "Not Set"

Once your have finished configuring your DVB provider you will get a screen with the option of "Use tuner...to tune Cable TV" or "Use tuner...to tune Antenna/Broadcast". Select "Use tuner...to tune Cable TV". The next screen offers you a chance to select an EPG source--as far as I know there isn't one that works for the AMC21 PBS feeds in Sage so I selected "No EPS Data". Now you are finished with setup.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by FriscoJohn

The only problem remaining is how to get EPG data for these channels. It is possible to find it on the internet, e.g., TitanTV.com, but how to get SageTV to reference this in the EPG is beyond me as a SageTV newbie. I wonder if I used the XML import option if that might provide a way. Hopefully somebody more knowledgeable than I can comment.

If you can find the channels in TitanTV, then you should be able to configure mc2xml to use its TitanTV grabber & export the listings in xml format. Then Sage should be able to import them.

My local PBS is overly compressed, and I need a dedicated ATSC tuner for it anyway, since it has a tower in a different direction from every other broadcast channel in my market. So I've been toying with the idea of bypassing my local station and going right to satellite like you did, but I know nothing about satellite. How big of a dish did you need? Will a friend's old Dish Network dish do the job? Or do I need one of those big huge things?

Thanks,

Drew

[FriscoJohn]

Thanks for the info on the xmltv. I'll give it a try.

Unless you're on the periphery of the AMC21's satellite footprint (e.g., in northern Mexico) , you will get excellent reception of all except the S2 channels (Louisiana Public Broadcasting and Oklahoma public broadcasting channels) with a 0.8 meter dish--which is what I have in San Francisco. The 0.8 meter (32 inch diameter) is marginal here for the more demanding S2 broadcasts and if you want to get them reliably I would recommend a 1.2 meter dish. Even the latter is hardly huge and will appear to the neighbors as a slightly oversize Dish or DirecTV dish. Either size will mount easily to the wall or roof of your house. You may save on shipping if you find a supplier for the dish in your area although you will find many internet merchants or may pick one up on Craigslist if you're lucky. Count on spending $100 or so for a new dish and LNB. Another seventy for the Prof 7301 and 20 for some coax and you're in business. If you want a larger dish it will be more. I can still get the five main PBS national feeds (PBS-E HD, PBS-W HD, V-ME, PBS World, Create) plus Montana PBS perfectly with my 0.8 meter dish--five additional feeds which intermittently but regularly broadcast. If you go for the larger dish you can regularly receive some five or six additional S2 channels from Louisiana and Oklahoma public broadcasting.

Lyngsat.com will give you info on the strength of the AMC21 footprint and its position in the sky in your area. Make sure you have a clear view of the satellite from where you want to mount the dish. Lyngsat also has the info you will need to set up the Prof card.

Sorry but the Dish (and DirectTV) parabolas are a little too small for reliable reception of AMC21 and, in any case, have LNB's with circular polarization, rather than linear polarization as needed for AMC21 and other free to air signals.

Hope this helps.

[49studebaker]

I updated my thread at Ricks:

http://rickcaylor.websitetoolbox.com...85685&trail=15