Freeview TV source

[newschapmj1]

I have a PVR-350 connected to the TV out from my NTL Set top box (Pace Di4000N).
The digital channels (ie not BBC1.. Five) all appear as channel 52 on the tuner of my PVR-350
so I have to manually tune the set top box to say Sky 1 or History channel.

Q1
With a Freeview box do the digital channels all appear as the same one channel (say 52) or does the tuner on the PVR-350 see 20 other channels (ie no manually tuning required)?

Q2
Ideally I'd like to plug the freeview box into the TV out signal from the NTL box.
Should this work?

Thanks in advance for any comments

[edgley]

Hello,

1) All channels will appear the same. You should be using a connection other than RF to link the two together. To get over the problem, order the USB IR controller from the Sage site. This will allow Sage to change the channel on the NTL box to the correct channel. Add XMLT to this and you can get a guide that offers much more info than the NTL one.

2) Yes you can, but that sounds like you will be connecting then together via RF, which doesnt offer the best picture. Add another PVR to the system and connect that to the freeview box and you can get dual channel support with Sage.

Simon.

[nielm]

A brief expansion on Q1:

The NTL and freeview set-top-boxes can only decode one channel at a time, but Sage has the ability to tell the set-top-boxes to change channel for you (using an IR transmitter such as the USB-UIRT)

This way, you setup the tuner/set-top box in Sage as: 'Use external receiver', and either on a fixed channel number, or on the Svideo/composite input.

You then use XMLTV to get the EPG, and Sage will present yout sat/Freeview lineup as individual channels and Sage will automatically change channels (using the USB-UIRT) on your set-top-box whn it needs to record something, or when you need to change channel watching liveTV.

Q2: I am not sure what you are planning here, but if both set-top-boxes are using channel 52 for their output, then mergeing the two signals will not work. you would be better off as edgley says with either using 2 tuners, or using 2 different sources on your tuner (eg one on composite, one on S-Video)

[newschapmj1]

Thanks for the comments above I now understand the setup better.

On Q2 I just wanted to use the NTL feed as a reliable TV source rather than using an aerial.

The NTL STB is non standard so I was worried about remotely controlling it. (ie just changing channels).
I've now seen posts confirming the USB-UIRT works.
I was thinking of Freeview as an alternative if the NTL STB could not be changed automatically.

I've gone the Red-eye serial route and use the s-video in. It is slightly cheaper than USB-UIRT.

Just got it working last night after lots of help!

I'll describe my setup in a new post and hope this helps people who have NTL and are newbies to this subject..