Newbie who needs advice on purchasing Dual tuner PCIe Satellite PC card and Dish

[CriticalMass]

I need some advice on a Dual Satellite PC Tuner - new to this aspect of computers and don't understand much of it - the whole field is ridiculously complicated!

I've never used one and don't know the brands\jargon etc I've been wading through the tech jargon and think I know the kind of thing I want, but I seem to have come to this at a time when there don't seem to be a lot of those, but I'm probably wrong

The end of my street in London gets a very poor reception, even for Freeview, so I've decided to put up a satellite dish myself and use my PC; Cable won't ever come down my street, I don't have a DVD player, or even a digital TV ATM

Currently got:

8800 GTX - DVI out
E8400 3GHz ASUS P5Q SE+ MoBo
Cheap Set-top Freeview box
Win XP SP3 ATM, but doing a clean install of Win7 Ultimate 32bit soon, so will have use of Windows software

(Mid range Gaming\multi-use self build)

I'm capable with the comp hardware stuff, but much more a software type - I'm not too bothered about the software side, since I'll start on that once I've got the hardware and I'm not concerned with mastering this area

At some point, I'll add a sound card, but might move to new socket CPU first....but meantime don't mind using the PC's onboard sound and speakers for the sound (HDMI carries sound and vision, right? I know the different DVI's don't)

What I want is:
DVB-S (Perhaps an -SD if I have to, though frankly don't see the point of HDTV)
Dual Tuner - want to be able to record and watch
PCIe since it's so much faster than PCI I'd like to be able to use it as a PVR as well as for pumping live TV to a new Digital TV

A 50cm Dish with Dual LNB - for one room - good enough for West London, I believe? Doesn't need to be bigger, does it? Is it easy to find the Satellite? (I've forgotten all my fractions, never mind trigonometry!)

Things like motorized satellites might be interesting in the future - is it worth looking at this now? If so, what size is useful?

A Full HD 32" TV - no onboard Freeview etc, DVI in, a spare HDMI for PC Gfx upgrades (in\out)

I don't watch that much TV, but movies and some 'Net TV\Live sport

I believe I'd be best getting a good quality Sony TV, but do I need HDTV? I won't ever bother with BluRay etc and don't believe I'll need to have anything other than the DVB-S to watch Freeview, right? I'll never subscribe to any service for TV.

Sony seem extremely reliable and great build quality, but are there other brands worth looking at - I know nothing about TV's - Budget of ~ £350

Do I need to think of things like Refresh rates etc (which doesn't mean much to me when it comes to TV's - isn't 50Hz good enough?)
Sony's contrast ratio etc always seem high spec - are there other things to look for?

I especially need advice on the PC Tuner Which brands are worthwhile looking at? Which to avoid - My budget goes up to ~ £160 -ish

I can't find one that does exactly what I want; too many analogue, DVB-T, Hybrid etc, stuff I don't want to pay for since it's not necessary

(What's 'HTPC' stand for btw?)

Any advice appreciated

Thanks

 

[pgh13]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

A few comments on your questions......

HTPC = home theatre PC. PVR = personal video recorder

Dual satellite tuners..... still not too many about, but there's the PCTV 4000i, which is PCI and not HD, around £80 and the TBS 6981 which is PCIe and HD at around £170. Haven't used either but if you Google those you'll see lots of comments. There are quite a few dual tuner PVRs around if you don;t want to go DIY PC route.

Any new TV is going to be HD now and will come with DVB-T (like it or not) tuner and prices seem to keep falling but how long that will last is anyone's guess. 3 x HDMI is quite common now.

Not sure if PC HDMI output combines sound so you may need separate sound connection to TV but that is usually catered for in TV inputs

If you want more than the free UK channels then you're looking at S_y or a pricey foreign subscription.

Smallish dish is OK for UK based stuff but is limiting if you're thinking of going motorised. 80cm is probably a more realistic size. Quad LNB is more common and gives 2 spare for other rooms

Couple of places to look ....BYOPVR as in build your own PVR. GBPVR which is a Windows based media centre project

Downsides of HTPC - getting it quiet enough for under TV use. Price of pretty cases

Upsides - Nobody else has one quite like yours. Can store your music and photos. You can view/listen around the house through cat5 / Wi-Fi

 

[CriticalMass]

Thanks very much for your informative reply, pgh13 - it's good to know I'm on the right sort of track

I've been doing some research about the whole motorised thing and, whilst it might be interesting, not enough for the outlay - for me, ATM; my budget is limited on this.

So I'll stick with the 50cm standard dish - I'll never go for foreign subscription packages

I've seen the TBS 6981 you mentioned, for ~ £170! It's this kind of thing that's had me confused; very much more expensive than other, similar seeming stuff, is it coz it's deigned for multiple Sat search? It made me think that I was missing some tech thing (the more you research, the more questions that come up, as usual) There are one or two others that promise the same sort of capability, but don't yet know enough on the tech side

Needs more research..

BTW, thanks for your edit Llew

 

[pgh13]

HD cards do carry a premium and while dual DVB-T cards are becoming more common dual satellite cards are harder to find, so I think it's partly these factors that allow the 6981 card to carry that price premium. They'll all work on multiple satellites. You can get a bog standard SD single input card for around £30 that'll give you loads of channels from whichever satellite it's pointing at.
Also, bear in mind HD puts a heavier load on the PC and creates bigger files

 

[CriticalMass]

Cheers pgh13 - settles some questions for me; and with the HD side of things, I'm not too pushed about that, so can perhaps forgo the higher specs

So a dual tuner that's compatible with Win MC and doesn't cost a fortune!

 

[pgh13]

Well, in the absence of other suggestions; I started off by saying the PCTV is the only one that I am aware of. That's PCI, though not PCIe. Then I stumbled across this TeVii one which ticks all you boxes and is about the same price. Haven't tried either. So far I've stuck with singles. Neither have
I experience of DVBShop. Anyone here used them?

 

[hexah]

I'm capable with the comp hardware stuff, but much more a software type - I'm not too bothered about the software side, since I'll start on that once I've got the hardware and I'm not concerned with mastering this area

DVB Viewer is the best software. The free open source codec ffdshow is the best codec for all decoding, with the least overhead for H.264 than anything else I have used. Search for ffdshow tryouts on Sourceforge.

At some point, I'll add a sound card, but might move to new socket CPU first....but meantime don't mind using the PC's onboard sound and speakers for the sound.

For television, any cheap sound card will do.

 

[CriticalMass]

Thanks for your reply hexah - I'll do as you suggest

Just to let you know:

I went for the TBS 6981, but got it for £74 from BizTek on Amazon _www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0038LU03K/?tag=p--21 The picture of the box shows the 6980, which is supposed to be £74 & elsewhere, the 6981 is £169; I'd heard they were delivering the 6980 though, so took a chance and just received it today and it has '69811 actually on the card PCB so it's not a con; can't recommend you take the chance too, since, if you go to the _http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=A1F83G8C2ARO7P&me=A2GQI2TM3GLHN9, they say they have 4 of these in stock both before I ordered & after I received, so don't know if it's a mistake or what; I can only tell you what I got

The TBS 6981 is a low profile, PCIe, dual tuner for satellite reception of TV\Data; comes with a basic Remote, 'Magic Eye' type device (I believe it's called?) to pick up the Remote signal from the front of the PC. Comes with some of the free Software, such as TBSViewer, ProgDVB, DVBLinkTVSourceTBS, DVBDream

I have yet to see whether it's any good of course; still need to put up the dish...

I got a 50cm Freesat package from _www.aerialshack.com/freesat-dish-installation-p-1378.html with a quad LNB, which I'll put up over the weekend ... which I'm looking forward to!

Next up; The _www.richersounds.com/product/lcd-tv/sony/kdl37ex401/sony-kdl37ex401 from Richer Sounds, round the corner from me (once I've translated the Paypal money back into Cash, which the want, so end of next week sometime - seems a bloody good deal to me, for only £350!

After that, a Sound card, perhaps, so long as my E8400 can handle all this and I don't need a new CPU

Thanks very much for your help & advice chaps - I'll let you know how it all works, once I'm up & running

Nick

Unparsed three URL's - [Admin]

 

[CriticalMass]

Apologies about the links - should have read the rules more closely [

Very blowy today, too much for clambering about on roofs and tomorrow is the 6 nations.....don't expect a review too quickly!

 

[Lazarus]

Apologies about the links - should have read the rules more closely [

Very blowy today, too much for clambering about on roofs and tomorrow is the 6 nations.....don't expect a review too quickly!

Errm, Six Nations starts TONIGHT !!!

 

[CriticalMass]

Shhh....I'm watching a match on the telly!

 

[CriticalMass]

Just to get back to you; Once I'd got the 6891 card installed, it was no prob getting channels off the sat Their branded software that comes with it, TBSViewer, (based on DVBViewer) has proven the easiest software to work with The wider subject of DVB-S\SD on HTPC is much more complicated, with a good bit of arcane & highly specific knowledge - far more than I expected; I'll probably have to read help files to get to grips with it! (mumblegrumblebah!) Too ignorant to say whether it's a good card or not; but it's a good picture\sound and this only using the onboard Motherboard Sound, not a dedicated Daughterboard soundcard. Easy to set up, the software is easy to use, just to get the Freesat channels and start watching\recording - though I suspect their branded version of DVBViewer is a bit limited I've been surprised at just how light a footprint card use has, on system resources, for both watching & recording - Again, having to currently use an old E4300 1.8GHz CPU, as my 3.1 Dual Core E8440 blew just before all this Soon as the shop has the Sony TV in, I'll be straight down, so all's going well, but with lots to learn Thanks for your help guys; once I get the new CPU\dedicated Soundcard and got the signal pumped to the new HD TV, I'll be well pleased; much to learn, but the simple setup has proven easy enough

 

[Llew]

Consider upgrading to DVBViewer Pro, it'll cost you about 12 quid, but well worth it. Extra plugins like Transedit are then available through their member's forum, which makes scanning TP's much more refined than the basic DVB Viewer.

 

[CriticalMass]

Aye, Llew, I well; TBS Viewer is definitely too simplistic and, once I get to understand the software a bit better, I will want one of the more sophisticated software tools

 

[pgh13]

Did you take a look at GBPVR?

 

[CriticalMass]

I did, but I didn't get very far with it; It's a nice looking bit of software, but not TV control section, which didn't seem right to me...Also, they're in the middle of migrating to a new bit of kit (New Developer? Rebranding?) so I wasn't sure what the story is... I badly need to do a clean install of Win7, for the first time, as soon as I get a bit of peace, so I think my first choice will be Win Media Center....but I do appreciate the pointer, thanks!

 

[pgh13]

Same developer - ground up rebuild. He's still officially calling it a beta but it's pretty reliable. What do you mean by 'TV control section?'

Correction: It's no longer beta as of today!

 

[CriticalMass]

Sorry about my tardy reply - my PSU went and I've been offline for a couple of weeks I'll have to have another look at this, when I'm back up to speed pgh13 - what I meant was, there was no section that hooked into the Sat card and allowed me to control it; it seemed to be just a media center for 'dead' files - IE DVD's, Vids, music files on my system, not live TV.....

 

[Llew]

Might find nPVR from the same stable easier to use. With the main menu up, right click on it and choose Settings, where you can configure your device, codecs and scan channels. Mine is for a Hauppauge DVB-T tuner.

 

[pgh13]

Like Llew said.....nPVR is now the official version. Right click to get into the settings menu but once it's configured you drive it with remote control.