FOAK: Media PC and TV/Satellite cards

Either I'm searching for the wrong thing or it doesn't exist.

I've got a satellite dish on the house, regular digital aerial is shite
reception. I want to build a media PC and need to source a card that
will take the satellite feed. I get either blank stares or "you need a
freesat card and these are *very* new" in local PC specialist shops. I'm
not sure a freesat card is what I need.

So, does such a thing exist? A card that will take the regular satellite
cable and show me all the free-to-view channels. Or better still, a card
that will take same cable, together with my Sky viewing card, and show
me all the free-to-air (or (should I choose to) subscribed channels).

Cheers in advance.

 

I use a Skystar2 for exactly that. There are more recent versions around
now. I use DVB-Dream software, which is excellent and free. In
development all the time, so there's a short and easy learning curve.
The maker's sw is ok, but a bit limited.

I'm sure I've seen something similar - a PC card that will take a CAM,
but whether a Sky card will work is something else.

 

As Grimly says, there are PCI cards available to do just what you want,
including BBC HD. I use a Technotrend 3200-S2.

You can use a Smargo USB card reader to do this but it's a bit of a faff
and you need to be pretty keen.

 

Go back & tell them they're clueless fuckwits.

Yes, plenty of them. I've got a Hauppauge HVR3000 hybrid which does
free-to-air satellite, Freeview & analogue in (Sky box).

You need a CAM to do that. Not really mainstream, but plenty of info
out there if you Google. I went for an alternative approach - hybrid
card for freesat & freeview, & a PVR150 card for the Sky box.

 

There's a reason this NG is called the FOAK.

Plenty to go on there, thanks all.

 

Others have covered the ground well enough, but here's a bit more.

The simplest solution is to get some soty of satellite set top box
(STB), either FreeSat or Sky, yjrm plug the output of that into a
pretty vanilla analogue TV card. The Hauppauge PVR150 is the card of
choice for this. You'll also need a thing called an IR Blaster which
flashes infrared at the STB to get it to change channel. The various
verions of Windows Media Center (XP, Vista, Windows 7) all do this, as
does GBPVR. This is what I, Krusty & several others do.

The next, slightly more complicated step is to plug the feed directly
from the satelite (the LNB) into the TV card, dispensing with the STB.
A liitle more complex, but AIUI, straightforward enough for FreeSat.
You need a DVB-S/S2 card for this.

The most complex option is where you plug a Sky feed directly into the
TV card and can access the encrypted Sky channels. As the others say,
you need a thing called a CAM for this. It is do-able, but most
solutions seem to be homebrewed atm. Google is your friend.

I can give lots of advice on option 1, so ask away if you want.

 

Well, "soty" is obviously "sort", but I'm fucked on "yjrm" - is it a
predictive text alternate, or some variety of component feed into the
TV?

 

yjrm = 1 key out when typing - try reading a keyboard 1 key to the left of
quoted letters - it'll all make sense then.

And beware - I'm back on 2 wheels

Big Fat Ugly Old Bloke

 

<sigh>

Back on a newsreader, too. Kindly dmo[ dohd on uk.r.m. Thanks.

 

Cheers for the in depth. I've thought about the STB, but I want to get
rid of all the crap we have and have a single unit and a TV.

That way I can rip the kids' favourite DVDs, watch the basics on TV and
have access to iPlayer and a US-based slingbox and listen to streamed radio.

I may be in touch later when I get round to actually sourcing all the
pieces. At the rate it's going so far, that'll be January .. 2011.

 

Way too mych effort expended there, sir. In the old days a simple '****
off' would have been the way.

*sigh* Things ain't what they used to be.

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Excellent read, thanks. I like the look of the SilverStone and as I'll
be running Slingbox and otherWeb stuff the right mouse on the iMon looks
useful - Microsoft not got a right click on theirs?


"I did however, want a VFD in the front" - WTF is a VFD i this context?
Acronym finder says "Volunteer Fire Dept."


I been running Windows (Ultimate) 7 via VMWare on my MacBook Pro for a
few months now and it's a **** of a lot better than Vista. Whilst I'd
like to think I'm platform agnostic (Mac, Solaris, Linux, whatever) it's
looking favourite for the home box. Apart from being quite slick, a mate
at work's got a free unrestricted MSDN subscription which puts it on a
par with *NIX, price-wise.

 

Not my experience at all, using 32 and 64 bit versions on different
boxes. I don't recall a single problem.

 

Probably made by Apple.

 

It's actually called WinSSHD...

http://www.bitvise.com/winsshd
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2 Fleetwood Mac tickets for sale for the NIA 3/11/2009...
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