[mythtvnz] Freeview questions.

[criggie]

matthew pearce wrote:
> Now that Prime is on Freeview I am very interested in getting it
> working. I have an old sky dish (with LMB and coax) that a friend gave
> me. I assume it will be OK for receiving freeview.

Yes - takes a bit of work to mount and aim but its doable.

> However, the problem I have now is; what DVB-S PCI card to buy.
 > So here is my
> question; Which is the best to get? (sorry for that question :-) )
> Perhaps a little more specific may help:
> What is the card (DVB-S) with the most features?
> What is the card which works the best 'out-of-the-box' for mythtv?

The old skystar2 is great - just works.  Anything else built on the same 
chipset will be fine.  The TeVii S420 is a PCI card which is supposed to 
be just as good and has a loop connector to run to a second DVB-S card.
Lots of web sites saying it works fine in linux kernel 2.6.28 or newer.

> What card is the best value for money?
> Which is the cheapest that works?
> Where is the best place (cheapest) to get these cards? Do any of you sell them?

nicegear.co.nz has the tevii and others.
Just avoid USB based ones - they're just pain.

> I have a PC with a 2.66 GHZ celeron and an 80 and 120GB HDD in it. It
> has a GeForce MX 440 with s-video out which drives the TV. I had a go
> at getting an analogue tuner working, and after a fashion I did, but
> the reception on our rabbit ears is not very good. :-) . Therefore
> Freeview would be nice.

You'll need dvb-s... that box won't cope with dvb-t because terrestrial 
is High Def and needs a much better box.

> Is the EPG sent in the satellite data stream, and can 'mythtv' pick it up?

Yes - you run epgsnoop to slurp the data out into a xml file then feed 
that to mythfilldatabase.


-- 
Criggie

http://criggie.dyndns.org/