Help!

[Renbo]

Need Help. Willing to pay if needed!

So I know that you all are busy, and that questions from newbies must drive you nuts. To start, I am not a complete newbie. Been playing around with sat stuff for a while, but most of my experience lies years ago. At that time, I had set up a sat rig in my yard that still to this day appears to be properly aligned.

It's a 30" dish on an HH motor, affixed to a dual 4x4 base in about 100lbs of concrete. An outdoor junction box connected to an underground plastic conduit connects the wiring to the home. I have verified that the wiring is still good, insofar as I have been able to rotate the motor and (sporadically) get software on the PC to lock on some signals.

I am at wits end. The software I used to use (and likely the PCI-card) are not working as I remember. I am looking to replace the PCI-Card (SkyStar2) with a USB 2.0 solution. I am quite out of touch with the new PC USB solutions + software that I might use to achieve my goal.

The Goal: Set up my rig (with new USB device of some sort) to gain access to freely available television content from the sats available to me. This would be controlled by a server pc that sits close enough to the cabling to be connected to it, and have a client PC (in the bedroom) be able to control the server and view content it is receiving.

I am willing to pay if necessary for the assistance of someone who can direct me towards USB 2.0 receivers and the software that may be used with them in order to achieve this goal.

The receiver must be able to deal with: Receiver->13dB Amp->HH Motor->Diseqc 2-way switch->QPH-031 (1 circular output, 1 linear output), such that it can rotate the motor to the appropriate satellite and choose the appropriate LNB from the QPH-031.

I have an picture that shows the wiring layout of my current system, but this board apparently will not let me post it.

The amplifier and 2-way switch are both housed in an outdoor junction box next to the dish.

Current rig:
*QPH-031 Quad LNB
*DMS International Diseqc 2-way switch
*GS3100 H-H Motor *Philips 950-2150 MHz 13dB gain in-line signal amplifier

I do not have a lot of money to throw around, and if someone wants to help me for free, I would be extremely grateful. If not, I will try to arrange a method of payment (such as PayPal) for assistance that leads to the goal.

From a technical perspective, I am a software engineer with over a decade of experience, so software and driver stuff is fairly easy for me. Please let me know if anyone is interested, and what they would want in compensation for their help.

--Reynolds K (Milford, MI - USA)

 

[turbosat]

Welcome to the forum , Renbo! I'm sure there are some members who use setups like yours, sorry but I am not one of them. ( and if I were- it would cost you nothing!)
I know that computer-type receiver equipment has evolved, not sure how much, hopefully somebody who is into those will pop in for you. It's infinitely easier for me to just have a set-top box receiver to use, I think they're much easier to set up and use in a master-slave configuration like you desire.

 

[Renbo]

Thanks for the welcome turbosat!

One of the major reasons that I am revisiting this is that a while ago we dumped cable tv and went to purely NetFlix, with the bedroom TV as actually a monitor hooked up to a computer. However, that computer is way too far from the sat cabling for it to be the one that controls it. Long time ago I used to recall setting up some software that could relay the stream to another PC, but it has been a while.

Anyway, thanks again for the friendly hello, and if I do manage to get this thing running, I will be sure to spread the love by way of posting the final solution to the problem on these boards.

 

[KE4EST]

to Satelliteguys Renbo....I too do not use the computer for TV. I have plenty of receivers set-up and dishes in the yard, but have not done the PCI tuners yet. So hopefully someone tomorrow will come along that has a set-up like that. There is plenty of help on here and glad to have you aboard, and look forward to seeing your final solution.

 

[Renbo]

Thanks for the welcome ke4test!

 

[trinidex]

Interesting project which I'm sure is achievable.

My PC-Sat experience is limited, I do my stuff with sat receivers, I use a USB Genpix Skywalker with a PC to sniff out programming - not at all what you need.

The obvious (?!) way to stream from the server to client PC would be to use VLC.

What I'm not sure though is how you would control the server to control the USB Sat Receiver. One choice would be to use Remote Desktop software to simply view the server desktop upstairs - if you've got CAT5 cabling this would work, but the video may suffer.

Another option, assuming you've got CAT5 would be to use a Keyboard Video & Mouse (KVM) extender which would route the server KVM over the CAT5 removing the need for a separate client PC.

As for the receiver, a quick Google returned these offerings:

http://www.store.proftuners.com/16-dvb-s-s2-usb

Good luck with your project - keep us posted.

 

[Magic Static]

Welcome to the forum Renbo! I'm a PC DVB nutcase. Let me share my pain. Right now I'm using a couple of combinations. My primary setup is a Hauppauge Nova S2 HD (pci) using MyTheatre ver 4.00.130 (retail). I also have a SkyWalker 1 (USB) secondary tuner. And I have an ATSC tuner (PCIe) under MyTheatre. A second setup uses a TBS 8922 PCI DVBS2 card with DVBDream ver17a (retail).
Both setups are lacking. MyTheatre can't do 3/5 FEC. DVBDream is unstable. Very irritating to use, but can pull those 3/5 fec channels. The setups use one of four displays, two DLP projectors a 52" Samsung, and my 25.5" ASUS monitor.
For a usb S2 tuner I would look at a TBS QBOX, but you can't use MyTheatre with a majority of the new tuners. The disappearance of the "Eye patch crowd" has slowed development in the PC satellite softwares. I'm not ready to go Linux based PCs, but you may find that more to your liking.

 

[Renbo]

Welcome to the forum Renbo! I'm a PC DVB nutcase. Let me share my pain. Right now I'm using a couple of combinations. My primary setup is a Hauppauge Nova S2 HD (pci) using MyTheatre ver 4.00.130 (retail). I also have a SkyWalker 1 (USB) secondary tuner. And I have an ATSC tuner (PCIe) under MyTheatre. A second setup uses a TBS 8922 PCI DVBS2 card with DVBDream ver17a (retail).
Both setups are lacking. MyTheatre can't do 3/5 FEC. DVBDream is unstable. Very irritating to use, but can pull those 3/5 fec channels. The setups use one of four displays, two DLP projectors a 52" Samsung, and my 25.5" ASUS monitor.
For a usb S2 tuner I would look at a TBS QBOX, but you can't use MyTheatre with a majority of the new tuners. The disappearance of the "Eye patch crowd" has slowed development in the PC satellite softwares. I'm not ready to go Linux based PCs, but you may find that more to your liking.

I've seen the TBS QBOX around as I've looked for USB solutions. Sounds like it might be a winner. As for streaming, I too thought of VLC, particularly because I can write software (I am a software engineer) that can launch a VLC process with the appropriate parameters (one I know what those are).

The biggest trick I will face is writing something that can initialize the sat, point it, and tune it. If I could do this from C# I would be in heaven. Perhaps there's a tuner mfg. out there that has an API that I can use from C# to do this. I will do further research.

--Reynolds

 

[Magic Static]

DVBDream likes the TBS tuners and VLC

 

[merkin]

If you like c# than check out SichboPVR.

But for a back/frontend approach you suggest, check out DVBViewer and its Recording Service.

If you want to develop something yourself check out Media Portal sources.

Would not even bat an eye at the previous suggestions, but that is just my opionion.

 

[wallyhts]

Check out dvblast its from VLC. I attached a Voice message with more details.

 

[Renbo]

Thanks Wally! I gave DVBlast a once over and it looks like it handles a lot of what I am looking to do. Not sure if my gigabit switch is multicast capable, but I can figure that out. Linux will be a little slower for me, as I spend most of my time in Windows, but I have built up a Linux firewall box, so it should be doable.

What I might do is put VLC on the same box and have it do some (optional) transcoding if I want to try and expose some lower bandwidth options for streaming to smaller devices.

Lots to digest!