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So I had posted earlier about setting up an FTA sat rig to allow one server machine to point the dish and tune into channels, and allow other client PCs in the home to connect and watch satellite TV. I haven't had the cash to invest in a new USB DVB-S2 tuner yet, so I am working off of my old SkyStar2 PCI Card.

I tried many different configurations, and so far the only one I have had success with has been MediaPortal. I had tried MP some time ago, but it has come a long way, and appears to handle DVB-S stuff a lot better these days.

The hardware:

• 30" dish
• GS3100 H-H Motor
• DMS International DiSEqC 2 way switch
• QPH-031 Quad LNB
• SkyStar2 PCI DVB-S card
• All PCs are Windows 7 Ultimate x64

For the Server, I used the most recent B2C2 drivers for the SkyStar card.

Before installing MediaPortal, I knew (from previous attempts) that it would require SQL Server or MySQL. Being familiar with SQL Server, I downloaded SQL Server 2008 R2 and installed it. If you are comfortable with SQL Server, this may come in handy. Direct manipulation of data in the MP tables helped me with some parts of the motor configuration (as I will explain later).

I downloaded the MediaPortal installer, and ran setup while always selecting "advanced" options. I chose the TV Server option so as to install the components that tune the dish and serve content to the Client PCs.

I also had installed FastSatFinder (licensed) and MyTheatre (trial) for dish pointing and sat identification.

Satellite Pointing

To find the satellite I was looking for, the technique I finally ended up using was to set FastSatFinder to the sat I was seeking (AMC9), and to a transponder that had the content I was trying to get (the one with RetroTV Network). Since the dish is a considerable distance from where the PC is, I turned up the volume on the PC speakers, used the home phone on speakerphone to call my cellphone, and put the home phone next to the PC speakers.

The motor on my dish has mini switches for manual driving. I started to slowly move through the general range of the arc where I knew the sat was, and listened to my cellphone (also on speaker) for FastSatFinder to bark the levels. (there are ways to supposedly get FSF to spin up a web server that you can use to do this, but I could not get it to start).

When I got a lock and tweaked the levels, I would go back inside, stop FSF, open MyTheatre and try to scan the transponder for channels. (I had to do this a few times, back and forth). Eventually I got a lock with the expected RTV channel in it.

MediaPortan TV Server Setup

Inside the "TV-Server Configuration" program, it had detected the SkyStar card as "DVB-S B2C2 MPEG-2 Source" under "TV Servers" / {IP Address of PC}. Clicking on this gets you to a 2 tab config screen, "Scanning" and "DiSEqC". I clicked the "Update Satellite List" button to get a fresh transponder list.

My configuration:

• Checked "#1" sat
• Selected DiSEqC "Level1AB" for the 2nd position on the switch (for one of the linear LNBs on the quad)
• Selected "Ku-Linear (Universal)" for band.
• Selected "83.0W AMC9" for Satellite
• Checked "each satellite" under "Create Groups For"
• Deselected "Enable DVB-S2" (the card is only DVB-S)
• Deselected "Enable Channel Movement Detection"
• Selected "Use Advanced Tuning Options" (opens up more configurations below it)
• Checked "Override default LNB frequencies"
• Low (LOF1): 10750
• High (LOF2): 10750
• Switch (LNBSW): 0

At this point I clicked the "Scan for Channels" button which scanned all transponders and came up with the 3 FTA channels I expected.

DiSEqC Motor Hack

The DiSEqC Motor panel allows you to move the dish in number of step increments to try and find a lock. I had already found my lock and didn't need to move the dish. Furthermore I had already used FastSatFinder to assign a motor position to this satellite. The screen does not allow you to manually enter the position for a given satellite. It assumes you want to find the dish, then have MP assign a position for you.

To get my own assignment in there, I went into the SQL table "DisEqcMotor" and entered a new row for my position:

• idCard (looked this up in the Card table
• idSatellite (looked this up in the Satellite table
• position: this is where I picked the position number I had already assigned.

SQL Considerations

For a while I could not get the client machines (using the same MP installed but selecting options for TV Client) to get to the server. I do not know if they attempt to connect directly to the SQL Server, but once I used the SQL Configuration tool to turn on TCP/IP port 1433 for all IP addresses and configured SQL to accept unlimited remote connections, they all started to work.

EPG

I was not getting any EPG info for the channels, it may not even be available, so I disabled it in order to (hopefully) gain some performance.

Summary

So that's the quick and dirty on the new setup. Sometimes the client machines show "no signal" the first time you pick "channels" and select one. Trying a second time seems to always work. This may have to do with the initialization of the card and subsequent delays on the server end. More hackery and twiddling will probably solve this.

Next step: more satellites and actual motor actuation to go from one to the other!