Windows Media Center Vista + 102g

[dashaund]

Hey guys, I'm working on my new setup and I had a couple questions. I had an "idea" today, just wanted to bounce it off you guys. I currently have a Twinhan 102g card in my tower PC, and was considering using it as a media center. I also have an XBOX 360. I've been successfully to stream DiVX movies from my PC to my 360 using the Windows Media Center. Has anyone used the WMC to tune their 102g (or other DVB-S) card and stream it to a WMC Extender device, specifically a 360? I figured this would be awesome if it would work. WMC isn't a MUST, I guess I could use another media center-isk application, but I specifically need it to work with my 360. Thanks!

 

[willie8605]

bump bump

 

[zamar23]

Windows Vista WMC is known not to excel in that task (if at all) - read Vista WMC Help, though it can hardly be considered an explanation of actual WMC functions. The reasons for this are not necessarily MS policies related, but overall situation with FTA support in NA. However, Windows 7 MC is expected to support well both DVB-S and DVB-S2 Sat cards. There're reports in German forums of WMC 7 current builds working well with both standards. Do you want to try?

 

[dashaund]

Hmm...wasn't aware of that update. I just installed Windows 7 32-Bit RC (can't find compatible 64-bit drivers for my 102g...if I get another DVB soon I can wipe it out and install 64-bit...no big deal to me) and I'll give it a shot and let you know! Thanks!


Update: Okay, got it installed. Installed the drivers for my card and everything, and ran the WMC setup. SUPER easy. It automatically detected my DVB card, allow me to set it up. It allows me to pick a satellite, and my LNB frequency, and then if you like it can scan for signals in it's database of known TPs (you can also go in and scan keyed in TPs and SR). I don't have it hooked to my satellite right now (pouring the concrete for my BUD today hopefully), but when I get it going I'll post an update. For all of you PC card users, I highly recommend giving this a shot with Windows 7. Heck, the 7 RC is still free for download through August 20th (so hurry!), so you've got nothing to lose. It also has an EPG downloader, so hopefully for the "known" networks on DVB, you should be able to have a guide and schedule and record. Seems like an awesome idea, we'll see how it works out.

 

[zamar23]

Good news! Did you have TV Pack 2008 included with your Windows 7 download, or get it separately? I think, it has been quite polished and rolled into WMC 7 by now. You might be interested to learn that Windows 7 RTM has already been released and can probably be found on the web (with matching checksum). Can you try also DVB-S2 performance in WMC 7 and let us know?

For those interested in setting up an ATSC & QAM Tuner in WMC 7 RTM - here are the Instructions. This guy looks like a good contact for any pain expression, FTA PC warriors are still experiencing.

 

[dashaund]

No, didn't know that. But I'll "check my sources" when I get home and see if I can snag it somewhere. I'm not sure what the "TV pack" is, I just installed my 32-bit RC ISO. It downloaded some packages from the internet, it was kind of vague what it was installing, only thing I caught on to was the EPG. I just ordered the TBS 6920 PCI-e card, and I will let you know how the S2 performance in.

 

[meinename]

TV Pack 2008 was for Windows Vista only.

Most (if not all) features for that pack were included in Windows 7 Media Center.

 

[dashaund]

Thanks for clearing that up meinename. I did some searching, I did find references to the TV Pack for Vista, nothing for 7. So I installed the 7 RTM last night. Not much has changed obviously. I did notice it installed drivers for my 102g automatically, something it did not do in the Beta or RC. I installed the latest ones from Twinhan anyway. It set everything up automatically. I ordered my TBS 6920 from Ebay yesterday, I'll probably get it next week. I hope to have my dish up and running by then.

I will say 7 has impressed me so far, I've been using it for a few months everyday. I've been a Mac and Linux guy for 6 years. Ubuntu is incredibly easy to install and configure now, as well is Mac OSX. It seems like Microsoft did their homework this time. It looks like WMC seamlessly configures our DVB tuners and integrates it with everything. I'm definitely looking forward to this. If it works like I hope it does, I'll slap an ATSC tuner card in my PC as well, and have both OTA and FTA pouring in.

 

[gillham]

How are you guys legally using Windows 7 RTM when it won't be out until October 22nd, 2009?

 

[dashaund]

Windows 7 RTM was released to TechNet subscribers the first week of August.

 

[gillham]

Windows 7 RTM was released to TechNet subscribers the first week of August.

How much are you paying for that subscription?

 

[dashaund]

Me personally, nothing. My company has a TechNet Gold subscription, which is like $2495 a year I think. There are different levels of subscriptions, starting at $99/year I believe.

 

[zamar23]

I just ordered the TBS 6920 PCI-e card, and I will let you guys know how the S2 performance is.

Juts make sure your 36" Fortec dish is adequate to receive DVB-S2 and/or clear 8psk channels you target at your location, which is remote enough for such dish size. You may want to consider 1.2 m dish for much better luck with DVB-S2 channel locking. And with that dish size you may have a bonus of getting some (limited) C-band stuff, if you go for a mini-BUD setup.

 

[dashaund]

True. Well I'm puting up my 10ft C-band dish so it should be adequate. As far the 36", the Ku signals I receive here in SC absolutely bang in...I've very few signals that I got less than 90% quality on. But I do understand because of the FEC, dish size is important. We'll see how it goes.

 

[willie8605]

Will Win7 MC be capable of streaming live TV through a local network? I know it will do recorded media, just not sure about live...

 

[dashaund]

Yes it will. There's a option that says "Live TV" on the extenders. This is why I'm wanting to do this project. Once I get my satellite cards working, I'm going to put an ATSC card in as well so I can do OTA as well.

 

[willie8605]

Do you have to be using WMC to view the live streaming video? I would like to use WMC on my media server b/c Windows has support for my Pinnacle Pro HDTV USB OTA tuner, but if it is going to require me to put Windows 7 on all of my computers then I will probably just stick with a Mythbuntu backend and try to figure out how to get the Pinnacle tuner configured for Linux. I don't want to buy Windows and my University won't have it available for students to download until 6 months after it's initial release and I really don't want to wait that long (and I don't think my laptop would like running Win7 very much anyway )

:EDIT:

After talking to a guy at work, I think I am going to stream video using VLC. I have decided to run Win7 on my media PC so I can use WMC and just stream anything I want/need using VLC. I don't need or necessarily want a media center on every computer. If I want to stream something to my laptop, viewing it through VLC is sufficient. VLC is fully compatible with Ubuntu so I won't need to make any OS changes except for my media PC (which is getting a hardware overhaul as well).

 

[dashaund]

That's cool Willie. Yeah, I tried VLC a while back, works great as long as you have enough bandwidth. At the time, all I had was an 802.11b network (11mbps) and it wasn't enough. Once I plugged into my 100mbps wired network it was fine. I'm thinking 802.11g will be enough. It works great streaming to another computer, but my 360 will only communicate with WMC to stream live content...it will work with other media streaming applications for movie files and such.

 

[willie8605]

Right now, everything is setup up with 802.11g. For my birthday I got a gift certificate for Newegg.com so I will be buying some 802.11n stuff soon and probably a new 500GB or bigger hard drive. It should be able to handle HD content . I have talked to a guy at work who tried to stream HD content over 802.11g and he said it didn't work very well, but the SD stuff worked fine on 802.11g.

Right now, I just have en extra CD-ROM drive in my media PC. I've been holding back on buying a DVD drive and have been thinking about just getting a Blu-Ray/DVD drive. These are getting pretty cheap, so I may invest in one of these and hold out on the 802.11n hardware.

 

[Shawn95GT]

If 802.11g isn't doing it, 802.11n may help but don't have too high of expectations.

I'm using power line ethernet to bridge my up and down stairs and stream content (basically huge MPG2 files) between my Tivos. It isn't the same as what you are doing but the challenge is the same. SD works fine. HD I can't quite watch in real time. Via 100 Meg Ethernet I can.