Time for HD? Advice needed please.

[woodlouse]

Hi folks,
My Twinhan Starbox USB has died.
I'm looking to get a replacement but not sure whether to stick with PC based gear or get a receiver.
My main interest is getting English Prem footy. I've been using v-plug etc to watch it on Premier recently but its all been a bit hit and miss with keys changing so frequently.
Also I'd quite like to upgrade to HD gear, I think my PC will just about cope with H264.
One issue is that I have an Asus a8n sli mobo which doesn't get on with pci cards so I'm restricted to USB devices (I'm assuming I would have the same problems with a Skystar HD card as I had with my old Skystar 2 -BSODS).
I think the only HD USB boxes available at present are the Technotrend S2-3200 and S2-3650 (similar to 3200 but with card interface). Has anyone here had any experince with either of these boxes?
Do they work with any of the players that take "plug-ins"?

My other option is to get a receiver. The only one I've looked at so far is the Fortec Passion from Maplins (£199) but then I'd have to buy a dragoncam or similar on top of this as well as a hdtv so it will all get a bit expensive.
Probably a linux based receiver would be more economical, but do any of them get HD? if not, are there any in the pipeline?
Which would be the easiest to update with keys?
Is ther any way to update the keys automatically?
And are there any HD premier league transmissions that I could receive anyway?
I've got an 85cm motorised dish so I need something with USALS to move the dish.
Sorry if this is a bit long and rambling. I need to get something fairly soon. Should I just get a replacement dvb-s box for now and wait for better things to come out?
I'd be grateful for any advice. Thanks
Woody

[RocketMBA]

While I can't offer any advice as to how the USB receivers are right now, I would be able to hook you up with an AVC transport stream recorded from BBC HD so that you could see if your computer can take it before taking the plunge with an expensive piece of kit.

[BGonaSTICK]

Hi mate. Great to have you on the forum. I've read your posts elsewhere with interest over a long period of time (assuming you're the same person of course!)

First off, what's the spec. of your current PC?

Second, AFAIK there are no plugins that work with the Skystar HD PCI, so I would be doubtful over the Technotrend S2-3200 USB because they use the same chipset.

http://www.satellitehelp.co.uk/forum...pic,924.0.html

No real contenders in the Linux HD arena yet, though there area few supposedly not far away. Check our HD section for a list of boxes, who has them and what they think. The Kathrein box is interesting, but hasn't taken off yet. Of course everyone is waiting for the mythical Dreambox 8000, but I'm beginning to think that I dreamed the press release last year :

The key-update process is always going to be a bit messy. I suppose the Dreambox with something like the satankey updater is the slickest you'll get. This can be made to work on other Enigma-1 images like the Technomate TM-9100.

Lastly, maybe it's time to swap out your motherboard? You could sell it and buy a replacement for very little difference, so don't rule this option out. You could buy a Skystar2 and a Skystar HD for less than most HD STBs, and pay for your motherboard upgrade with the change!

Just a thought.

I'm building an HD-capable PC at the moment, so I've been doing a little research myself.

Hope you find something here to make you a regular.

STICK

[woodlouse]

Thanks for the quick replies.
Yes if you can hook me up to BBC HD stream that would be great, thanks RocketMBA.

I am the same person whose posted elsewhere, good to hear from you again BG, nice forum you've got here
My current system is the asus nforce4 mobo (s939) with a dual-core opteron 180 running at 2.4ghz, 2gigs ram, and geforce 7800gt graphics, dual-booting XP and Vista on seperate drives.
I forgot to ask in my previous post if its possible to link a linux receiver directly to a PC monitor instead of a TV set?
mines an LG Flatron F900P 19ins CRT,(I'm sure the answer to this is NO). I suppose I could get an lcd tv with Pc input.

I have thought about changing my mobo but it feels like a big hassle reloading everything again, but I might end up doing that. I'd need to stick with Socket 939 though for my CPU. Not too many of them available now.
Decisions, decisions...

[RocketMBA]

_http://files-upload.com/files/463729/BBC%20HD%20Supervolcano%2020070827_230735%20#1.ts

It's around 40MB. Unfortunately, the clip is about 20 seconds long - blame the massive bitrate for that one! Let me know if there's any trouble downloading it and I'll upload it elsewhere.

[BGonaSTICK]

LOL, decisions indeed.

Rebuilding a PC is sooo time consuming when you have a ton of stuff installed. I'm sometimes tempted to just change the motherboard and let XP re-detect everything off the original hard drive. It seems to work for some people.

Not sure about STB to PC monitor, but I bet you could do it if the STB had component-out and your monitor had DVI in. There seems to be a box of tricks that would convert it, but it's mighty expensive. Not really my forte I'm afraid.

[RocketMBA]

Oh, yeah, as for that... You can use a cheap video game converter-type-thing to get that job done. Some convert composite, some convert S-Video and some convert component - and they all convert to VGA! Hooray! Here's a couple I've used myself in the past:


http://www.edirectory.co.uk/pf/880/mia/pid/4075921
I paid about £30 for this one from Lik-Sang... I'm sure you can find it cheaper elsewhere. Let it be known that the image quality isn't wonderful, especially with composite. Also note that, unless your device can output 60Hz, a lot of LCD monitors are going to have trouble with this device.

http://www.consolesandgadgets.co.uk/...hv-p-2424.html
I think this one was £35, and I believe I got it from Play-Asia, but it was worth paying every penny for, even though it only does component. The image is great, considering it's £35. It also does HD resolutions, so you can connect a HD box/Xbox 360/whatever to it for maximum graphical...-ness.

[woodlouse]

Many thanks for the file RocketMBA, it downloaded fine.
I played it on Media player classic, video was nice and smooth but lagged behind the sound until I added CoreAvc codec, then it played fine.
Thanks for the info about the converters, I'll check them out.

[woodlouse]

I'm leaning towards getting a Skystar plus USB as a replacement for the Starbox, to get me up and running again, I beleive it works with Progdvb, so presumably plug-ins will work with it?

I might also get a budget HD STB for fta dvb-s2 stuff.- maybe a Pace DS810XE (looks good value at about £80 on ebay).
The YPbPr to RGBHV VGA Box looks interesting but would the HDMI or HDCP stop HD content from being displayed on a PC monitor?

[RocketMBA]

Google searches reveal conflicting information - the official site for ProgDVB claims to support the SkyStar USB version, but a result a few hits down claims that it doesn't. I'd be inclined to go with the official site, to be honest, but "USB" and "USB Plus" may very well be two different things...

I'm unsure about HDCP - I would assume that you'd run into problems there, since the converter is just converting one type of signal into another without regard for anything digital. Then again, it might be more of an issue on the receiver's end - the receiver may output HDCP-protected content happily, or it might refuse to output HDCP-protected content on anything but HDMI. Swings and roundabouts, it would seem.