Complete newbie, any help appreciated.

[bertbert554]

Hi everyone,

I am new to this excellent site.

I am looking to build a HTPC to get the VM channels. I have currently decided on the following:

AMD 780G or NVidia 8200/8300 motherbaord
AMD 5050e CPU
Windows XP
MediaPortal

I would like to use MediaPortal as I currently use that for DVB-T and works perfectly.

Question is, for DVB-C, what else do I need? The techonotrend C1501 cards seem popular but can't seem to find one to purchase anywhere (in UK). Are there any other cards that are known to work with MediaPortal that don't cost too much? I am not interested in streaming or anything like that, just to be able to view the channels.

I think, from what I have read on this forum, MediaPortal supports softcams? Is this the VPlug thing?

So hopefully all I need in addition to the spec above is:
1. a dvb-c card
2. softcam

Thanks very much.

[biosonik]

the cheapest dvbc card you can buy is most likely the twinhan cab-ci from Hisat at a reasonable £34 + £10 delivery however its not a great card. Top of the range is the floppydtv by digital-everywhere at about £130-ish.

Do a bit more research before commiting to mediaportal. Vplug can be a hassle to get working in mediaportal

[bertbert554]

Thanks for the reply.

I was hoping there would be more cards to choose from. I'll have a look at the Floppy one.

What's the alternative to MediaPortal?

Cheers.

[biosonik]

Before I started playing with cable on the PC, I downloaded most of the applications I could find and thought about what I wanted from them before commiting to anything.

Here is a small list..
DVBDREAM (works well, can give transponder problems)
ProgDVB (Blind search for channels is great)
DVBViewer (Pay software, look around, you may find an illegal download)
Mediaportal
GB-PVR (both MP and GB-PVR need a slight modification to run vplug)
SageTV (never used it but have heard good things)
Windows Media Centre (FloppyDTV - Hardcam decryption or using DVBSBRIDGE)

These are the most popular. I ended up with Windows Media Centre only because I liked one plugin (TunerFreeMCE - on demand tv) and the tv guide.

For mediaportal, the cheap Twinhan works fine, here is a new post with the guide on how to get vplug to work with Mediaportal MDAPI 2008 for Mediaportal

[bertbert554]

Fantastic, thankyou.

I'll order all the parts next week and hopefully should get it to work.

Cheers.

[bertbert554]

Can't get this working.

Using:

XP Pro SP3
MediaPortal v1.0 Release
Twinhan CAB-CI (2031) with 1.2.3.8 BDA drivers
MDAPI

Scanning through all transponders just says "No Signal" for all TPs.

Any ideas?
It should be able to find channels without VPlug right?

Thanks.

[biosonik]

yeah it'll find channels without vplug.

Try the crappy program that Twinhan supply on the drivers CD. I've heard it works in XP and can find channels.

-Check your transponder file (MP's have extension .dvb in TuningParameters folder, something along those lines). You should be scanning freq's on 6952 if in ex-tele or 6887 if in ex-ntl. ("h"orizonal or "v"ertical steps, try both)

-Check your cable feed / signal strength.
-Try a blind search in progdvb (blind search will normally find something)

[bertbert554]

Thanks for your help biosonik.

Managed to get DVBDream working, so I should be able to get the channel settings from there for MP.

Cheers.