Satelllite Channel Reception and Guide Issues

[jonboy_9999]

Hi,

First post on this forum (also posted on Windows Experts) – I hope someone can help me. If this has been asked before, many apologies and perhaps someone could point me to the relevant thread.

My Windows Media Center (Windows 7 Ultimate, SP1 x64) worked perfectly with Freeview – all relevant channels received and guide / series link all good.

I’ve had to switch to Free Sat in a new property (no aerial), so removed my Freeview Tuner card and installed a dual tuner SAT card – it’s a TBS 6981 DVB-S/S2 Dual BDA.

Perhaps I am missing something, but since the switch to FreeSat, I can’t detect all the channels I should get through FreeSat. I use the following process for setup:
• I set the appropriate location etc in TV Setup and my south-west London postcode is recognised OK
• TV Setup Data is downloaded
• Tuner is correctly detected, and I select it
• I get a full signal from “Astra 2A-B-D (28.2E) EUROBIRD 1 (28.5E)” (green bar on the “Satellite TV Signal Confiugration” page
• A couple of “Next”s and the settings are saved
• I then run a “Full Satellite Scan” from the Satellite Transponder Scan menu on “Astra 2A-B-D (28.2E) EUROBIRD 1 (28.5E)”
• After about 25 mins of scanning, 579 channels are found, which sounds good but the list starts with some odd entries (sub b+1000), ?TV, __4109 etc
• I then request to download the latest version of the guide listings, and wait until complete.

When the guide is opened:
• ITV has no data until the channel is selected, then the next 2 programmes appear in the guide – after this – no data available
• Channel 5 has no data available, and it does not work (“Service is unavailable”)
• BBC3 has data in the guide, but the channel does not work (“Service is unavailable”)
• BBC4 works, but only the next 2 programmes show in the guide – after this – no data available
• BBC1HD doesn’t appear, and BBC2HD doesn’t work (“Service is unavailable”)
• The lots of channels listed with No Data Available, before reaching BBC New and BBC Parliament, neither of which work
• At channel 900 and onwards, there are repeats of the BBC channels (regional variations maybe?)
• You get the idea…

This means that:
• Many channels can’t be watched
• Guide frequently not available for some channels (with or without channel signal)
• Series Link doesn’t work on channels where forward guide information is not available

I have tried rescanning many times – same result. I have tried a complete reformat and reinstall of the OS and rebuild – same result.

Very grateful for some pointers as to what to do to:
• Get the right channel line-up
• Get the guide (and hence the series link) working properly

On Windows Experts, someone suggested the following:

The problem stems from the fact that the TV setup process includes a pre defined set of channels that are added to the guide automatically - unfortunately, the list of satellite transponders is out of date (many channels have moved more than once!)

There are two options:

1. Manually go through each channel that you want to watch using the edit channels menu (Tasks>settings>TV>Guide>Edit Channels). Check the sources for each channel against a site like http://www.kingofsat.info or http://www.lyngsat.com/Eutelsat-28A-and ... -2F.htmlto ensure that the correct transponder is selected.

2. Use DVBLink TVSource from DVBLogic in order to set up the channels manually, then import them into Media Center.

It's also worth running TV setup again, disable all channels in the edit channels menu, then manually scan selected satellite transponders (rather than the full scan that scans every possible transponder) so that you only scan for wanted channels, then go through the edit channels list using the preview option and only tick the channels that actually work.

I tried this, but option 1 didn’t fully work
- I don’t get a full list of freesat channels
- On some channels, the guide says no data available. When you activate (start watching) the channel, the guide information for the current and next programme appears, but the remainder of the guide still displays “no data available”.

Option 2 requires additional software and significant configuration changes.

Much appreciate any thoughts and assistance.

JB

[holidayboy]

The first step is to get all channels working properly, the next step is to get the guide data mapped to those working channels. A lot of the default channels are looking at the wrong transponder completely (BBC 3 is a good example as it is probably not set to use 10818 V - it used to be located elsewhere).

1. Make sure that you do a single transponder scan for each transponder that has channels you want to watch - the two sites linked above are ideal for this. Doing a full scan can miss channels as Media Center doesn't know about every transponder - as the TV setup data is out of date!

2. Go through each channel in the edit channels menu and tick only the ones you want in your TV guide (you can sort by name to make this a bit easier).

3. Either manually add guide data for each channel in the edit channels menu (tedious!), or use GuideTool to do it outside of Media Center. You may find that you need to try a few different sets of data to find one that actually works.

When you see 2hrs of guide data for a channel, it means that Media Center is using the guide data being transmitted by the TV station over the air, rather than using data that was downloaded from Microsoft.

To change guide data for a channel, you need to right click the channel in the guide and click edit, or go though the edit channels menu, then edit listings, scroll through the list and click on the data set that you want to use and then click copy listings when asked.

Hope that helps a bit, let us know how it goes. There's a few of us using FreeSat here so it's possible

[tony_park]

Hi JB,

personally, I would install and use DVBlogics TVSource (http://dvblogic.com/en/software/windows-pc/) application to simplify the installation and setup. To get your guide data, they have another application using
DVBLink EPG Loader for Digiguide, or alternatively use the epg collector tool.


Tony

[bobbob]

+1 for dvblink

[rampad]

I am having exact same problem as described in the post above by “jonboy_9999” for last two years, the channels numbers don’t match. I am manually editing the channels. Not happy. has anybody managed to get this working please ?

[sorethumbs]

Hi Chaps
I've set up a few freesat media centers using guidetool to trim the massive list of channels and to assign guide data to get listings. Guidetool is excellent to configure your guide and re-ordering of channels.
What tuners are you using in your setup?

[tony_park]

2x TBS 5981 DVBS2 here

considering adding pinnacle 7010ix back into the mix, if I can remove my graphics card - giving an additional 2 dvbs and dvbt tuners.

[sorethumbs]

5981 or 6981 Tony?

I have a 6981 - was just trying to see what the chaps are using that are having problems in this thread.

[milli260876]

Dvblogic wouldn't work for me with more than 4 tuners.
EpgCollector is great for guide data.
Microsoft is poo at updating mediacenter...
thatisall

[jonboy_9999]

Solved! Clean installation, Windows7 MC 64 bit, DVB Logic Server and DVB TV Source managing the channels and guide. Only trick was to ensure that MC ONLY gets channel scan information from the DVBLogic tuners (NOT the sat card natively) - then it will only find channels that you have selected in DVB Logic. Excellent - thanks for the steer everyone.

ps - yes it has taken nearly 1 year to find the time to sort it out...!

[locallad]

Had to come on here and post my solution to the missing BBC Three issue. I have a single channel satellite card, windows 7 and using the ASTRA 2A-B-D (28.8E), EUROBIRD 1 (28.5E)

After a full scan it comes back showing BBC Three as available, but was blank when clicked on.

I then went back and did a single transporter scan with the following settings:

Carrier Freq - 10847
Symbol Rate - 22000
Polarization - Vertical

It should then throw up another few channels; two of which are BBC3 and BBC3 HD. Hurray!

Also used the excellent guide tool programme to edit the listings data. All seems to be working....