UK BBC SD to HD change

[shudman]

Last week, BBC stopped broadcasting SD channels on Freesat, and the notion is, that one should move to "equipment capable of running HD". "Meh", I thought, not a big deal as I have a trusty Hauppauge Nova DVB-S/S2 PCI card, and that will be just fine. Well, alas not. Not matter whether I try to rescan with full transponders or single, I cannot detect these new HD channels....although CH4HD/CH5HD continue to work just fine. I tried Hauppauge's WinTV app....no avail there too. Anyone any idea why ? What am I missing ?

[holidayboy]

It's been a while since I last used my Hauppauge cards so this may be of no use... I remember that I used to have to run a Hauppauge "patch" tool for my Nova HD S2 card - to add extra transponder tuning info into the registry before scanning for new DVB-S2 channels.

Did you try running that tool? Let me know if you don't have it - I've probably still got a copy somewhere.

[shudman]

Thank Rob. Trying to ploy info out of Hauppauge themselves, and actually they have tried to be very helpful. They suggested a few things, to no avail, except one useful thing - try running dvbviewer. This is just a 3rd party DVR app, but it does scan all transponders, and DOES find BBC HD channels and shows them in blue (oppose to the regular freesat channels in black text)....but it also has (ac3, eng) next to all of them...and it does allow you to watch. So, I know the hardware is up to it, and MCE (and WinTV) are not, currently. Indications are that it could be codec....but awaiting Hauppauge to see what they can offer as a fix.

[holidayboy]

The zip file below contains the old Hauppauge DVB-S2 transponder tool that I used to use, as well as the custom .xml file that I used back in 2013 to enable DVB-S2 (out of date now obviously) - you can either let the tool download the latest satellite config (list of transponders etc - if the server is still online of course), or you can import a custom xml file. You need to reboot once the tool has imported data into the registry - then scan the required transponders in MC.

Hauppauge DVB-S2 patch tool.zip

(187.41 KiB) Downloaded 120 times

The tool imports extra settings into the registry that Media Center needs in order to tune into -s2 channels - Media Center uses "auto" by default for some parameters that actually need to be set to certain values in order to tune properly.

I found a reference to it over on the AVS forums - showing the type of info the tool imports - the tool was originally called the Hauppauge MCEDVBS2Patch Tool (I'm not sure if anybody at Hauppauge will remember it - all the old forum posts have been removed and result in a 404 error now!)

https://www.avforums.com/threads/bbc-on ... 2.1684760/

[holidayboy]

Here is old thread that also goes into some detail regarding what is needed to add the extra info for each DVB-S2 transponder that you wish to tune - there is also another link to the tool.

viewtopic.php?p=12422&hilit=mcedvbs2#p12422

[Kevin Chalet]

Out of curiosity, what installer did you use to set up WMC? The MSI-based installer maintained by Gary is known to include a more up-to-date transponder list. Not sure it would help in your specific case, tho'

[shudman]

duped into this forum, to close off loop:

I have success !!
I persisted with the tool, and with another posting in the WMC10 forum (viewtopic.php?p=140803&hilit=HD+channel ... ge#p140803), managed to get the correct registry settings.
So 100% factual statement....MCE does not see DVB-S2 from a Hauppauge card unless these reg keys are put in first (and rebooted), and then upon reboot, rescan the single transponder.

Code: Select all

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\hcw88bda\DVBS_Params\[b]10818000[/b]]
"unique_key"="28.2E ASTRA 2, EUROBIRD 1"
"symbol_rate"=dword:015ef3c0
"modulation"=dword:0000001b
"fec_inner"=dword:00000003
"polarization"=dword:00000002
"pilot"=dword:00000000
"rolloff"=dword:ffffffff
"broadcast_type"="DVB-S2"

For me, the first line gave me BBC 1 HD. I added another entry under DVBS_Params for 10847000 for BBC 2HD. They did appear on odd channel numbers, so renumbered to 101 and 102

The important "finding " for me, was the correct fec_inner and modulation. The original Hauppauge tool, put these in with different numbers, and I guess it is transponder dependent....but because they are reg keys, who only knows what modulation=1b actually means - I could find no info. I know polarization=2 means Vertical !!

Anyhow, appreciate the assist(s) from folks, and hope this info does actually help someone too.