MCE and My ntl samsung box HELP Please

[andybandit]

I carnt seem to get my ntl to work through MCE at all
i have a dual DVT2000h tunner card which does both analog and digital

i belive every bit is connected properly and that the settopbox coaxual out is turned on (the MCE will pic up the digital signal but not analog ntl signal) on startup of MCE i input my post code and it gives me the listings of servises in my area but not ntl so where is it.

is there a setting on the box or is it MCE thats only set to digital not analog cus microsoft want 230 quid to just talk about it so wtf is all that about

i am at the end of my tether and keep seeing ppl talking about there MCE and NTL and the problems with the IR remote but nothing about this

please help


the system is MCE 2005 (altho thats what the CD says but not the system info says 2002 whats that about) its got 512ddr and 160gb and 500gb sata hdds and geforce 5200 card 3500+ 64 bit cpu

[rdhw]

Originally Posted by andybandit

I carnt seem to get my ntl to work through MCE at all. i have a dual DVT2000h tunner card which does both analog and digital

There are no tuner cards which can (legally) decrypt signals from NTL digital cable TV. The "DVT" in the name of your tuner card suggests that it is intended for terrestrial digital (Freeview) and analog TV signals - so it needs to be connected to a conventional TV aerial, not a cable feed. The NTL cable feed needs an NTL set-top-box to supply a signal to a TV, for instance via a SCART. If you do not have an NTL set-top-box in the house, there is no guarantee that the NTL cable is actually connected to the NTL distribution system: this might explain why you cannot even find any analog TV signals on the cable.

It might be possible to provide further advice and suggestions if we knew more about your setup and what you have connected to what, and whether you actually have an NTL cable TV account.

[andybandit]

i have a cable box what i am trying to do is use the coaual out put on the samsung box to go into my analog input on the card (u made me sound thick).

i just carnt get it all to work it should cus i have read forums with ppl talking about it but not any one with this problem.

thanx for posting a reply tho and if u know what i am on about now u might know what my problem is.

thanx

andy

does the tv card have a composite connection? if so use that and sound into the line in on mobo via a scart to phono jack adapter

to the forum btw

In media centre there is a scan funtion on the tv you will need to scan for the channels

use windows help files for instructions cuz its been a while since i used it

[mark1234]

Hi,

I can't find much info on that TV card you've mentioned, and most I can find seems related to Australia, where they are blessed with over the air HDTV. But it looks like this card is a hybrid HDTV/SDTV card. Am I right?

Assuming it does capture normal SDTV signals then you need to ensure that it is doing the MPEG2 encoding in hardware, rather than expecting software on your PC to do it. MCE is only compatible with devices that provide hardware MPEG2 encoding. You also need to ensure the driver you've got is MCE compatible.

If that's all in place then when you go through the TV Signal set up in MCE choose the option to say you have a set top box and it should scan and find an analogue signal.

You'll get better picture quality if you use the Scart output rather than coax. I have scart from my ntl Pace box out to a Hauppauge PVR150 and it's fine.

From what I've read you're going to have issues with the IR blaster and the Samsung. Problems with it not seeing double digits - so channel 110 would come out as 10, and lets hope you don't want to watch Film4 on channel 444.

Mark

[rdhw]

OK, I have found mention of this tuner card at the UK Leadtek site. It is the "WinFast DTV2000 H". It has 3 antenna inputs: one for FM radio, and the others for analog and digital TV.

The RF output from the Samsung box is one single channel of analog TV, usually on a high-numbered UHF channel. You need to make sure that the output from the Samsung cable TV box is connected to one of the WinFast antenna inputs that is enabled for analog TV. The single channel of output from the Samsung will be the channel that the Samsung is currently receiving. Once you have made the connection, you will have to instruct the tuner card to scan the UHF band to find the Samsung analog output channel.

You will not be able to use the digital TV features of your tuner card at all: they are intended only for terrestrial Freeview usage. You will not be able to use the digital radio features of your tuner card at all, either.

The signal from the Samsung will be quite degraded, having been modulated onto a UHF carrier, and then demodulated again by the tuner card. As a previous poster has suggested, you would get a better signal by hacking into the SCART output of the Samsung, and connecting the Composite video output of the Samsung into the Composite video input of the tuner card.

[mark1234]

Good find there.

Having looked at the Leadtek site I'm thinking that for analogue inputs it does software encoding, which means it won't work with MCE.

It doesn't explicitly say it's using software encoding, it's just in the way things are put. For example, for digital inputs you only get MPEG2 format files, but for analogue input you can choose MPEG1/2/4, DVD, VCD or WMV. It's also got a recommended PC spec of a 2.4Ghz P4 and that's quite high if all the encoding work is being done in the hardware.

So, I suspect if you hook up an ariel and try and get Freeview then it'll work fine with MCE, but if you want to use the signal from your ntl box then it'll not work with MCE.

I can't access ftp from work, so can't check the manuals on the Leadtek site to see what they say.

Mark

[andybandit]

thanx for your comments so if i use the SCART to Comp and jack and do it that way will it work with the mPEG2 format. the other thing is that MCE doesnt even give me a option to use a analog signal or settopbox it just asks if i want to use the EPG and then asks for my post code and comes up with only Digital terrestrial.

the other thing is the disk that is OEM MCE 2005 but in the system info it says MCE 2002 whats that all about could that be the problem or do u guys think that i need a different card with onboard CODECS for the MPEG or somet.

i was informed by NTL that there new box will be free to me as i have family pack so i will be able to have HDTV and when this box comes (december) will all this be a waste of time or will (acording to the specs on the new box) be posible again and will i be able to get HD through my MCE PC

thanx all for ur help good comunity on here very friendly

all info on the new box is true its 15 quid setup fee tho and its 10quid for ppl not on the family pack per month. carnt wait HDTV on me LCD Great!!!

[popper]

i assume this is your card?
http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/tv_tun...&pronameid=252
http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/suppor...eyword=Dtv2000
http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversi...12303-250.html
http://search.ntlworld.com/ntlworld/...000H+driver&cr=

you need to remember that the old analogue and the new DVB parts are totally seperate even though they are on the same pci card.

the key to analogue CD sized SW capture is to capture with a quick lossless codec then later convert to the format you want to use, atleast if you intend trying to keep as much quality as possible, or one pass Xvid/DivX (aka the old Mpeg4/asp format not the latest mpeg4/AVC format) or low bitrate mpeg1/2 will do for most people.

iv found (and iv tested a lot over the years with a bt878 chip)that the only CD sized software mpeg2 encoder that can capture in realtime without dropping frames on an 2400XP grade chip is the old winDVR3 analogue tv app so you might want to look for that software in the bargin bins if you want that option?.

with current DVB (FAR better quality than sw analogue in most cases), I.e anything that has a BDA driver will work, and that so called recording isnt decoding/re-encoding but mearly taking the DVB transport stream off DVB-T(digital terestial) in this case, and saving it direct to harddrive, in eather industry standard .ts format, mpeg2 format or the MS abortion (stay away from this MS one if you intend trying to keep to industry spec).

i cant find the pdf datasheet for this card,(i dont have this card, and im not doing all the work LOL) so dont know what chips are on there, for the old analogue part,you might be able to just run it through (free and best quality tv app) Dscaler, for the DVB part with its BDA digital driver just about any 3rd party BDA app will work and tune the digital terestial channels.

just go down argos and get a cheap (or not so cheap) yagi tv arial, some good quality coax cable and stuff that in your loft as high as you can get it pointing in the same direction as peoples outside arials , that should get most peoples DVB cards working good enough.

http://forums.dvbowners.com/lofivers...php/t6642.html
http://wiki.dvbowners.com/index.php/Main_Page
http://forums.dvbowners.com/index.php?showforum=28

these two being the best options for local network streaming of the DVB-T stuff
http://www.jtvlan.org/?PHPSESSID=c1c...5498096b0ecfc4
http://www.digtv.no-ip.com/webscheduler/

[andybandit]

thanx but everyone is using all abriviations and i dont understand them all and i really just need some one who has it working to tell me there spec and how they did it please please make it simple as posible (bot that i wont understand but ppl do go on about othere things off the problem some times)


btw i have my MCE working with Digital terestrial but not NTL thats the problem

sorry but some ppls post have confused the f*** out of me