AW: [mythtv-users] Looking for advice moving to DVB-S

[Martin Bene]

> Moving to DVB-S means buying a satellite dish and a DVB-S 
> card, right? 
Correct.

> I wont need one of these fancy boxes that normally come 
> as a "satellite receiver" together with a dish? Does 
> anybody know if there are offerings here in Switzerland 
> for "only a dish" ? (I was not yet able to find one)
The set you'll need consists of :
 - dish
 - lnb
 - cable(s) 

LNB is the thingy that sits in the focus of the dish and has the
cable(s) attached. If you want to feed multiple cards you'll need an LNB
with the corresponding number of cable attachments (up to four); since
the receiver (or DVB card) controls what signal the LNB actually puts on
the sat cable, ( 4 possible settings) it's not possible to just split
one cable to feed two cards. 

You don't need a sat receiver, though a set including  a receiver might
actually be cheaper that just the dish + LNB. 

> Hauppauge seems to be a good choice, judging from the reports 
> on the lists. Is there any point in buying a full-featured 
> Nexus as opposed to a Nova (or other budget card)? 

No, a Nova will do fine. 

> How is recording of 2 concurrent shows done? Do I need 2 
> DVB-S cards (I guess so). Do I also need 2 satellite dishes??

Depends on which sattelites you want to receive. If you just want to
receive multiple programs from the same sat, you'll need a seperate card
for each concurrent recording, and you'll need a dual or quad LNB with a
seperate cable for each card, but you don't need seperate dishes.  

> I will buy at least one, maybe 2 (legal) CAM modules. Are 
> there any gotchas or can I just plug them into the CI and 
> Myth will work happily? Is all the decrypting done on the 
> card/driver? Are there well supported  cards with 
> multiple CI slots?

There's a CI module for the Hauppauge nova that supports two CI modules;
the nova-ci-s just supports one module. One potential problem I
encountered is the premiere decryption: the CAM module provided by
premiere works only in selected receivermodels and doesn't work with any
DVB cards; you can however get third-party CAM modules that do work with
premiere.  

> Is there anything else I have to think of? I guess my 2.4 GHz 
> Pentium will be more than adequate to handle this (just as now with my
PVR 350's).

No problem, I'm doing 4x DVB-S with 2.4 Ghz. For a backend and standard
definition, that's plenty.
One other thing you my want to consider: the first stations in germany
just went on-air with HD content - only problem: noone can creceive it
yet. They decided to go with DVB-S2 which can't be received using
currently available DVB cards. (and no, normal sat receivers aren't
available either). Premiere pay tv will be using the same standard.

Bye, Martin