Re: [LUG] DVB-S via old Sky Disk [Linux + tvheadend]

On 11 Apr 2017 11:21 pm, "mr meowski via list" <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 11/04/17 11:35, Simon Avery via list wrote:
> Hi Mr M
>
> I've run two tuners on Freesat since it started, and Freeview before
> that (Unfortunately, the digital switchover completely destroyed
> freeview signal in my area, so freesat was the only non-commercial
> option!)Â Luckily I had an old 80cm dish knocking around from earlier
> geeky fiddles to get european TV and improve my German (which works
> fine, but I got bored once it was working and never did learn the language)
>
> Drivers are a pain for my card, needing a manual rebuild for each
> kernel, and the software is mythtv and mythweb. The latter for
> everything but configuring so it's a remote server.
>
> Myth is of the old school - somewhat unfriendly devs, cliquey support,
> arcane setups and not user friendly to configure. But it's the best I've
> found which records as straight MPGs (and I use a script to rename them
> to human-readable, since I playback from the filesystem, rather than by
> myth itself)
>
> The best guide I've found for freesat and myth is here, which has the
> required frequencies; http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_freesat.php
>
> There are windows alternatives too, of course - some quite good, if you
> can avoid the not-good and adware-riddled ones, or pay a lot. I've not
> kept pace with those so can't say what's good.
>
> On 10 April 2017 at 00:50, Steven CÃtÃ via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>Â Â Â Â Â>Does anyone know for sure if an old Sky dish (as in, Sky ceased
>Â Â Â Â Â>provisioning the paid service X years ago but left all the kit in place)
>Â Â Â Â Â>can provide a working output that can be fed into a Linux machine?
>
>
>Â Â ÂI've run a MythTV box off an old Sky installation for years. So
>Â Â Âyeah, it definitely should work without modification. Basically,
>Â Â ÂFreesat is just the branding for a tuner that pulls in all the
>Â Â Âunencrypted channels on the Sky satellites and bundles them up with
>Â Â Âa digital tv guide (that's not strictly true, but it's close enough
>Â Â Âfor this conversation).
>
>Â Â ÂIf you have a scan running and it's reporting back anything
>Â Â Âpositive, then the frequencies it's reporting should work. Having
>Â Â Âsaid that, even if you specifically only ask for unencrypted tv
>Â Â Âchannels, some cruft usually gets through, so restrict testing to
>Â Â Âchannels that you know exist.

Thanks for the replies - I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with
the dish setup here then, which is unsurprisingly where most of my
testing has been happening for convenience reasons. I'll try what I
believe *should* be a fully working DVB-S equipped RPi at a couple of
other places where I suspect it'll work. One friend currently has a
crappy old FreeSat STB still in service so that would be the obvious
candidate to try as I can be 100% sure they at least have a functional
feed to test with.

I was a long time mythtv guy as well and know the parker1 site well but
over the years it's become increasingly difficult to wrestle into
submission so I've been looking for a long time for something Linux
based (no nasty proprietary Windows crapware or Media Centers) that I
could use to replace it Myth as a backend, abstracting all the front end
logic away and leaving something preferably newer, more advanced and a
bit more future proofed. Ideally something that would also scale down to
being deployed on a RPi3, even one already busy doing other things -
which is how I got to tvheadend.

Why do you insist on mpgs by the way? I'm guessing you need that for
commercial detection/skipping plugins? tvheadend will do that as well
(either/and record to mpg/cut ads). If you've got a spare RPi or Linux
VM and a USB tuner card or two I highly recommend checking it out!

Cheers
--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq