Nicely put

Thanks , but i think i've been on the "stupid pills" again as i cant spot the difference between the two quotes

look at the first character of the lines

MCE 2005 will only work with ATSC and DVB-T cards, DVB-C and DVB-S cards will not even be recognized, even if there is a BDA minidriver for it. I know for sure, because I've written BDA minidrivers for DVB-C, DVB-S and DVB-T cards some time ago already and tried them with MCE 2004 and 2005.

So Twinhan may have a BDA minidriver for all their cards now, but that still won't make the DVB-C and DVB-S cards work in MCE 2005.

Hi Robert_s,

You may very well be right.

I have not tried DVB-c or s with Media Center, of course they all work with MCE as an OS.

I presume, from what you are saying that it is not a question of the drivers don't work with MCE, but more an issue with Media Center not supporting satellite and cable "broadcasts"?

Cheers

Renura

I am getting a bit confused here. Claims being made and some being retracted. I gather the bottom line is that, currently, DVB-S or C cards cannot be used with MCE 2005 OS.

I know this thread is MCE 2005 but does anyone have first hand knowledge of:
a ) DVB-S BDA drivers working under Win XP ? and
b ) Appropriate software to view programs ?

Bradley

Well the only software that I definitively know works with BDA DVB-S is UltraDTV (which is due to go into beta in the next month or so). We only tested this for the first time last week.

Another possibility is ShowShifter 3.10 rc1 which apears to have support for BDA DVB-S... There is nothing stopping you from downloading and trialing it

Let me see if I can clarify it for you.

1. TwinHan BDA drivers are designed to work with all fully compliant BDA based applications and with their DVB-t, DVB-s and DVB-c devices.

2. Media Center (which is just a part of the MCE 2005 Operating System~WindowsXP) does not support DVB-s or DVB-c, only DVB-t, hence if you want to use Media Center with anything other than DVB-t devices, it will not work, at the moment. Presumably it will when MS fixes it.

3. I have tested DVB-s and DVB-t devices, using these drivers and running BDA based applications, under MCE 2005 and WindowXp, XP Pro, and they work! Although, with some of them I had to shut down the MC Receiver Service first.

I hope this makes it a little clearer.

Cheers

Renura

Just to clarify that a bit more under MCE2005 as an operating system (NOT within MCE itself)

Yes

Yes, exactly. The issue is that for DVB-T you can do with only a simple list of frequencies, which are standardized per country and available from official places.

In contrast, e.g. DVB-C also needs a modulation type and symbol rate, and each cable network operator chooses their own settings, and sometimes this information is not even public. So you would have to have the specific parameters for each cable network operator, of which there can be numerous in each country.

Similarly, DVB-S needs transponder lists for each satellite, and there numerous satellites up there, and again, not all satellite operators openly document the full parameters of each of their transponders.

So supporting DVB-C and DVB-S is very support intensive. And Microsoft simply doesn't even have any infrastructure in place yet to provide this data to MCE. AFAIK, the current system can only provide EPG data and a frequency list, but not the full tuning parameters that DVB-C and DVB-S would require. So this goes far beyond a "simple fix", there is a deeper rooted architectural issue here, which I don't think will be resolved anytime soon.

Personally, it does not bother me, I find Media Center (even for DVB-T) rather inflexible and not suitable for my needs, thankfully we have other great applications that we can use.

Cheers

Renura

Thanks for the help earlier in the thread. Just worth noting Ive had people complain about the LNB error using the standard drivers from twinhan..

Anyhooo what software are you using at teh moment with these drivers?

G'Day All.
I've been working on this problem for over 24 hours now, and find I finally have to post a question...

I have the VisionPlus DVB-TV App (Version 2.411) with the standard drivers from Feb 2004, which work fine.

Attempted to get WebScheduler running, so installed the TH BDA drivers (1.2.1.2)

Now when launching DVB-TV I get 2 errors...
'Can not support the card or driver, please check them'
Followed by a msgbox 'LNB Power Off Error !'

I've rolled back to previous driver, and it runs again, but WebScheduler doesn't run.

Rebooting does not appear to make any difference.
OS is XPSP2 Home Ed. Hardware P4 1.6Ghz 512MB Matrox G550 dual monitor Video Card (which works fine with the old drivers BTW)

The Vision Plus card (and software) is starting to get quite old now, so I wondered if it might be the DTB-TV App itself that needs updating. If so, can anyone point me to the latest version please ?

Any other clues or ideas please anyone ?

Regards, Greg.

VisionDTV as you have discovered does not use BDA drivers. The best solution would probably be to move to a BDA Viewing App as well.

Alternatively use the original WDM drivers with VisionDTV and the original WebScheduler (non BDA version). Although AFAIK this version has been frozen and no further work on it is planned ~

It is extremely unlikely that VisionDTV is going to be rewritten to use the BDA Architecture any time soon as it needs to (and does) support DVB-S including CA etc which the BDA Architecture currently does not support.

Hi Renura

I have downloaded the new drivers and installed successfully however XP is still complaining that they are not certified?

I click install anyway and they work great. Running MCE2005 with 2 VP cards for a week now and it all looks good.

Are you sure you are installing those ones? there is no difference between these and the prvious ones other than the certification. I don't get any messages:)

Anyway, as long as thye work, that's all that counts.

Cheers

Renura

If you've hacked your psi...dll you'll get the warning anyway, even if the drivers are signed.

G'Day Joey.
Thanks for the heads up re the DTV App. I didn't realize the BDA stuff would not work with it.

You suggested a BDA viewing App should be used... What App in particular would you suggest (I may need to try several).

Thanks, Greg.

renura
what applications do work with TwinHan BDA drivers?

MCE, ShowShifter and some others not yet released

Will DNTV Live! work with BDA?

DNTV Live! uses the BDA drivers of the DVICO card and the DNTV Live cards.

It designed to work with those two cards and overcome some of the the limitations of the BDA drivers for those cards (eg multi device support, etc).

Support for other devices (both DVB-t and DVb-s) is planned.

Cheers

Renura

Good, but will the next release of DNTV Live! support BDA drivers from TwinHan?

Do anyone know of a BDA driver for Twinhan USB box (VP7041). I've asked the Twinhan support for one but they sent me the BDA-driver mentioned in this thread, didn't work. Thanks!

MyTheatre is going to have support for the VP7041 box in the next version

A future release of DNTV Live! will support VP cards, but only if a DNTV Live! card is present in the same PC.

Cheers

Renura

The 7041 is really a waste of time fro Australia - it's a USB 1.1 only and unlikely to be continued to be sold in Australia beyond current stocks.

If you have it, there not much you can do, other than sell it or put up with it.

If you don't have it, buy a USB 2 version coming out soon, or buy something else.

The new USB version does have BDA drivers and it will be supported by a number of applications.

Cheers

Renura

Why did you choose this development way?
So if i have only 2 VP cards in the same system (DVB-t and DVB-S) i can't use DNTV Live, and i must buy a DNTV Live card, right?

Another alternative will be UltraDTV which will support VisionPlus DVB-T plus DVB-S using the Twinhan BDA drivers

The BDA drivers do not support the Sat-Ci version of the cards, which is mainly what we are interested in, in relation to DVB-s.

At the same time the souce filter used by SDK based applications has problems whe recording HDTV, etc, threfore we are looking at alternative methods which might require the use of objects, filters, decoders, etc that may only be distributed with the DNTV Live! (or VP) hardware, for copyright reasons.

Furthermore, we are not looking at just the existing VP cards, but also at the future ones, which may very well require a different approach, despite the BDA drivers.

DNTV Live! will use the BDA drivers where appropriate and non BDA approaches if and when appropriate. This way we can support DVB-t, DVB-S (including CI) and DVB-c.

Cheers

Renura

But will VisionPlus SAT CI work with BDA drivers even if the CI part (PCMCIA slot) is not recognized? Will it work only for FTA channels?

AFAIK Yes

Hello! I have the problem of getting thrice the tv-listings when scanning with Windows MCE 2005. This topic was discussed before here.

robert_s pointed out that for the european region, the "locking range" has to be limited to +-100 KHz. Can this be changed please? It is not only an annoying bug but leads to lock ups in mce when assigning tv programs to the channels...

Thanks in advance.


DAULSTA

I suggest you contact TwinHan directly about that. These are not official manufacturer's support forums although some of the manufacturer's do read them from time to time ~

Joey what is the homepage of UltraDTV?

Can i download it?

http://www.ultradtv.net It has not been released yet, we will be going into beta next month. Some of the screen shots are a little out of date and I will try to get them updated real soon now

The primary visual differences are that we now have both xmltv and live EIT based program guide screens and we have added the ability for the user to group and rename both xmltv and tuned channels. There are also a few new popup windows in the video view for channel selection, audio video control etc.

I will put up a screenshot showing at least an overview of this later today...

got it worked out. the entry:

; Skip scan shift frequency (+-167) - For DVB-T
; Normal
HKR,"DriverData","DisableLockShift",0x00010001, 0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00
; Disable lock shift
;HKR,"DriverData","DisableLockShift",0x00010001, 0x01,0x00,0x00,0x00

must both be set to 0x01,0x00,0x00,0x00

resulting to the following thbda_mce_eu.inf:

; Skip scan shift frequency (+-167) - For DVB-T
; Normal
HKR,"DriverData","DisableLockShift",0x00010001, 0x01,0x00,0x00,0x00
; Disable lock shift
;HKR,"DriverData","DisableLockShift",0x00010001, 0x01,0x00,0x00,0x00

with this modification only the correct channels are scanned ... no more multiple entries.

Greets, DAULSTA

Venturer Posted on Dec 21 2004, 08:16 AM
QUOTE (JoeyBloggs @ Dec 19 2004, 11:29 AM)
Another alternative will be UltraDTV which will support VisionPlus DVB-T plus DVB-S using the Twinhan BDA drivers


Joey what is the homepage of UltraDTV?

Can i download it?

Ventura, Try http://www.ultradtv.net/

Regards, Greg.

As promised http://www.ultradtv.net/news.htm

So will Ultra DTV support multiple TWINHAN cards (DVB-T plus DVB-S) in the same system through BDA drivers?
When it ll be avaiable, how much does UltraDTV cost?

Yes UltraDTV will support multiple cards from TwinHan or any other manufacturers in the one system with BDA drivers, in any combination supported by the drivers.

There are currently some restrictions in viewing more than one BDA source at a time (due to bug's in Microsoft's TIF filter) but it is possible to overcome this by either running two instances of UltraDTV or running under MCE2005 (as an operating system). Hopefully Microsoft will release a DX / BDA update or Service Pack to address this on Win2000, WinXP but please don't rely on this happening.

Multiple silent recordings (plus one live viewing) on any supported operating system will not be a problem.

It remains to be seen how useful BDA DVB-S is. As it does not currently support CA CAM's / Card's and we have no information on when Microsoft will add this support to the BDA Architecture. It may be necessary to reintroduce the TwinHan SDK support for DVB-S although this is not our preferred option...

We are planning on going through private and then public beta's starting next month and the product will be available after that... Pricing is not finalized but as a guide AUD 50.00 (USD 40.00) for a single card / device license and double that for a multiple card / device license.

Regards
Joey

will the visionplus pci dvb-s card and the bda driver work with mce2005???

As has been discussing in several other threads. Apparently not as MCE2005 does not support DVB-S.

Joey, when UltraDTV public beta program will start?
Can i join it?

Later this month. Yes by definition a 'public' beta is open to all

Thanks for all your contribution Renura.
My problem is that I don't succeed in installing the bda drivers version 1.2.1.2 (or the earlier one). I have Twinhan dtv-t card. I can update the audio driver but the videodriver gets a yellow mark in the device manager (error 10, or something like it). If I try to do a new hardware installation with those drivers it won'r work because the installer can't find the manufacturer. The dvb card is working well with the twinhan application. If I try the spectrum bda drivers updating functions but then MCE can find the tuner but will not scan the channels.

With the way sat services seem to be moving towards encryption systems that don't have a CAM available for them (ie you have to have a box with embedded support, and that usually means the providers box only), CAM support may not be a problem in the not too distant future anyway.

Uninstall the old drivers, shutdown your PC.
change the PCI slot your DVB-t card is in
Reboot and force window to install the BDA drivers

Cheers

Renura

Hi All,

Having the same problems...
Bought a TwinhanDTV Ter-CI with the hope that it should work with MCE...
E-mailed the support at Visionplus and got the answer that it didn't support MCE

Anyhow, I won't give up just yet as it's soooo... close to work.
Problem is. With the chassi that I'm using (a Silverstone) I can't use another PCI-slot than the one I'm currently using.

Any other suggestions about how to get the card started???

Regards
Grihingo

Ummm if TwinHan are saying the BDA drivers don't support it, then the BDA drivers don't support it. You are not close... A driver that is incorrectly installed and won't start is just as bad as no driver at all