Newbie in the UK

[Vertigo1]

Hi to all, first post here.

I'm keen to build a PVR PC and have been looking closely into Beyond TV as it seems by far the best software solution out there, but I have a couple of questions that some helpful people here may be able to answer for me.

The first relates to the electronic programme guide. I'm on Telewest digital and already have a subscription to Digiguide, is it possible to get BTV to use this to obtain it's listing info, and how exactly does this work? Is it fully automated or will I have to manually copy data around?

The second question relates to hardware. I realise I'll need a TV card (preferably with on-board MPEG2 encoding), but what would people in the UK recomment for use with my Telewest setup? On the input side, what's the best way of obtaining the required signals from the STB (and possibly RF aerial too). On the output side, do I need to use a graphics card with TV out to feed a standard TV, or am I better looking at a card like the Hauppauge PVR-350 which appears to have it's own S-Video and sound outputs.

This last issue of input and output to the PC is what's really confusing me at present. If anyone can help or point me in the direction of a site which explains all this stuff from the ground up for total idiots I'd be very grateful.

Cheers,
Toby.

[Kryton]

There is no way of using the Digiguide to generate XMLTV for BTV or any other PVR solution. Heard once there was a way of doing this exporting the guide so it can be printed out (this somehow gets written to a file). You then need to write a parser in perl or similar scripting language for this. I think Digiguide removed this feature or stopped making it possible? Not sure I never tried it ...

I personally use this grabber to get XMLTV data from the radio times web site: http://www.alanbirtles.dsl.pipex.com/xmltv/xmltv.htm

Works very well and gets 2 weeks worth of detailed data in under 5 minutes.

You then need this tool to import the XMLTV files into Beyond TV http://www.lmgestion.net/@en-us/4/22/20/article.asp

As for Hardware I use Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 as my TV card but with my current setup I only use the features that are in the 250. I use my ATI 9800's S-video out with a standard cable from dixon's and that works perfect and the quality is very good. I wouldnt bother using the S-video out of the PVR-350 as socket is unstandard so you cant buy any cables for it. The supplied S-Video cable is in fact s-video converted to Composite then back to S-Video in the end so in fact its really only a Composite cable which can connect to the s-video socket on your TV.

This is bi-directional so I use the scart connector on it to connect my Sky Digibox to it (still this is SCART converted to composite then S-video so in fact the quality is only composite). This is the only extra use of the 350 over the 250 (this cable and the convinience of SCART) but I soon will opt for buying an RBG SCART to S-Video converter. This should improve this quality but that will set me back around £75-100 with cables. You can get this from http://www.js-technology.com/

Other very good hardware when building a PVR is the USB-UIRT http://www.usbuirt.com/ It now ships from the UK now so much faster to receive. This works perfectly with my Sky Digibox for changing channels automatically from the EPG. All these should work equally well with Telewest I would think.

Lastly I recommend the X-10 PC Control from Marmitek. I would download the 3rd party x-10 drivers from http://www.marmitek.com/en/software/x10drivers.exe.zip

This means it will work without installing Showshifter which will conflict. Only problem is it has stopped working with BTV 3.5 where as it had native support in 3.4 ... I think I may have to invest in Girder.nl software soon to get it working again which is a shame.

[Vertigo1]

Thanks for the reply.

On the output side, I'm somewhat concerned about the quality available from the TV-out socket on standard graphics cards, as in my experience this is just awful. I've seen posts from users in the US about using external transcoders to convert the VGA output to composite but as we tend to have RGB inputs on our TVs over here, and the VGA output is fundamentally an RGB signal, is it not possible to connect the VGA output directly to an RGB SCART input, via just a cable or maybe with a minimal amount of electronics in between?

As for the XMLTV stuff you mentioned, posts I've read this evening suggest that BOTH Digiguide and Radio Times have now blocked this from working. Frankly until there is proper support for program guides built into BTV I shan't be buying it as the lack of a proper programme service for UK and European users just leaves a gaping hole in the system and renders it worthless to me.

[mikem]

You are going to be waiting a long time to get a proper EPG in a PC based PVR system in the UK. (likely never)

Snapstream have added support for tvtv.co.uk in the 3.5. This is a website and allows you to send recordings to the BTV system.

Incidentally there is a digiguide add-on that allows you to send what you mark for recording in Digiguide to your PVR.

http://ratings.digiguide.com/default.asp?th=addins

This would allow you to use your subscription to record in Snapstream.

Neither solution populates the BTV program guide however.

Whilst I cannot speak for Snapstream it would seem that they are expecting European users to fork out the £15.99 a year to get your listings, and this seems to be the official version. As such I would not hold my breath waiting for Snapstrea,.net to provide UK listings.

With regards to the Radio Times website then they now have an XML friendly method.

http://www.alanbirtles.dsl.pipex.com/xmltv/xmltv.htm

is the grabber I use. Whilst this is free at the moment they may start to charge for the Radio Times data in future.

If an officially supported populated EPG is high on your priority then I would suggest that you look at the new DVD-Hard Disk recorders coming out. Whilst they are not as good as a proper PVR solution at least using the Panasonic one you can time shift using a DVD-RAM disk and record permamently using a DVD-R disk.

[Vertigo1]

Originally Posted by mikem

You are going to be waiting a long time to get a proper EPG in a PC based PVR system in the UK. (likely never)

So they have no real desire to support the market outside the US properly then?

Snapstream have added support for tvtv.co.uk in the 3.5. This is a website and allows you to send recordings to the BTV system.

So how does this work exactly? Do you browse the tvtv.co.uk website from within BTV, or do you have to it it externally and pipe the data in somehow?

Whilst I cannot speak for Snapstream it would seem that they are expecting European users to fork out the £15.99 a year to get your listings, and this seems to be the official version. As such I would not hold my breath waiting for Snapstrea,.net to provide UK listings.

Not sure what you mean here. What exactly do they give you for £15.99 a year? I don't expect something for nothing here and if they'd only work in conjunction with Digiguide or TVTV to provide a proper EPG that's automatically populated, a la US version, then I'd gladly pay an annual subscription for this service.

With regards to the Radio Times website then they now have an XML friendly method.

http://www.alanbirtles.dsl.pipex.com/xmltv/xmltv.htm

is the grabber I use. Whilst this is free at the moment they may start to charge for the Radio Times data in future.

So this does let you populate the EPG from the RT website, and you can then browse the EPG from within BTV to schedule recording and so on? How automated is this transfer?

[mikem]

1. To be fair to Snapstream at least they have teamed up with tvtv.co.uk. This is more then can be said then any of the other companies offering PC based PVR solutions, including european developers. Reading through the forums then they are apparently starting to make a push for the European market and this is the first part.

2. You unfortunately need to browse from outside of the BTV product to the website. You effectively select the programs you are interested in and mark them up for recording. That is then exported into the BTV software on your PC and inserted as a manual recording. I am not sure how it handles recording conflicts as you have to pay the £15.99 to get this to work so I didn't bother. It does not populate your Program Guide within BTV which was my issue with it.

3. I am guessing here that Snapstream are expecting European users to be happy with the tvtv.co.uk method of getting the recordings working in your BTV system. For 15.99 you get the ability to send recording instructions from the tvtv.co.uk website.

Companies such as tvtv and digiguide have to pay for the tv listings information that they get and are not allowed to distribute those listings out. This is the reason that digiguide kept breaking the tool for getting the listings from the digiguide application. I do not expect snapstream to start providing free listings directly as they do in the US and Canada via snapstream.net.

The only advantage that this has over using the digiguide add-on is that this is an officially supported method.
4. Using this along with the XMLTV importer does populate the EPG within BTV. It is not automated but you can create a batch file to run the grabber and then the importer and thenschedule the batch file via the windows scheduler. After that then the grab and import is automatic.

[fieldeffect]

Digiguide - Not going to work. The latest version of Digiguide stops the program that grabs data from Digiguide from working (they seem to be under pressure to stop people from redistributing the listings data). This seems ridiculous because we all just want it for our own personal use, but that seems to be the way it is. If you search these forums there are some quite angry opinions on the subject

TVTV - i'd forget the tvtv idea. You don't get to use any of the funky features that BTV has because BTV doesn't actually have the listings, tvtv just tells BTV what to record. Again, maybe the reason they chose this way of supporting the UK market is something to do with the pressure not to let raw data be redistributed, because if you are just viewing someone else's website you are not actually getting the data in a redistributable form (just a guess - maybe they actually chose tvtv just because it is easier than doing it properly ).

My system uses the two programs Kryton mentioned and it works *very* well for NTL cable channels. The two programs can be scheduled to run silently in the middle of the night so they are invisible to all intents and purposes (I wrote some scripts which check that the jobs completed and that full listings data has been retrieved and emails me if there were any problems).

I use a WinTV PVR-350 for input and a GeForce FX 5200 for TV output. This gives output quality that is pretty much identical to a TiVo or a Sky+ (i'm viewing on a 42" TV, so i'd be the first to notice any picture quality degradation. If it wasn't as good as Tivo I wouldn't be using it.)

BTV doesn't support the TV-Out on the PVR-350, but if you connect a PVR-350's TV-Out "backwards" so you are using it as an input you get fantastic quality capture - richer and better than any other TV card i've tried (and i've tried quite a few).

That of course means you then need something else for TV-Out. The GeForce cards seem to work well with BTV. The reasons that I went for a 5200 were:
1. Cheap
2. Tried and tested by people on these forums
3. Fanless = quiet = girlfriend not complaining about noisy PVR

The only thing that isn't "TiVo equivalent" about my PVR at the moment is that it's controlled via a wireless keyboard rather than a remote control. Still trying to decide on the best one to use.

Nick.

[fieldeffect]

Sorry Mikem. You posted pretty much my thoughts while I was writing

[Eric3a]

I am not sure but I think it's a simple economics: The guide data is more expensive in the UK and the market much smaller than the US.
So Snapstream can't do it.

I believe they'd like to add other countries in the future, and that tvtv is their second forray in that direction (Canadian listings were first).
The greater the success of 3.5, the higher the chances of world-wide domination in future versions. Evil laugh bouhahahaha/
Eric

[Vertigo1]

Thanks for all the replies. I think that the XMLTV transfer from the RT website will do the job for the moment. If they do decide to start charging for the service then that wouldn't be too much of a problem unless they charge a fortune.

To Kryten & fieldeffect, I'm a bit confused about this input on the PVR-350.

I thought the only difference between the 350 and 250 was that the former had output aswell as input, but that this was useless for BTV as this needs a DirectX card to render the interface. Now you seem to be saying this output can be used for input?

Can you explain this a bit more as I can't seem to find any info? I presume the standard input which is on both the 250 and 350 is merely a composite one? Are you saying the output on the 350 can be used as a higher quality input than the composite, maybe even using an RGB signal from the STB?

Many thanks.

[fieldeffect]

Yeah I know. It confused me too

On a 350 you have 3 physical video connectors:

1. The co-ax connector - straight into the TV tuner. I tested this and it is Ok-ish, but not fantastic. Colours are weak and image is soft (as you would expect from a TV Tuner)

2. The Svideo connector - This would have been great, but I found that the input from my NTL cable box through this input was really terrible. Like unwatchably bad. Hauppauge support told me that this was a known issue that happened with "some external input devices" and there was no fix, except...

3 The TV-Out - This is a weird DIN type connector that comes with a break out lead with a SCART on the other end. If you plug it into the output of your STB and tell BTV (or any other capture program) to use the first composite input (composite 1 - channel 200), you get a really nice picture. I'm not surprised you can't find much info on it. I found out about it direct from hauppauge, and when I first starting posting about it people told me I was lying

So in conclusion, this is *probably* just the signal quality that you *should* be able to get using the Svideo input, but for some reason the Svideo input doesn't work for some people. I can't answer definitely because i've never had the Svideo input working well.

Since, as you say, BTV doesn't support the TV-Out on the 350, it would make sense to just get the cheaper 250 *if* you can get the svideo input working properly. Just check before you buy a 250 that you can return it if the svideo input doesn't work as expected with your STB (I can send pics of how bad the svid quality is and how good the reversed tv-out quality is if it would help).

I think that the method i'm using is the best picture you are going to get without going for some kind of horribly expensive external DV converter that BTV wouldn't recognise anyway.

Nick.

[Vertigo1]

Thanks for the info but I've found a good deal on a used-but-mint PVR-250, so I'm going to go with that and see how I go. I can always ebay it later (getting it for a fair bit less than they go for on ebay) and trade up to 350 later.

[fieldeffect]

Sounds like a plan. The 350 is awfully expensive considering the number of other PC components you have to buy. Depending on the quality of the equipment you are outputting to and what sort of expectations you have, you may find that even if you have to use the Co-ax input on the 250 it may be good enough.