Freeview and Freesat in Win7 Media center

Luke284

Luke284

Luke284

Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
1,828
Location
Southampton
Hi,

I've got a HTPC running Windows 7 and I use the built in Media center for TV etc. I've got a Dual freeview card installed for watching and recording TV.

I was thinking about getting a Sat tuner card and using that to get the HD channels that are on freesat.

Will media center allow me to have two freeview tuners (on a single card) and a freesat tuner as well?

Ideally I'd want a dual sat tuner and not use the dual freeview tuner but my flat only has a single sat feed to my living room.
 

probedb

probedb

probedb

Associate
Joined
24 Jun 2006
Posts
1,462
I'm pretty sure it will. I was originally looking at getting a BlackGold BG3600 which is twin Freeview HD and twin Freesat but decided to stick to a 3620 which is just twin FreeviewHD.

Freesat is better because they use AC3, Freeview decided on AAC for HD which pretty much no receiver will support :(
 

DragonQ

DragonQ

DragonQ

Soldato
Joined
13 Jun 2009
Posts
6,847
Freesat is also better simply because of the superior bit rates. I had to watch some ITV4 footy last night on Freeview because my DVB-S2 tuner was being used to record something else. It was painful, blocks everywhere. For the second half I watched on satellite and it was much nicer.

Windows Media Center should work fine with 2x DVB-T(2) and 1x DVB-S(2) tuners, although it has a weird bug that if one tuner is DVB-T and another is DVB-T2, it won't find DVB-T2 channels (i.e. the HD ones). There is a fix for this though, I think it's posted on BlackGold's website.

Have you tried the open source MediaPortal by the way? It has a good number of advantages over Windows Media Center, including being able to record as many streams as you want with a single tuner if they're all on the same multiplex. As a test, I recorded 13 channels simultaneously last night using my BGT-3630 and all worked perfectly. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom