Topic: TV on the PC

[jww41005]

Hello Pals,

I've recently looked into the possibility of getting British TV via satellite, but I'd need a 2 metre dish, which aren't cheap, if you can find one.
So, now I'm looking into watching TV on my PC. Can anyone recommend a program?
I'm not talking about a TV card.

John

[GillE]

I've got a Hauppauge card in my computer and I don't get on with the software at all.  It doesn't acknowledge as many stations as the Microsoft Media Center which was bundled with Vista.

I wish there was some way to recieve more than the free-to-air satellite stations on computer.  I have a subscription to Sky and it would be great if I could hook up the signal from the decoder box to my computer without compromising the television.  Unfortunately, this doesn't seem possible.  Unless, of course, someone out there knows a trick...?

[Sandra]

If your Sky box has Svid or Composite out then you could feed that into your Hauppage card and watch the same programme that was being watched on the TV on your PC Gill.
There are other ways to watch encrypted satellite TV channels on PCs and other TVs but you need Linux based satellite receivers and/or PCs and its not that straight forward, unless you are in the know 

[jww41005]

I have a dish pointing at Hispasat 30W, which is only good for BBC News. All the good stuff is on Astra 28.2E, which is a collection of 3 satellites that Sky uses, but the signal is too weak for me.
Anyway, I've seen some programs on the net and in the shops that give you the opportunity to watch something different instead of the usual dribble.
Spanish TV is terrible.........
I'll see what info I can dig up.

[GillE]

Unfortunately, Sandra, my computer is upstairs and our telly is downstairs.  The aerial feeds through the Sky box and then up to the computer by means of a coaxial cable.  I used to be able to tune my analogue TV card into whatever was on the Sky channel but now I've got a digital card it won't recognise the signal.  I've tried fitting an analogue tuner to the computer as well as the digital card, but they were incompatible and the digital card overrode the analogue.  It defeated me but I wonder if you can see a way around the problem?

[Sandra]

I cant see why thats happend Gill, I have a digital pci card and a digital USB tuner, both on freeview plus an analogue TV pci card that I just use for recording from a VCR to the pc if someone wants something on a DVD.
I use a different program for the analogue card, have you tried that ?
Have you got Svid or Composite in on either your digital or analogue card ? If so you could use the second scart out of the sky box, or even a scart 1 into 2 if you use one scart to the TV and one to a VCR, then use a scart to Svid/composite adapter and run Svid or composite and the audio from that.

Have you been hit by the recent police crackdown on the re transmission of SKY UK channels in Spain then John 

Hispasat used to have some good film and sports channels on when it was showing Tequilla and another one whos name I have forgotten, but I think they may have moved those packages to Astra 1 now 

[jww41005]

Yes, I heard about that, and if I remember right it wasn't so long ago, nothing to do with me though!
In my part of Spain some small time crooks were retransmitting Via Digital. It was quite a big problem in the villages.
Via Digital now broadcasts on 'Negra', which is apparently difficult to crack, not that I know anything about it