DVB - PC Cards Getting the nightly woop woop channels?

[elyl]

Yeah, yeah, I know you can get much better quality online, but sometimes you're watching the telly at night and there's feck all on, and you can't be bothered booting up the desktop PC.

So, Playboy, Adult and TVX all get picked up fine by Vista media center, but the "nightly" or PPV channels like Red Hot Raw, Red Hot Grannies and Red Hot Dogs don't seem to get picked up properly (FloppyDTV-C, ex-TW). I know, from other tv programs like DVBviewer, the pr0n channels were usually unnamed services, and you could access them that way, but I'd like them all in my Vista media center. Has anyone else had any luck getting these channels picked up in Vista?

 

[cafe.racer]

Ewwww.

I've got all the channels, named and some with Guide (Sky EPG)...

Are you missing a transponder?

 

[elyl]

Yeah, I've got all the transponders. Are you ex-TW or ex-NTL? I know on ex-TW it transmits a placeholder channel for the PPN channels, this is just a rolliong 24-hour advert telling you how to subscribe. The actual channels with the action on them are transmitted as data channels, and don't identify themselves with a channel name (usually listed as Service127 or something similar in DVBViewer).

 

[nozzer]

The only way presently to find these channels is to actually look at the ones with strange names and then rename them when you fathom out what they actually are.

It is possible to look at the dvb linkages from the placeholder channels and follow those but afaik there is no software that presently does that (except the firmware on a VM digibox of course)

 

[elyl]

Does Vista MC pick these channels up for you, though, nozzer? I can get the channels with other programs and rename them, but it seems like VMC doesn't pick them up in scans as valid channels.

 

[cafe.racer]

I had a quick look last night, I have three or so Red Hot channels - it must've picked these up in a scan, I haven't done anything "special".

When I looked last night, they were all showing the preview/To Subscribe message. I'm positive they've shown actual programs, though.

 

[nozzer]

Does Vista MC pick these channels up for you, though, nozzer? I can get the channels with other programs and rename them, but it seems like VMC doesn't pick them up in scans as valid channels.

Not sure what Vista does. I've purposefully not used it as it really isn't a good option for cable (Micro$oft were persuaded not to add proper cable support by the US cable Co's).

 

[elyl]

The poor support for cable has nothing to do with the US cable companies, as they don't use DVB-C. Microsoft is just too lazy to bolt on an extra few lines of code onto their DVB-T implementation to allow tuning of DVB-C and DVB-S. Actually, I think CableCard (the US standard) has much better support than DVB-C.

 

[nozzer]

lol, I dont think I actually mentioned dvb-c

As far as the OS is concerned though the standard doesn't really matter, its the drivers that handle the low level protocol. Once you get to the OS level and higher its just a set of access protocols which, in the most part, should be identical regardless of protocol and even medium (sat/terrestrial or cable).

There was an article a while ago in some of the technical magazines regarding support (or lack of) for cable in Microsoft OS's and that it was basically down to pressure being applied because most US cable companies do not allow "foreign" TV receiving equipment to be connected to there network thus there would be no need for such a thing in a PC OS.

It got to the point where questions were being asked in the senate that supplying tools that could be only used for hacking cable TV should not be built into a PC OS.

 

[kitoog]

it's simply down to the fact that MS dont care at all about the Non-US market. They'll happily add whatever new standard appear in the US. Luckily they've finally copped on about 5 yrs two late and have setup a development centre in Dublin where they are testing dvb-s and hopefully dvb-c. They were meant to start beta testing the next version of vista media centre last summer and nothing was released. So unfortunately it could be years before we see it.