TV Cards

Overview

A general reference to TV Card features supported by MediaPortal.

Introduction

This is not a complete list of all TV Cards supported by MediaPortal. It lists only specific manufacturers or cards with specific features that are not supported with all cards of the same type.

MediaPortal supports far too many cards to be able to list all of them individually. If you want to know whether a certain card is supported then first check the guidelines below.

Supported Cards

If your tuner has a BDA driver (most DVB and ATSC/QAM tuners do) and is not listed in the unsupported list then there is a very good chance that it will work. 

In general, MediaPortal's TV Server supports:

1. Any DVB/ATSC card which has BDA drivers. This includes the vast majority of all tuner cards available today.
2. All analog cards with hardware encoding on board.
3. Some analog cards which require software encoders. The card must not require a connection to the "Line In" or "Microphone" input of a sound card to make the audio work. Also, TV Server only works with some software encoders.
4. The TechniSat SkyStar-2/Airstar-2/CableStar-2 cards when using WDM drivers.
5. The Hauppauge Colossus and HD PVR video capture devices. TV Server also supports capture inputs on cards with analog tuners, however other capture cards without tuners are not supported.

Unsupported TV Cards

CableCard tuners are not supported.

The following cards are currently unsupported (or not yet fully supported)

• Anysee (DiSEqC, CI)
• Avermedia (DiSEqC, CI) - please petition them if you want support for these features in MediaPortal
• Blackgold (DiSEqC) - support planned for 1.3.0
• Ceton - Ceton CableCard tuners do not work at all in MediaPortal
• Compro (DiSEqC)
• Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650
• HDHomeRun Prime (CableCard) - clear QAM works with the latest drivers, but encrypted channels will not work
• KNC TV-Station DVB-S2 Twin (DVB-S2, DiSEqC, CI) - DVB-S tuning should work if you use the DVB-S network provider
• Omicom (DiSEqC) - support planned for 1.3.0
• Pinnacle/PCTV Systems (DiSEqC) - support planned for 1.3.0
• Realtek RTL2832U based tuners (DAB, FM) - RTL2832U is a chipset used in many tuners (eg. DigitalNow Dabby and Quad, Mygica T803 and T188) that support DVB-T with DAB/DAB+ and FM radio. DVB-T functions work fine, however DAB and FM functions are not supported at this time.
• TBS (CI) - support planned for 1.3.0
• Technotrend Premium

Special Features

The following tables lists the special features of various tuners that are supported by MediaPortal. It is not meant to be a list of each supported card 

DVB-C Cards

DVB-S(2) Cards

DVB-T Cards

Video Capture Cards

Feature Explanation

CI/CAM

Some cards have a CI/CAM slot. Some examples are shown below:

The CI slot allows you to watch encrypted (pay TV) channels when you insert an appropriate CAM and smart card. It is not possible to watch encrypted channels without a CI slot, CAM and smartcard.

CI Menu

CAMs generally have a service menu that allows you set parental control settings and view information about your subscription, smart card and CAM. If your card supports it, MediaPortal allows you to access the service menu in two ways:

1. from the fullscreen TV context menu (F9 or Info/More key)

2. from TV-Server Configuration

Multichannel Decoding

Multichannel decoding is the ability to decrypt multiple channels from a single transponder/multiplex with a single tuner. Both the tuner and CAM must support decrypting multiple channels for this feature to work.

Digital Devices tuners support a feature called multidecrypt (MTD) which many people confuse with multichannel decoding. Multidecrypt is the ability for multiple tuners to share a single CAM. Digital Devices cards support multidecrypt, but they do not support multichannel decryption.

Multichannel decoding example

A single Digital Everywhere FloppyDTV S2 card can decrypt multiple channels from a single transponder with a single CAM.

Multidecrypt example

A Digital Devices Cine S2 card with its two DVB-S2 tuners can use one CAM to decrypt two channels from any two transponders. Both tuners must be used even if the channels are on the same transponder.

There are no tuners that support both multichannel decoding and multidecrypt.

DiSEqC

DiSEqC is a communication protocol that allows satellite tuners, switches, LNBs, dish motors (positioners), and other related satellite equipment to work together. It is most commonly used by satellite tuners to control a switch or motor that enables you to receive channels from multiple satellites.

The picture below shows a dish with four LNBs. Each LNB is connected to an input on a DiSEqC switch, which is in turn connected to one or more tuners. When the owner of this dish wants to watch a channel, their tuner must use DiSEqC commands to select the correct LNB corresponding with the satellite which broadcasts the channel that the person wants to watch.

DVB-S2

DVB-S2 is the second generation DVB satellite broadcasting standard. It is commonly used to transmit HDTV H.264 channels since the better compression and modulation techniques allow HD channels to be transmitted using the same bandwidth as a normal SDTV MPEG-2 channel.

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