• Country Specific Informations
• NewZealand
• SkyEPG

Reliable EPG from Sky Transponders

It's a well known fact that Sky uses NDS Videocrypt for their channel encryption; this means it's impossible to watch Sky directly via DVB-S on a PC, the only option is to use your original Sky set-top-box in conjunction with an analog capture card(e.g. Hauppauge PVR-150) and an infra-red blaster to change channels.

What's not so well known is that Sky do not encrypt the EPG data on their service. So long as you have a DVB-S card pointing at Optus D1 you can make use of this data.

Here's how:

1. Make sure all your analog channels are set up and working correctly, either via your capture card's tuner or S-Video input and IR blaster, if you're using a set-top-box.
2. Scan in the Sky channels.

   • You can either create you own custom Transponder .ini files in c:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal TV Server\Tuningparameters Or use the Optus D1/B1 preset that comes with TV Server; this should contain all the Sky transponders as well as the Freeview ones.

   • All the Sky channels will scan in as encrypted channel and have a red icon

   • From the "Tv Channels" node delete all these encrypted channels except the ones for which you have matching analog channels.

3. Combine the analog channels with the DVB-S encrypted channels.
   • We'll use the "Prime" channel for this example
     • * Select the "Combinations" node under "TV Channels"
     • * Select your analog card. In the left listview you'll now see all your analog channels
     • * From the left listview select "Prime" and in the right listview you'll see channels from other cards
     • * In the right list select the matching "Prime" encrypted channel; it should be at the top of the list
     • * Click the "Combine" button!

   • What we now have is 1 channel with 2 sets of "Tuning Details"; that is, "Prime" can now be viewed from either the analog card or the DVB-S card.

4. Enable EPG grabbing on the DVB-S channels
   • Continuing on our example with the "Prime" channel:
     • * Select the the "TV EPG grabber" node from under the "TV Channels" node
     • * In the listview on the left tick the check box for "Prime" (and the other DVB-S channels)

   • "Prime" is now usable from Analog and DVB-S and it has an EPG source. One problem remains; "Prime" can't actually be viewed via the DVB-S card (because it is encrypted!); this will cause a problem if we try to schedule a recording on "Prime" and some other analog channel at the same time; a conflict won't be detected because TV Server believes that it can use the DVB-S card to record prime as well as the analog card.

5. Change the mapping for the encrypted DVB-S channels to "EPG Only" mappings:
   • Again with our "Prime" example.
     • * Select the "TV Mapping" node under the "TV Channels" node
     • * Select your DVB-S card. In the left listview will be channels that are not mapped to the DVB-S card and in the right channels that are.
     • * In the right listview double click "Prime"; you will see that it changes to "(EPG Only)"

   • What have done is told TV Server that "Yes we can tune "Prime" on the DVB-S card but only for EPG Grabbing". The card won't be used when trying to view or record on "Prime".

That's it! No more xml downloads and imports, just endless reliable EPG data direct from the provider!