Sky MCE Integration

Sky / MCE Integration
by Graeme Clark

UPDATE : digital everywhere FloppyDTV S2 cards are no longer available as the manufacturer is no longer in business. We will try to locate an alternate solution asap. Please be aware as well that with the new white sky viewing cards, the Predator firmware will no longer decrypt channels. This article is retained for past reference only.

Following a selection of previous popular Kustom articles , here we explore another use of media centres – this time it’s adapting your Media Centre to view and record Sky broadcasts without the need of a separate Digibox. Admittedly this is something I had tried before but couldn’t get quite right, but with some new hardware, a little more perseverance and some useful tips picked up from around the net (special credit goes to the posts in this avforums thread) I’ve been able to compile a guide showing how to set this up step-by-step. All of therequired parts are available from Kustom PCs and are linked during the article.

Advantages and Drawbacks Summary

Previously we have suggested using an analogue tuner card receiving a feed via the SVideo port from an existing Digibox, and using the Media Centre remote kit to change channels on the Digibox. This is fairly easy to set up , but results in some quality loss and still requires the Digibox to remain present – which usually means slow channel changing, unreliable use and the fact that the units are just plain ugly when sat next to an elegant HTPC case.

Here, we aim to take the Digibox out of the equation and use a satellite tuner in the PC to capture – this gives better picture quality, improved reliability and means we can get rid of the Digibox. This does still of course require a Sky viewing card and on-going subscription – it’s just they physical hardware of the Digibox that is being removed. There’s a bit of expense and effort involved in setting this up but it’s been proven to work well. *Note : see footnote about retaining Sky box to occasionally keep the viewing card 'alive'

One slight downside about MCE (both in 2005 and Vista variants) is that it will not play HD channels as the H.264 compression method is not supported, but later on we’ll look at MediaPortal which offers an alternative means of displaying these channels. Also, the ability to order Sky ‘Box Office’ (pay per view) services is no longer available.

Method – Hardware Setup

There’s a few steps here to allow the Sky viewing card to be used in the PC and to ensure channels are decrypted and then ordered correctly in Media Centre. We’re going to install aFloppyDTV S2 TV tuner into the system, this slots inside the PC (PCI or PCI-E slots are supported, as the card connects via a firewire cable) and provides a Common Interface slot at the rear.

We need to add a CAM (Conditional Access Module) here to insert the Sky viewing card into. The recommended model is aT-REX / Dragon unit since these support the Sky NDS viewing cards. Next, we need to load ‘Predator’ firmware on to the CAM module , this is achieved using a CAS Programmer. Search google for Predator firmware and download (‘predator364.zip’ is a good bet to search for, or if you like we will email it to you).

Download the programmer software fromDuoLabs website and follow the onscreen instructions to install the loader card into the programmer module and update the Dragon firmware with the predator364.dra file.

When this has completed, you need to locate the serial number of the Digibox that the Sky NDS card is paired with – this can be found by entering the Services > System Setup > System Details menu on your Digibox. The number is 10 digits long, keep it noted as we'll need this later.

Now, you can install the FloppyDTV S2 software – for the installation process choose ‘MCE Setup’ as the driver installation type (this sets the card up as DVB-T digital tuner so that MCE can see it since satellite tuners are not natively supported in MCE) and choose Astra 2D 28 as your transponder type for UK use (although we’ll be adjusting transponder settings later).

Run C:\Program Files\FireDTV\Tools\Common Interface.exe and in this program you can configure the Dragon Card / Predator firmware – there’s just one thing we need to do here, and that’s enter the serial number from the Digibox retrieved earlier. Go to the Settings Menu, and choose to update ‘NDS Box Serial’ – enter your Digibox serial number here, press OK and then exit the application.

Method – MCE Setup

Now we’re ready to set up channels - unfortunately it’s a little more tricky than a conventional Freeview setup, but I’ve completed some of the hard work for you ! The first thing is to update the transponder list – this is a set of satellite frequencies to scan, married to MCE ‘virtual’ channel numbers. Unfortunately the transponder list that’s included with the FireDTV software is a bit vague and not really geared up for UK use.

There are two ways of resolving this – you could create your own transponder list (using information from the following two lists : http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html and http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/skyuk.html ). This is created by adding frequencies (make sure to add ‘000’ at the end of each one since they are displayed in Mhz on the site) , Syncrate , H/V Polarisation and FEC numbers. Make sure note to delete any of the MCE channel numbers, keeping them with spaced quotes if the position is not required eg

"690167"=" "

*OR* - you could download the list I have already made (Transponder.zip), suitable for Sky Digital UK subscribers. Probably a better option.

To install the transponder list , download the above Transponder.zip file and run 'ClearTransponder.bat' file (which clears the existing list) and then double click the transponder registry file to insert the information into the registry. Next time MCE scans for available channels it has information on the correct frequencies to scan.

If it’s not already running, start MCE and enter Settings > TV menu > Set up TV Signal. Choose to set up the guide, enter your postcode and choose ‘Sky UK’ as the guide type. We don’t want to run a scan quite yet, so when the guide finishes downloading, choose to finish the wizard / cancel channel scan.

If we run the scan just now so we’ll get a lot of channels that we don’t actually want. Using the application ‘mce2dvbs’ we can create an exclusion list to block these channels, and it will save a lot of time later. Visit http://www.reycom-mediacenter.ch/rmcdownload_mc.asp and scroll to the bottom of the page to download mce2dvbs.

Mce2dvbs is written in German, but the help guide does include an English translation. Basically, you want to make sure ‘ExclusionList’ is selected on the left of the window and then click on channels you wish to block and press the right arrow to transfer them to the exclusion list. For instance, you may not want the wide selection of radio / shopping channels, and if you don’t subscribe to the sport or film packages there’s not much use in having those either. Further, the various extra regions of ITV1 / BBC1 will likely not be required, so you’ll probably want to exclude those too. When you have chosen your list, click ExclusionList speichern which saves the Exclusion List to MCE.

Return to MCE, and from the Settings > TV menu choose ‘Scan for more services’ and allow the channel scan to complete. Don’t worry that the number of services found / displayed may appear to have some missing, MCE will think that encrypted channels are blocked, but the Dragon card with Predator firmware will allow these to be displayed after all. When the scan completes, go to Settings > TV > Edit Channel List and press ‘Select All’ and then ‘Save’. This switches on the encrypted channels (but not the channels blocked earlier in the ExclusionList – they are hidden).

At this stage, it’s worth viewing a channel to make sure that the tuner and CAM are working correctly.

The channel listing will be in the wrong order, so again we turn to mce2dvbs to resolve this. Click on ‘Kanale Sortierung’ on the left side and insert channels in the order you want them to appear. Use sky.com’s TV Guide website as a reference, or use the file I created below as a template (although you may wish to change the ‘Scottish’ BBC and STV channels to those of your region) – Click here to download and use the ‘Soriterung importieren’ button to import the list. When changes are completed, click ‘Soriterung ubernehmen’ to apply the changes to MCE.

Now that the channel order is resolved, return to MCE and visit Settings > TV > Guide > Add Listings to Channel. Some channels will be missing their guide listing as the channel name can vary slightly from that stored in the guide, so they need to be paired up manually. When you choose a channel , if it’s name is already at the top of the list then it’s already working fine, but if it’s not picked already scroll down through the list and select the appropriate channel from the guide listings. This process tends to be easier with a keyboard / mouse rather than a remote control.

This step completes the MCE integration – you can now watch and record channels from the Sky channels as you please ! The FireDTV software installs a background application in the system tray which will ensure that any time a channel is changed decryption is updated automatically so this works fine for both live viewing and programmed recordings.

Coming soon : Media Portal setup guide with information on viewing HD channels via satellite.

Comment in the forums...

*Update : We have been advised that the Sky viewing card may need to be re-inserted back into a Digibox in a 5 week period to keep it 'alive' - at the time of writing the article, this setup had been in day to day use for a few weeks, so will confirm on the above if it proves to be an issue.

*Update 2 : After being in use for 2 months outwith of the Sky Box, the viewing card would no longer show encrypted channels and had to be reactivated by calling Sky customer services and reinstalled in the Digibox. Therefore it would be recommended to use a LNB splitter / or swap the cable back to the Sky box once a month and leave the viewing card in overnight to ensure it's kept 'alive'.