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Skystar2 and Twinhan - DVB satellite tuners for HTPCs?

1331 Views 8 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  balazer, 
K
Some guy on another forum claimed to have found the holy grail of DVB tuner cards for HTPCs. Here is his quote:


"Haha, that's news to me and the 1000's using a $70 100% legal and legit FTA PCI sat card like the Skystar2 or Twinhan 1020a. Heck, we can even get great HDTV on many channels with DVB-S PCI cards and an 18" dish. (search the web, don't ask). These are the best kept little secret of the TV reception world, and it p!sses off those in the sat biz because it is 100% legal."


Anyone heard of this Skystar2 or Twinhan PCI cards? Are they actually legit? Will they work directly with DirecTV or Dish Network without the standard set top box set-up? Please comment on the viability of these cards. Thanks.
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K
Google search produced the following result:

Twinhan VisionPlus 1020a Satellite PCI card


It claims to support DVB-S signals from Dish Network. Anyone know what is meant by "Free-to-Air programs"? Does it include channels such as ESPN, TNT, CNBC, etc.?


What PVR software are supported by these cards? Thanks.
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J
Those cards will work for FTA DVB satellite. That is their legitimate use.


However, they are widely used by people to hack satellite and as such probably taboo for these forums.
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K
Quote:
Originally posted by jvincent
Those cards will work for FTA DVB satellite. That is their legitimate use.


However, they are widely used by people to hack satellite and as such probably taboo for these forums.
What is meant by FTA (free-to-air)? Is it the same as OTA?


If I pay for Dish network or DirecTV subscription for extended channels (eg. ESPN, TNT, TBS, etc.) then can I use the satellite card perform PVR functionality on these channels? Thanks.
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S
 MyTheatre can tune satellites and has the ability to record.
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J
Quote:
Originally posted by kharvel
What is meant by FTA (free-to-air)? Is it the same as OTA?


If I pay for Dish network or DirecTV subscription for extended channels (eg. ESPN, TNT, TBS, etc.) then can I use the satellite card perform PVR functionality on these channels? Thanks.
FTA is indeed Free to Air. It's the satellite equivalent of OTA.


As to the second question, that's somewhat of a grey area since there is no legitimate way to tune the encrypted channels with a DVB card.


We're getting dangerously close to violating the forum rules, so I'll leave it at that.
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M
There are FTA channels on some of the Dish Network satellites. They are the NASA channel and the Dish Network "barker" channels (How to use your remote channel, This is why Dish is so great channel, This is what's on Dish on Demand channel, etc, etc, etc). It is 100% legal to pull these channels in. It is illegal to receive the encrypted channels with these DVB-S cards.


DirecTV does not use the DVB-S standard, so cards do not work with it. VOOM uses MPEG-4, so the cards don't work with that either.


There are other stations and services out there that have FTA signals on the various birds (mostly religious channels), and it is 100% legal to pull these in, but there is also no guarantee that they will be FTA forever.
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Im running MyTheatre with a Twinhan and it works great.


You need a fast computer with these cards compared to a Nexus since they dont have onboard mpeg2 decoding.
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B
VOOM uses MPEG-2. In any case the card doesn't do any video or audio decoding, only receiving and channel decoding. So it wouldn't make any difference whether VOOM uses MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 as far as these cards are concerned. The bigger issue for VOOM that the system VOOM uses (Digicipher II 8PSK w/ turbocoding) is not supported by any of these cards.


Actually the TwinHan is capable of receiving DIRECTV's DSS transmissions, but you won't find any interesting FTA programs on DIRECTV.
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