Irish DTT (SAORVIEW) on Windows
- Introduction
- MPEG4 / H.264 Video Decoder
- Desktop TV viewing software
- Media Center Software
Introduction
There is a wide selection of Media Center and Desktop TV Viewing applications available for Windows.
The Media Center class applications usually run full screen and are designed to be used with a remote control sitting some distance from the TV / Monitor.
Desktop TV Viewing applications are generally designed to be operated by mouse and work better as floating desktop applications opposed to full blown Media Centers.
DVB-T Device / BDA Drivers
When choosing a DVB-T device try and make sure it uses BDA drivers (Broadcast Driver Architecture). If your device uses BDA drivers it mean it is accessible to all of the applications described below.
MPEG4 / H.264 Video Decoder
You need a H.264 video decoder installed on your system to be able to view Irish DTT. There are software decoders which use the CPU to process the image and there are hardware accelerated decoders (DXVA) which use both CPU and your graphics card to process the image. Hardware accelerated decoders put less load on the CPU which frees it up for other tasks. Below are some good H.264 decoders.
- ffdshow tryouts (Free, software and hardware acceleration options)
- MS DTV Video Decoder (Pre installed with Windows 7, hardware accelerated decoder)
- Divx H.264 decoder (Free, included with the DivX Plus Codec Pack, supports hardware acceleration)
- Core AVC (Paid, software and hardware acceleration via NVIDIA CUDA)
- CyberLink H.264 decoder (hardware accelerated decoder, bundled with certain Cyberlink software)
Some useful tools
- RadLight Filter Manager (View and manage BDA devices and DirectShow filters)
- DXVA Checker (Check if your system supports H.264 video acceleration)
ffdshow tryouts
ffdshow tryouts is a DirectShow and Video for Windows codec with support for a wide range of audio and video formats, such as Xvid, DivX, MPEG2, MP3, ACC, Real, WMV, H.264 etc.
I find the ffdshow tryouts H.264 software based decoder does a very good job of decoding Irish DTT, and produces less image breakup and artifacts at low signal strength than any other decoder I tested.
At this moment in time the ffdshow tryouts H.264 hardware accelerated decoder does not seem to work with Irish DTT, but the builds are constantly updated so eventually it will work.
Download and Install
To download the latest version of ffdshow tryouts, click on the link above, scroll down to "All Files", expand the "SVN builds by xxl" folder, then expand the "win32 generic builds" folder. Click on the latest file in that folder to download, when finished downloading double click on the file to install.
Follow the installation using the default options, when installation is finished it will prompt you to configure various decoders. Choose "Run video decoder configuration". This brings up a window which allows you to configure various aspects of ffdshow tryouts (these configuration windows can also be accessed from the Windows start menu)
Configuration
Here you can choose which formats ffdshow tryouts will decode. Note H.246 is set to libavcodec. It can also be set to disabled to prevent it decoding H.264 or it can be set to ffmpeg-mt which is optimized for multi core CPUs.
Enable whatever formats you want ffdshow tryouts to handle. As well as enabling the formats in this configuration screen, you need to configure your viewing software to use "ffdshow video decoder". See below.
Deinterlace Filter
Place a tick in the box beside deinterlacing to enable the deinterlace filter, then click on the word deinterlacing to access the deinterlacing settings.
- For "Method" choose "Yet Another Deinterlace Filter (yadif)"
- Place a tick beside "Double Framerate"
Doubling the framerate requires a bit more processing for the CPU but makes playback of Irish DTT a lot smoother.
Other filters
You can enable and configure other filters like postprocessor, sharpening, logo removal, levels, etc. The more filters you have enabled the more processing is required. If you have a slow CPU this may lead to choppy video.
Once done, click Apply then OK to close the configuration window.
Desktop TV viewing Software
DVB Viewer (€15)
DVB Viewer is a very good TV viewing application which is very stable and well worth the money. You can purchase and download it from http://www.dvbviewer.com
Run through installation, and follow the setup wizard. You can skip the channel scan section.
You can choose your video and audio decoders during the wizard or afterwards under Settings > Options > DirectX. If you select ffdshow as the MPEG2 decoder, you have to make sure MPEG2 decoding is enabled in the ffdshow video configuration we used earlier. To scan for channels go to Channel > Channel Scan.
Alternative Desktop TV viewing software
- DVB Dream (Free)
- AltDVB (Free)
- ProgDVB (Paid)
- VLC (Free)
Media Center Software
Media Center 7 (Free with Windows 7 Home Premium and higher)
Media Center in Windows 7 now supports both DVB-T and DVB-S cards, along with built in H.264 hardware accelerated video decoding.
Setup of Media Center in Windows 7 is very easy. Just follow the simple wizard and you will be set up in minutes. A handy piece of software to manage and organize channels for Media Center 7 is GuideTool. Media Center 7 uses the MS DTV video decoder by default, if you want to force it to use a different decoder see here.
MediaPortal (Free)
MediaPortal is split into the frontend and a backend TV server. They can be both installed on the same PC if you will be watching TV on the PC that holds the DVB devices.
Download and Install
Download MediaPortal here. Version 1.0.2 seems to have a DVB-T bug in it so get any version higher than that (including betas and release candidates). The installer will install various pieces of software required for MediaPortal to work, including the Media Portal frontend, the TV server backend and database software.
Run the installation file and select the below options (where applicable to your setup and leave all installation directories to their default values)
- Start with the installation now
- Yes - I will use MediaPortal to watch TV
- Perform an advanced installation
- Singleseat Installation
- MySQL 5
- Choose whatever password you want, default is MediaPortal
- Tick the options to allow MediaPortal to configure Windows Firewall
When it gets to the end click install and the installation will download and install all required components. When it is finished installing you will have three shortcuts on your Desktop. MediaPortal Configuration, TV Server Configuration and a shortcut to the MediaPortal application.
Database connection
Start up the TV Server Configuration. You will get a prompt asking you to test the database connection. Select MySQL 5 and enter in the password you chose earlier. Click Test and you should get a prompt that a connection was made.
Click save to continue to the TV Server configuration.
Scan
In the TV Server configuration window, expand TV Servers > "Your PC Name" > "Your DVB-T Card". To scan a single frequency choose:
- Use advanced tuning options
- Single transponder
When the scan is complete and channels are found, they will appear under TV Channels where you can preview and edit them.
Video Decoder
Start up MediaPortal Configuration, click on Codecs and Rendering > TV Codecs. Select your preferred video and audio decoders here.
MediaPortal is now set up to view Irish DTT.
Alternative Media Center software
- SageTV (Paid)
- Cyberlink PowerCinema (Paid)
- GB-PVR (Free)