Catching up...

[mark1234]

I've been a Media Centre user for over 6 years now, and a regular on TGB, in its various guises, for around 5.5 years. You know what I finally went and bought at the weekend??

My very first HDTV! Only a cheapy one from the Best Buy closing down sale, but none the less a HDTV it is. It's not set up yet, it's still sat safely in the box in the hallway. The kids are getting our trusty old 32" widescreen CRT. Once I've manhandled it upstairs.

Biggest problem with a HDTV, and why I've not been bothered about getting one previously: I don't think I have good enough signal strength to get Freeview HD and Media Centre won't work with cable HD from Virgin. So having a HDTV is largely pointless, apart from the TV not having the enormous back to it. Oh well.

[holidayboy]

Any walls begging for a Freesat dish maybe?

[mark1234]

I live in a conservation area, so need permission from the council to do things like that. Not that my house deserves conservation... It sticks out like a 1970s square boxed sore thumb in a sea of 100 year older (or more in some cases) nice looking properties. Oh, and permission from the wife.

[holidayboy]

You need one of those glass satellite dishes mate

[mark1234]

No, I need a way to get the DVB-C signal from Virgin unencrypted and into Media Centre, like you can do with Sky. Then I'd be happy.

[bobbob]

i also live in a conservation area in the middle of London. However I decided that HD sport was more important to me than that and put a dish up anyway. OctoLNB ftw

[Fleadh]

so noones managed to gat a Virgin cable card working in a Dreambox or the like to be deccrypted?

[mark1234]

Not as far as I'm aware. Unlike Sky, Virgin are in control of the box you use to view TV - you're not allowed to use your own equipment. That means they know the internal secret codes of your box and can use stronger encryption than Sky. I don't believe the nagra 3 encryption they use has been cracked.

Just to be clear: I'm not interested in stealing TV. I'm happy to pay, as I do now, but I would like to use Media Centre with the native signal.

[dduk]

I think the only legal option for Virgin into Media Centre is using a VM STB and a Hauppauge Colossus. Not cheap, especially when you consider you'll only get one stream out of it and it can be buggy. But it could work well if you get DVBLogic's stuff involved.

I've often thought about getting VM into my HTPC before and I've since come to the conclusion that it's not worth the £900pa that I pay for it (that includes ~£25pm for broadband). I'm moving in the new year and I won't be taking their TV service with me.

[mark1234]

Don't Virgin use HDCP on all their outputs? Which means the Colossus won't work.

[dduk]

Don't Virgin use HDCP on all their outputs? Which means the Colossus won't work.

They do. I apologise for not mentioning it earlier, but you'll need a VM Scientific Atlanta box with the RCA 1080i outputs.

[Cafe.Racer]

Oi Oi Mark.

I have Virgin HD box, now.

That's got you all excited, but I have it fed into an analogue card.

[mark1234]

Moved the old CRT upstairs last night. Man those things are heavy!

The new TV is in place now, but I still need to swap the connection over from SCART to HDMI. I have to swap the graphics cards over with my main desktop PC to do that though and couldn't be bothered last night. (7MC GPU has s-video output, other one has HDMI). Will do this tonight or tomorrow though as the picture on this TV is (insert swear word of choice) compared to what the CRT was showing. I did test the new TV over VGA on the kids PC briefly, so I don't think it's the TV itself.