BBC/Sky start test Olympics SD feeds on satellite

The BBC and Sky are testing some Olympics video feeds on satellite at the moment - the full frequency lists are on the KingOfSat site. I tuned in my expensive setup to the feeds and they're a mix of various BBC clips (some are sports, some aren't) and also a test card and 5.1 audio check. Strangely, they put an opaque white foreground with a test feed caption in front of the video streams, so it's surreal to see a very pale Bjork wailing her stuff in an endless loop :-)

Sadly, it looks like every single test feed is in SD only so far, so we're still waiting for the far more important HD equivalents (which I want to record to see how many MBs per hour disk space they'll take up).

Satellite and aerial install completed

I now have two 60cm satellite dishes  - standard Sky-style quad LNB black mesh pointing at Astra 28.2E - and two terrestrial aerials (each pointing to two different TV regions) attached to the two chimney stacks on my roof. I took a day off work to supervise the install and was happy with the job, which took under 5 hours on Monday 11th June (no heavy wind or rain luckily!).

The installation cost was £525 and the (10!) cables are now plugged into the 2 PCs (5 into the first PC, 5 into the second PC). I spent quite a lot of time allocating channels on the 6 tuners (4 sat, 2 aerial) on one of the PCs, so that I could watch the England match in HD of course. Discovered that ITV4 HD and Channel 5 HD are disgracefully encrypted on satellite, which is galling when the SD versions of those channels are unencrypted on both the terrestrial and satellite platforms! Luckily, neither channel are broadcasting Olympics stuff (though the odd C5 news bulletin might feature something).

The final three (out of eight!) 3TB Seagate hard drives arrived for the expensive PC setup, so all the expensive setup hardware is now done and dusted. Just a sofa and a couple of leather computer chairs to get...

BBC adds third Freeview HD Olympics channel

If you retune your Freeview HD setup, you'll find that channel 304 is now showing a caption indicating that it will be used to air Olympic events in HD, meaning that there will be three Olympics HD channels on Freeview (BBC One HD, BBC HD and channel 304). Of course, it doesn't match the 24 HD Olympics channels on Freesat/Sky/Virgin, but it's certainly a welcome addition for those without satellite or cable.

In my "expensive" setup, I did a recent Freeview HD test using a twin tuner PCI express card, recording 3 HD channels and 8 SD channels (more than enough to cover all of the terrestrial BBC Olympics coverage) and it didn't break a sweat using tvheadend. It ended up using 14% of one of the 4 cores of the i7 2600 CPU in the PC. In general, CPU isn't an issue when recording multiple channels - it's disk I/O. It's why the expensive setup will record to very fast SSD and then copy each completed recording to HDD serially (but with very fast hard drives).

Note that I've nearly finished getting quotes for my new 2-dish + 2-aerial setup, which is planned for installation on 11th June, at which point, major recording (mainly from Freesat) will take place and I will report back here on its progress. The aim is to record at least 30 simultaneous channels (almost all HD) and maybe more.

New Ubuntu/XBMC+PVR installation guide available

I have created a new installation guide documenting how you install Ubuntu and XBMC+PVR from scratch on a Revo. Yes, it actually starts from opening the Revo cardboard box and unwrapping all the items! I will be adding further pages about XBMC+PVR configuration in the near future.

BBC announce the Digital Olympics / Expensive Setup documented

The BBC have announced their "Digital Olympics" TV coverage, though most of it was either known beforehand or could have been easily predicted. There will be 7 BBC TV channels that are possibly worth recording for their Olympics coverage as follows:

• BBC One. This will be broadcasting throughout the day in both SD and HD. It will take breaks for news though, at which point it dismally switches to BBC Two (SD only!). It's always been outrageous that BBC One HD has a permanent onscreen logo to ruin the purity of any HD recording, especially when BBC One SD doesn't have such a logo.
• BBC Two. A bit pathetic that this is SD only - rumours are that BBC HD might eventually become BBC Two HD, but not until well after the Olympics. Only airs Olympics during BBC One news programmes.
• BBC Three. Not only just available in SD, but a permanent and disgustingly purple logo is present. This channel will be extended to 24 hours on Freesat during the Olympics, but will remain restricted to something like 7.00pm-5.30am each day on Freeview.
• BBC HD. Annoying logo in the corner like BBC One HD.
• BBC News. Sadly only in SD in again and frequently has an onscreen clock and an irritatingly distracting scrolling ticker along the bottom with a bright red background - arrgh!
• BBC Red Button channel 301. SD only again - often accessible by pressing the red button on BBC SD channels.
• BBC Red Button channel 302. Predictably SD only and also can be accessed via the red button. This will broadcast only during the Olympics and currently has a static caption stating this.

Note that the 24 HD channels on Freesat/Sky/cable won't actually be up and running until just before the Olympics start, but all the channels will appear on the appropriate platform's EPG, hopefully with 7 days to go. It would be reasonable to assume that sports would not "wander" between the 24 HD channels - once they air on a particular channel, then you'd expect them to stay on that channel for the duration of the Olympics (and if two or more channels are needed by one sport, again you'd assume they'd stay on those channels). From what I've read, sadly the BBC will again destroy the purity of Olympics HD recordings by including a BBC logo on all 24 HD channels.

There are also three BBC digital radio channels covering the Olympics that you could record:

• BBC Radio 5 Live
• BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra
• BBC Radio 5 Live Olympics Extra (only available for the duration of the Olympics)

And if you really want to be a completist, it could be worth recording these too:

• Channel 4 HD news bulletins
• ITV 1 HD news bulletins
•  Sky News (this may only be in SD on Freeview and Freesat)

The BBC claim that there will be about 2,500 hours of TV coverage in all, though remember that not every channel is HD and not every channel will be broadcasting Olympics coverage all day (even some of the 24 HD channels will remain idle for long periods - possibly showing highlights from earlier? - because there won't be 24 events to cover on some days).

I will be documenting how to install Ubuntu+XBMC+PVR+tvheadend on a Revo this weekend, but until then, you can now read a lot more detail (though no links/prices/exact models yet) on the Expensive Setup page.

Welcome!

This is a new guide to recording the London 2012 Olympics that I've dubbed "Olymprecs". It's primarily targeted at a UK audience of course, but some of the info could apply to non-UK readers. Please start at the Introduction page and work your way through - pages will be regularly updated as I set up my recording environment at home, so please return each week to see how I'm progressing!

96 days to go at the time of this posting (note: first events start on 25th July 2012 - 2 full days before the Opening Ceremony!) and, yes, I have 25 Jul-12 Aug off work before you ask...