It's been a while since I've used Orb, but I decided to give it another go setting up my TV Tuners since that's a feature I've never used. My experience was not a very pleasant one though. The reason I'm posting here is because the Orb forum will not let me register there. They keep telling me my ip is blacklisted and I've tried from 3 different ip addresses!!
I'm currently running Windows Media Center using 2 Hauppauge Wintv HVR 2250 cards under Windows 7 (64 bit). Orb detected my cards, but I had many issues trying to set them up. For one, I'm using one tuner card with a set top box and the other card is utilizing the 2 analog cable tuners. Orb scanned for channels from my set top box , but only scanned from 1-300. My channels go up to 999 so many channels were left out of the scan. When trying to scan for channels on the card with the 2 analog cable tuners, Orb does not scan for any channels at all. I'll see a live preview of the first channel it switches on to, but that's all it does; no scanning. I later found out that I had to create a channelmap.txt file and manually enter all of my channel information. This is because Orb is no longer providing program guide information at the moment. Wish I'd known that before I tried fooling around with it.
My goal was to stream live throughout my network using DLNA so I can pick it up on Xboxes and other media server devices such as XBMC. I scanned a few channels from the card that's connected to my set top box. Those channels were also available when I logged into my orb account online. They even streamed online, but quality was poor. The problem is that non of those channels were showing up on any of my DLNA devices on my network such as my Xbox. I went to the Video folder in the Xbox and then to the Live TV folder, but nothing was there. Not sure why nothing was there, but I did a reboot on the computer orb was on and my channel showed up. The video that is streamed is very crappy, choppy and out of sync. I have a very good network and had MUCH better picture and sound quality when I used to use Beyond TV.
I wanted to use Orb for live TV streaming, but I feel like I'll be going back to the stone ages if I do so. Even though I'm limited to what I can do using TV tuner cards under WMC, but I do at least have a program guide, can easily stream TV to my Xboxes and can easily set my cards up. Orb does not provide good information on setting up multiple tuners by any means.
I like the concept of Orb, but I think the TV Tuners option needs some more improvement before I make a full switch. It's also useless if you don't have a program guide.
If anyone knows of a better solution to stream multiple live tv feeds, please let me know. I may go back to using Beyond TV. It was MUCH better than orb in my opinion.
