Hi Guys

There are many excellent advantages if you use your PC instead of Tata Sky dumb Humax receiver. Here are a few things you will get:

1. You will have an unlocked receiver, tune whatever you want. Use multiple dish antennas at once to receive different satellite & Services at once (using Diseqc)

2. Awesome picture quality, PCs with mid-tohigh range graphics card (like nvidia 8500GT onwards) can enjoy 1080p unscaled resolution pumped through HDMI.

3. you can record, watch & pause Live TV. and it will be way better than what you would have done with yours regular TV tuner card.

Hardware Requirement

* PC: HTPC recommended. HDMI output is a plus, also gigs of space if you are into recording.
* DVB-S Card: This card is DVB-Satelite tuner card which provides inteface to connect PC to Satelites. If you can get it from aborad then ok other wise in India MCBS sells at INR 3990. APNA DTH Complete product range
* Tata Sky subscription card: THe smart card which you can find in your recievers. Also, your account must be in active state.
* Pheonix/ Smartmouse supported smart card reader. This will read your Tata Sky smart Card I dont know if they are available in india, but you can order from WB Electronics, Infinity USB Unlimited available for EUR 69 i.e. INR 4550 (WB Electronics)
* LCD TV, HDMI Cable etc

Software Requirment:

* DVB Client Software: You can download many search google. But I recommend, DVB Dream and Prog DVB. DVB Dream dvbdream.org DVB Dream Development Homepage DVB Dream Development Homepage supports MPEG-4 and HD as well.
* Plugins= SoftCSA / KNCBDACTRL.dll. Multidec plugins = NDScam 0.0.0.4 / DCW.dll. Codecs = Cyberlink POWERDVD mpeg2 / Cyberlink POWERDVD H.264. Put these files into plugin folder of the DVB installation directory. This plugin will read your Tata Sky Card and decrypt the signals.

How it works

As I stated, I have a phoenix smartcard reader which I can put my legal active Tata SKY viewing card into to decrypt both my DVB-S signals via PCI cards. For this to work DVBDream needs a plugin to access MultiDec plugins for which will act as my softcam. softcams are software work arounds to read and use smartcard information without the need for CAM (conditional access module) hardware. The plugin I'm using to access the multiDec plugins is called softCSA, although I know there are others out there. The multiDec plugins I'm using are NDSCAM 0.0.0.7 (update release) and DCW.dll. Tata Sky viewing cards are encrypted using a system called Videoguard from NDS. Combine everything, And it works