Media Center 2005 official dvb-s support

Werner, please forgive me as I'm still learning here.

Prior to DVB-S support you had to use the output from your sat box as an input into a normal analog TV card, right. With DVB-S support I would assume that you can now use a sat-tv card that takes the signal directly from your dish and then decodes it without the analog conversion that you need with a conventional TV card.

Now what I don't understand is that the sat (DSTV) signal is obviously scrambled. How do you descramble it? Through software? Do you need to hook your DSTV smart card up to the PC?
 
Thanks Werner, as always a great reply. I've got a lot of homework to do...
 
Technotrend 1500-S with CI

I have been testing the Tecnotrend 1500-S CI for a couple of days now.The conclusion is that this card needs a lot of tweaking to get it to run on MCE2005.You have to map the Satellite transponder frequencies to DVB-T frequencies to scan for channels and it does not work that good at all.
I have followed the tutorials step by step and find that it's not an easy process to get this card running perfectly.The latest drivers causes a lot of crashes when initializing the common interface.There are also a few video codec bugs that causes stuttering video.
The original software that ships with this card is not that good either and ProgDVB is the only application with stable viewing but does not have the CI support to watch DSTV with your smartcard.I have tried a couple of DVB software sollutions like DVBviewer , Mediaportal , MyTheatre , GBPVR and WatchTVPro , ProgDVB is the most stable of the bunch.
I use a T-Rex Firecrypt CI module in the CI slot to watch DSTV with a original smartcard.The T-Rex module supports almost all Conditional Access systems from Irdeto to Nagravision(multicrypt).This CI module needs some manual upgrading with a special Dragonloader card to accept a DSTV smartcard for decoding.
 
It sounds like this is more hassle than anything. Should I not simply go with an external DualView decoder?

On the subject of picture quality: Is the Technotrend (digital) solution much superior to the analog external decoder option.
 
Rather get the Dualview as I would only recommend the PC DVB option for the satellite enthusiast.If money is no option I would get a Dreambox 7020 with dual tuner PVR option but you wil have to import it.This is the ultimate DVB reciever for the tech junkie.
I have a dual tuner PC DVB setup which consists of one Skystar2 card and the other is a Technotrend 1500-S-CI.It takes a lot of patience to get the setup to run without any problems.
I have given up on MCE and make use of the trusted freeware DVB applications.
 
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