System Requirements

Revision as of 12:25, 24 November 2012

Hardware

Basic Machine

The base requirements for your PC vary greatly depending on what you want to do. A basic server only machine running ARGUS TV Recorder will run on an Intel Atom 330 with 2GB of RAM.

Client and Single Seat machines are a far more complex matter. Requirements can vary greatly based on which Operating system you run, which client front end you run, the type of TV (SD or HD) you will watch, and what other tasks the machine will perform. In this instance, the best guide we can give is to use the minimum specs of the client software.

Other hardware

In order to watch and record TV on your computer, you will need a TV Tuner card. A TV Tuner card is not the same as a graphics or video card.

Tuner cards come in many variations for signal type and features. You will need to decide which available signal type or types you want to receive and acquire a suitable card or cards to receive it. If the signal is encrypted, you will need a CAM module and a tuner card that supports it.

As a basic guide, Satellite broadcasts DVB-S/DVB-S2, Cable broadcasts DVB-C, Terrestrial (Over the air) broadcasts DVB-T/DVB-T2/ATSC/and Analog. See Supported DVB/ATSC cards for a list of known working tuner cards.

Information: You need to be sure that the Tuner card is compatible with the signal type broadcast. A DVB-S tuner will not be sufficient if your provider only broadcasts DVB-S2.

Information: The number of tuner cards you might need depends on many factors. You do not necessarily need one tuner per channel, as it is often possible to tune more than one channel per card. ARGUS TV can record all the channels on a given transponder using just one tuner. In some cases, this can be as many as six or more channels. So with two tuners you could potentially be recording twelve channels at once. It is important to note that in case the channels are encrypted you will need to be able to decode all of them as well of course (Compare the CAM Limit of a card). However, this should be taken as a free benefit when it happens, and not relied upon. Channels can move between transponders at the broadcaster's discretion, so suddenly you might revert to needing two tuners to record those two channels that previously only needed one.

Standard Operating Systems

Windows XP

Information: Windows XP is very old. Although you should have no problems running ARGUS TV or any of the client software, you are encouraged to choose a newer operating system if you have the option. At some, not too distant, point in the future Windows XP will no longer be supported

If you have more than one DVB card, Windows XP may need a dvb-fix.

See MediaPortal

These instructions are copied from the MediaPortal forum incase it dies:

1. download the dvb-hotfix
2. unzip the archive to c:\ (this will create c:\dvbfix)
3. enter the "dvbfix" folder on c:\
4. Note: please just place it on c:\ because thats the safe way.
5. doubleckick the "runme.bat" which will unregister the broken files in "windows\system32" and register the new files in "c:\dvbfix"
6. restart your PC

Windows Vista & above

No special extra requirements

Server Operating Systems

Windows Home Server

No special extra requirements

See ARGUS TV on Windows Home Server for more information.

Windows Server 2008

Requires the bdaforserver patch.

Software

You will need the following software to run ARGUS TV

.NET Framework 4.0 - download it here Database server software, one of:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008/2012 (recommended) - download it here
• MySQL 5.x - download it here

Information: If you have already installed MediaPortal TV Server it will have installed MySQL already. There is no need to install other database software. Below is the default username and password for MySQL when installed by MediaPortal. The password is case sensitive. User: sa Password: MediaPortal