On this page ...

Installation of the Pent@Media Pent@VISION Here I'll explain how to install the Pent@Media Pent@VISION card (a PCI card for DVB data and DVB television reception by satellite) for use with Europe Online (EON) and Television reception. Most Internet by satellite providers use a similar setting. Note: Due to the very bad performance of EON these pages are no longer updated. The forum however remains. Note: the ISP SuperWeb no longer exists! Other ISP will do just fine!

Overview

• Introduction
• Basic EON Satellite setup information (transponders)
• Setting up the Dialup-adapter
• Pent@Media Pent@VISION Setup Requirements
• Briefing for the impatient and Step-by-Step index

Introduction

This guide is good to start working with the combination of Europe Online and the Pent@Media Pent@VISION board, even in combination with SuperWeb ! The great thing about the Pent@VISION is that it actually works instantly with the new login used by EON.

Left: the Pent@VISION card, Right: the Pet@NET card

The now following text is based on my own experiences and the experiences of others. I can't guarantee that this is the best, fool proof method of installing. By my knowledge however, this is a very easy and good working method.

PentaMedia Pent@VISION Setup Requirements

Requirements:

• Install the dialup adapter - your PC must have an Internet-connection that is already operational.
• Pent@VISION CDRom or disks (find the most recent drivers here)
• EON account
• The (Windows) setup CDRom - the one you used to setup your PC
• Dish for satellite reception, mounted and an antenna-cable to your computer

Short briefing for the impatient & Step by Step guide

The tabel below you can be used in two ways:

1. For the impatient (like me)
It's a short an quick briefing on how to install. Only experienced users should use this.

2. For the less experienced
Each step is a link to a page where the steps are explained in detail, including snapshots and photographs.

Shutdown your computer, if you have not done so yet. Remove the power-cord. Remove the screw and finally remove the "hood" of the PC-case.

!!! DO NOT SWITCH YOUR COMPUTER ON UNTIL STEP 8 !!!

This is not to hard to find since most manufacturers use these color codes to identifcy the slots:

INTERNAL AUDIO
Your DVB card has a connector for the internal audio connection to an internal Soundcard.
This connector (marked A), as indicated with the red arrow in the picture below, will be connected to your soundcard using the supplied thin cable. The connection on your soundcard can be any analog connector for example CD-Rom or AUX.

Note: don't ever use force when connecting cables !

EXTERNAL AUDIO
Alternatively, you can connect audio using the external Audio output of your DVB card. In the picture above marked as connector B. The cable can be hooked up to the external Audio input of your soundcard.

Check, just to be sure, that the card is inserted correctly and not like often happens slightly tilted or not inserted far enough into the slot (the golden contacts on the bottom of the card, should not be visible).

Note: your PC is still NOT switched on !

The centre pin of the connector used is simply the same wire used inside the antenna-cable and therefor not very strong.
Therefor: Be gentle when connecting the cable ! and DO NOT USE PLIERS to tighten the connector !

Once again: NOTE THAT YOUR COMPUTER SHOULD NOT BE SWITCHED ON YET!

Note: ALWAYS make sure your computer is switched OFF when connecting or disconnecting the antenna cable ! The LNB (the "head" of the dish) is powered by your computer.

Do not power your computer yet !
After you closed the PC, place the screws back and finally reconnect the power-cord but do not boot your computer yet !

The Pent@VISION comes with a special cable for hooking up the monitor, (S)VGA card and video out. This cable is also equiped with connectors for Audio/Video in!

In the image on the right you'll see the cable. The VGA connector with no markings on it is connected to the Pent@VISION card. The VGA connector marked "VGA" is connected to your graphics card (ie. SVGA card). The other VGA cable, marked "MONITOR", is connected to your SVGA monitor which used to be connected to your video/SVGA card.
The other four tulip connector are used for Video out and Audio/Video in and don't need to be connected yet: Yellow (A) Composite Video INPUT Red (B) Audio right channel INPUT White (C) Audio left channel INPUT Black (TV) Composite Video OUTPUT

Install the cable as descibed.

Note: You don't need to connect the Yellow, Red, White and Black tulip connectors yet.
You can use them if you like, for external connections, but they are not required for operating.

After connecting all cables (including the powercord) you can switch your computer on so it will boot.

As soon as Windows (Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP) starts, it will come up with a notification that it found a PCI device (the Pent@VISION DVB-card). The next pictures illustrate this, using Windows 98 SE (Second Edition). Other Windows version will show similar dialogs with the exception of Windows NT.

Note: Windows 95 (release 1) does not support more than 2 network cards. So if you have the Harmonic, a dialup adapter AND a regular ethernet adapter, then you MUST display the ethernet adapter in the device manager. My suggestion here: UPGRADE to Windows 98/98SE/ME !

Note: This setup is Windows 9x based, other Windows versions might work in a similar fashion.

Note 2: WinSock 2.0 is required to get things up and running and Windows 95 does not include WinSock 2.0. Download the WinSock 2.0 update by Microsoft here.

Select "Next". Select "Next".

Check "Search for the best driver for you device" and select "Next".

If you plan to use the driver on the CD-Rom, check "CD-ROM", if you plan to use a newly downloaded driver, check "Specify Location". So you can select either the CDRom or the downloaded driver as a driver source.

Check out the drivers page if you want to get the latest version.

Select "Next". Windows will display a message that it found the Harmonic card.

Select "Next". Windows will now inform you that it used the drivers and installed the card.

This last dialog indicates that Windows finished the installation of the driver. Select "Finish" to complete.

Windows will ask you to reboot, please do so or you PC might "freeze" (thrust me: I did this) !

After the computer rebooted, installation of the driver can be checked by clicking with the right mouse button on "My Computer" and selecting "Properties". Select the tab "Device Manager" and open the group "Network Adapters ".

Locate the DVB card ("Pent@Vision Satellite NIC") - if you find then all is OK.

Just before we continue our journey, let's first check some settings for this card by clicking with the right mouse button on the "Network Neighborhood" icon on the Windows desktop.

Look for the "TCP/IP -> Pent@Vision Satellite NIC" and click it once with the left mouse button.
Now select "Properties".

The dialog that appears will show you the TCP/IP settings for the Pent@Vision. Note that default it is set to "Obtain an IP address automatically". Change this to "Specify an IP address".
As shown below, enter these numbers:
- IP Address: 125.0.0.1
- Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

After changing the IP-address and Subnet Mask, select "OK" and "OK" again.
Once more the computer wants to reboot, please do so by confirming the request by selecting "Yes".

Start "SETUP.EXE" or "SETUP" of the Pent@Vision CDRom or of the installation diskette 1. There are 2 ways of doing this:

1. double click "My Computer".
Next double click the CDRom icon. Depending on the version of the CDRom the setup might autorun. If not, double click on the "SETUP.EXE" icon.

2. click the "Start" button of Windows, select "Run..." and type the drive-letter of the CDRom-drive followed by ":\SETUP.EXE". For example D:\SETUP.EXE if D is the drive-letter of your CDRom-drive or A:\SETUP.EXE if you're installing from diskette.

A dialog will appear.

Select "Next".

If you want to install the software on a different location, then do this now by selecting "Browse". This is not required but some people like to keep things neat and clean....

Select "Next" twice so the installation can start.

After installation is finished, select "Finish". The computer will ask you for permission to reboot, please confirm by selecting "Yes" and clicking "Finish".

Once you're back in Windows, click on the Windows "Start" button and select "Programs", "PentaMedia", "Pent@VISION x.x" (where x.x identifies the version).

The software will "fine tune" it's output the first time you run it ("Please allow 5 to 30 seconds ..."). This dialog will appear, please click "OK".

Sometimes this is not enough and a more advanced setup start. A dialog will appear, telling you there is a problem with the video alignment, please confirm with "Yes".

Finally the TV application will start, if you're looking at an image similar to this one, the all seems to be OK:

It's time to "tune-in". Click the tuner button, as indicated in the picture below:

A Window will appear, where you can select the Satellite(s) you wish to use.

If you're about to start using this card for Internet by Satellite then you'de want to start with the "Astra1A-1G19.2" since this is the one used by Europe Online.

In the "Source" listbox click "Astra1A-1G19.2" once with the lift mouse button and then click the "Add" button in the middle of the Window.

Next select the "Astra1A-1G19.2" in the destination window and select the "Seek" button in the middle of the Window. The program will now start looking for all the possible programs it can receive.

Starting a search this way has the advantage (above the mentioned method in the manual) that all transponders are checked now :)

An advantage in comparison to Hauppauge is that it indicates all found channels (both TV and Radio). Each found channel has a little icon indicating if this is an Free-to-Air or a Pay-TV channel. Neat little extra, which makes you see what you're missing (a bit depressing ... but good to know anyway).

In my test I found 305 TV channels and 185 Radio channels,... OK, most of them where not accessable due to encryption, but anyway...

So, now we're almost ready for our first INTERNET Test-drive, but first we need to do the proper settings for the Internet Explorer.

Note: similar settings are required for Netscape, Opera, etc. NetCaptor however uses the Internet Explorer settings.

With the right mouse button click on the blue "e" found on your desktop. Select "Properties" from the popup menu as shown below. Select the tab "Connections".

In the pictures above this text you will notice that I have 3 dialup-adapters in use. Take a look at the Dialup-page for more information and tips. I use 3 dialup-adapters so switching between transponders is easier.

Select the dialup-adapter you want to use for Internet by Satellite and select "Settings".

Make sure "Use a proxy server" is checked.

Enter the proxy server's IP-address at the "Address" field. This should be the proxy that goes with the transponder you would like to use (take a look at the transponder page). For the transponder 113 the (new!) IP-address should be 194.177.32.11 (in picture above the old ip-address is mentioned).

Next step is to enter the proper "Port" number (8080). Here you can also enter the username and password for the dialup adpater at the fields "User name" and "Password".
Note: This is not the same password as the one you use for the login at Europe Online !

Select "OK" and repeat these steps for each individual Dialup-adapter. If you experience problems mind you to change the same settings for "LAN Settings" as well.

When finished, close the window by selecting "OK".

Unlike the older and more simple Pent@NET, the test drive starts by starting the Pent@VISION application by clicking the Windows "Start" button. Then select "Programs" - "PentaMedia" - "Pent@VISION x.x" (where x.x is the application version).

Click on tuner button so we can select the proper transponder and frequency. The proper frequency can be found in the lower part of the destination listbox, as show above.

Now double click the transponder you would like to use. For this example we'll asume transponder 115. The frequency for transponder 115 (take a look at the transponder-page) is 12.662750 GHz.

Note: The frequency setting comes with the software installation as described above.

Double click the frequency "EOL 12662.75", this dialog will appear:

I'm used to call these transponder "EON 115" instead of "EOL 12662.75", I changed the field called "Transponder" to "EON 115" but found the application crashing. The funny thing is that after a reboot the settings where copied and working. Just don't forget to check the checkbox in front of the "EON xxx" name and don't blame me if your machine get's stuck !

Settings like "Symbolrate", "Frequency", etc. can be found in the transpondertabel on the transponder-page. For those who use DiSEqC (if you don't what this is: you not using it!) please make sure the settings match your equipment.

As you might have seen before we need to define a PID for the "Data Broadcast". This is done in the field called "PID Number". Make sure the "Dec" is checked and now enter "512" followed by a click on the "Add" button. Also check the "Auto Multicast PID"-option.

These where the required settings to start with. Now select "OK".

Now select the transponder you want to use. For our EON 115 example either select "EOL 12662.75" or incase you renamed it "EON 115" and select "OK".

Your now back to your regular TV viewing application with a black screen.

Now we start with the regular connection procedure. Click on the "Modem" connection button.

This dialog will now appear:

This is a nice feature of the Pent@VISION software: it is willing to work not only with dialup connections, but also with the LAN upstream connections :)

Note: There is no "Static IP Address" required, so even the "0.0.0.0" can be removed. If you do have a fixed IP Address for your Internet connection then you can add this here.

Let's assume we'd use a regular Internet connection by modem, so click the "Modem Connect" button.

You'll see the regular dialup-adapter popping up. If username and password are correct, click "Connect".

After realizing the modem connection, the "Sat Connect" dialog will prompt you with the found IP-address. Just select "OK" to continue, "Sat Connect" will now minimize. You may now also minimize (!) the Pent@VISION TV-application.

Pent@VISION uses two different, yet very cool, indicators:

1. in the Systray (if you have set that option) a diamond is rotating when transfers are running.

2. in the Taskbar you will see the title of the Pent@VISION change to whatever transfer rate is running.

Disconnecting;
is done by closeing either the "Sat Connect", the "Pent@VISION" or the the dialup connection.