Kodi Community Forum

Hi All,

I am a long time user and lover of XBMC. I have it setup at home on an NUC and it is the centre of my entertainment system.

For a long time however I have had my ugly Foxtel IQ box there - well because we all know its not been possible to feed Foxtel into XBMC.

Well, Im currently sat in the Qantas lounge in Perth waiting for my flight to Melbourne after a few nights away on business. I was sat watching the darts last night on FoxSports 2 (Foxtel) and it dawned on me - this is a digital feed that I am accessing on a Samsung TV (channel 106) and not a local set top box. There was even a working EPG as the Samsung TV was also able to tell me what was playing.

Hang on I thought - isn't this exactly what I want at home. This can't be right, I must be accessing through a box. I checked the input and no, this is a feed into the TV. A DTV channel on the Samsung TV.

My question is, how have they done this. They must have a Foxtel service (and a decoder of sorts) in a room in the hotel. Then a server which is then wired to each TV in every room. It can't be just a HDMI capture card or equivalent because this setup is streaming the same channel to each of the 400 rooms. In addition there is EPG info!!

I have Googled the hell out of this for 20 minutes and can't find any reference to the local SOHO community looking at this setup. There are plenty of "services" out there to deliver all channels to hotels so it HAS to be possible. All we need a scaled down version. For me here there is a decrypted Foxtel Signal and EPG data into a TV. Surly that could be fed into XBMC! I wish I had brought my NUC with me and tried it out!!

I'd like to start this conversation again ... have I missed something? It appears clear to me that this can be done without HDMI capture cards etc. Maybe the backend Hardware is far to expensive for it to be viable (but again, a scaled down version for one connection rather than to deliver the signal to 40 rooms, well it can't be that difficult??).

Discussion both positive and negative welcome!

Not sure. I'd be interested in learning more about this myself. I know hotels typically use some level of specialized hardware (and maybe special TVs?), but there doesn't seem to be much of any information on the web about it.

Bloody flight not ready yet!!

Ned, I have spent enough time in Hotels to see a few setups. You are right, often there is specialised hardware and I've even seen specially configured TV's too. Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree, but maybe not.

One of my guys is going to come back out here in the next few weeks. Ill give him the NUC and let him try and take some photo's etc.

In the meantime, if anyone in the know has a clue, speak up!!

It's special equipment for hotels. Same here for Sky. Expensive to say the least.

It can be dvb-t muxed stream.

If it's satellite (not sure what you have there) , decrypt signal and mux it to a dvb-t feed that you can distribute in rooms using a coax cable. Linuxstb has done exactly that over on #hts (tvheadend irc channel).

https://github.com/linuxstb/dvb2dvb

I've been mulling over this all day.

Just setup the new iMac in the new apartment so decided to stop and Google some more.

Found this: http://www.radioparts.com.au/product/374...GTLi1YWeX0

Yes its expensive, but it sounds like it does what I was talking about. Maybe the Hotel had one of them??

I haven't looked at the link provided by tnuc yet. However, Foxtel in the main is not delivered over Satellite - although it can be!

The hunt continues, but this is not looking as impossible as it once did.

There are two possible ways this is accomplished depending on the size and use of the location.

For small installations (5-30 screens) with large numbers of channels per screen Foxtel gives each screen a specific tuner (this is not what you saw). Each screen gets the encrypted signal (to set top box) and the STB does the decryption. When you change the channel the STB changes the channel and starts decoding the new signal.

For large installations (and ones with fewer channels per screen) Foxtel has large hardware sets that are 4, 8, 10, 16, 32 and 100 feed decoders/multiplexers (these function like a STB fixed to one channel). These feed into a distribution network within the location that works like your traditional free to air TV: each TV receives an unencrypted* signal generated from the multiplexer. The TV does not control what channel the STB is tuned to (as it's fixed).

Part of the equipment is similar to the link you posted but the equipment you posted does not do the decryption. It just takes the 4 inputs and "broadcasts" then puts them on a single cable using DVB-T signals. If you used this you would have a ton of downsides: you would need four "room" service from foxtel: one STB per channel. And then any screen in the house could tune to one of those four channels. But those four channels would be hard linked to the channel set on the STB (Channel 1 is Fox Footy, Channel 2 is ABC, etc) and would have no control over the STB.


With a little bit of ingenuity and writing some additional plugins you could in theory use IR blasters to change the STB channels then feed the STB signal on to your local network using capture cards. Let a single XBMC instance act as the controller or server of this content. The issue is that you will always be limited to the number of STB boxes you have: 2 boxes means you can look at two channels simultaneously.

Interesting post... you got me thinking.

I have 1x Foxtel-IQ box at home, I have 3 TV's and a PC with DVB-T capture cards.

I would be nice to be able to inject the HDMI output of the Foxtel box into the Coax cable. This would allow me to view same channel on 3 screens, and use the DVB card to also capture it

It appears that you can buy a device "HDMI to DVB-T Modulator" to do this. But at $1000+ it seems a bit expensive.

Also I suspect you would hit issues with HDCP (copy protection) as the Foxtel box *should* refuse to send the HDMI signal to the modulator.

Looks to be a bit out of the price range for home use.

No you buy an HDMI to CAT6 Balun at a lot lower cost and pipe it direct to your TV.

And really this has not much to do directly with XBMC, but is an intersting topic nonetheless.

There is some info here on intergrating foxtel into mythtv:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Foxtel_Digita...stralia%29

Looks interesting and by ordering extra stb's you could access more channels at once.

Yeah it's called the "analogue hole" - any STB that has an analogue output can be captured using standard capture card technology. Analogue out includes composite, s-video and component.

The page you pointed will only get you SD video. For HD you need a STB with composite out and something like an HDPVR to capture http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/HDPVR .

STB's with component out may be becoming few and far between as HDMI becomes more ubiquitous. HDMI of course has to cope with more chances for the b*stards to screw you.

Options are becoming fewer as the pathway becomes digital.

I don't know foxtel, but can't you just run a TV server with a smartcard reader or CI module, have it decrypt the stream using your subscription smartcard and then stream it in your house? That's how my setup would look like (and does for others) to watch SKY in Kodi (already running a TV server, only missing the smartcard part, but with Netflix I see no need for SKY)

that only works if card can be read outside official STB, those subscriptions are getting more and more difficult to find and you never know how long it will be before they pair the card to STB... then its game over.

And its quite likely a breach of foxtels t&c too.

HDMI to CAT6 Balun just gets the data to another endpoint, you would need a decoder at the other end.

The HDMI to DVB-T modulator injects the signal into coax so any TV set on the end of the coax can just tune into an additional channel. This *could* be a TVHeadend server with a DVB-T card, it could be 5 TV's in your house.

Then you could use XBMC (Kodi) PVR clients to also stream this "channel"

It is a *CRAZY* expensive solution, as the modulator seems to be $1000, and you need a Foxtel box per channel. The higher end modulator (4-HDMI) is about $4000!

There must be a better way.

I guess if you are running a hotel, and you have 200+ screens, the costs seem insignificant.