Re: data & tv broadcasts

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

Ralph Metzler wrote:
...
> Yes, there is a SP/DIF connection on the board.
> 
> The following is from the readme file of the Windows Siemens driver
> distribution (the one which came out 2 or 3 months ago):
> 
>  > 3. Internal Connector (DVB-S)
>  >
>  > There is a two row connector(10pin) on the DVB Sat version:
>  > Pin definition (pin1 shows an arrow)
>  > CVBS (Composite)     1   -   2       VCC
>  > Blue out             3   -   4       SPDIF out
>  > Green out            5   -   6       Audio Right out
>  > Red out              7   -   8       Audio Left out
>  > not con.             9   -   10      Ground
> 
> You should be able to get digital PCM sound from this output.
> But the TI chip cannot output AC3 sound packets. It just does not
> generate AC3 headers but only PCM headers.

I tried this out and my experiment proved Ralph correct:

Pin 4 on the center 10 pin/2 row connector on the board does
carry an SPDIF signal which I can play back on my HiFi system,
but it is only plain stereo, not AC3 (I tried the AC3 promo
channel with APID = 256 and also Pro7 with APID = 101 and some
PIDs in the neighbourhood of these).

I also had the impression that the sound quality I got from that
pin 4 was surprisingly poor (high-pitched sounds hissed a little).

Did anyone else try the SPDIF output?

It seems kind of odd to me that the DVB-S card neither outputs
Y/C video nor AC3 sound. Isn't perfect picture and sound quality
the whole point of DVB?

Carsten.