Re: TT budget card

[Marcus O.C. Metzler <mocm@netcologne.de>]

Carsten Koch writes:
 > David Toth wrote:
 > ...
 > >  My question: is this the same card it was on topic some week ago (the
 > > TT budget card?). 
 > 
 > I would guess so.
 > The feature description ("budget card, no MPEG decoder on board")
 > matches the description Ralph gave a few weeks ago.
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > > is it
 > > possible to connect a CAM somehow?)
 > 

Since the card doesn't provide any hardware for filtering the
transport streams it doesn't make sense to expect a CAM connector. You
could only write some software filters, implement the CI layers in
software on your machine and try to use a PCMCIA adapter to connect
your CAM and decode the transport stream.

 > >From the picture at 
 >    http://www.hauppauge.de/images/fotos/board_nova.jpg
 > I'd say it has no connector for it.
 > 
 > IMHO, the two main purposes for this card would be:
 > 
 > 1.  EOL.
 > 2.  As a secondary DVB-S card for recording only.
 >     Playback can be done via the primary card.

The interesting thing is, that you get the entire transport stream,
i.e. all pids. This means you can record all channels of one
transponder, if your system is fast enough. I would also gues that you
could use mpeg2dec or even oms, if someone writes a plugin, to view
the streams.

 >     
 > 
 > The card costs less than half the (list) price of the DVB-S
 > card, so it may be a bargain for the above two purposes.
 > Does anyone know whether Ralph's driver already supports it?

Not, yet, but we are working on it. 

 > 
 > And: Can Klaus' VDR record a programme with this card while
 >      you watch THE SAME programme with the other card?
 > 

Klaus would have to switch to recording transport streams instead of
AV_PES. But I guess he will do that anyway, since we are going to
phase out the AV_PES support in the driver. Instead you will get real
PES packets and the TS of the budget card can be converted to that
very easily.

Marcus


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Dr. Marcus Metzler                             
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mocm@convergence.de                    http://www.convergence.de

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