Subject: [linux-dvb] Full featured cards
Date: Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 11:24:10PM -0000
Quoting Adrian P Challinor (adrian.challinor@osiris.co.uk):
Does anyone know where you can get the full featured cards that are needed
by VDR? My understanding is that I need at least one card that support
DVB-IN, DVB/TV-OUT and has an MPEG decoder on board. These seem to be in
very short supply on the open market, so if you know of a card that is
available I would be very glad to hear from you.
It appears vdr was targeted to the Hauppauge Nexus-s (that is, the old
Technotrend full-featured) card. Here in Holland it can be easily
found, albeit at a shamefully high price (I found it at a shop of the
Mycom chain: www.mycom.nl). I understand that this was the first card
that was available to developers.
VDR makes use of the V4L-compatible video out that was developed for
the Nexus, as well as of the OSD and CAM interface code. I understand
that VDR was developed in parallel with the dvb driver.
With a Nexus, VDR works perfectly. The unpleasant fact that I am
finding out is that the Nexus is old technology: it includes the
saa7111 DSP, that does not allow you to extract the complete
multiplexed stream - only specific PIDs, and I am experiencing, with
the same level of signal, a much higher error rate in the extracted
MPEG stream, if compared with the Hauppauge Nova (budget) card.
Otherwise, any reason why I cant use a hi-end AGP card with a TV/DVI-out
capability?
In order to generate a video output, VDR needs the capability
(provided by the driver) of onboard MPEG conversion, and of on-screen
display. I *think* you can use VDR with a budget card for recording,
but you cannot see the set-top-box-like output. Porting it to using
software MPEG decoding is, I believe, not trivial.
In fact there are possibilities to use VDR with a budget card only and a
graphics card output, e.g. the softdevice output plugin. Nevertheless,
stability of such a solution heavily depends on the linux support of the
graphics card, before you go for such an option you should be absolutely
sure, that your graphics card (esp. the tv out, which is the non-trivial
part) is fully supported.