Here in Australia, we are still waiting patiently (impatiently in my
case) for a PC-DTV device to enable capture of HDTV and SDTV terrestrial
transmissions using a variant of the European DVB-T implementation.
Whilst HDTV cards were rumoured to be pending, they have all been
withdrawn and even the SDTV cards have suffered delays and none are
available today. The issue might be the problem associated with
manufacturers being stuck with either high priced hardware video codecs
or software codecs that won't perform well on mainstream PCs.
It would be great if there was a reasonably priced PC-DTV decice that
just captured the transport stream and left it to the consumer to sort
out demux/decode/playback, but I doubt such a device will be released in
Australia.
As I understand it, the state of play for PC-DVB-T that might enable
capture of transport streams and is possibly obtainable for Australia is
currently:
1. Hauppauge Nova-T budget (possibly compatible with Aus variant but
tuner only UHF and not useable with Aus predominantly VHF system)
2. Hauppauge DEC 2000-t (possibly compatible with Aus variant but
interface not available to set parameters; USB link to PC only SDTV
compatible)
3. Philips Europa reference design PCI card (probably compatible with
Aus variant, but > USD$2000 since designed for manufacturers and not
consumers)
4. USB2 capture device being designed and constructed by members of
linuxtv.org (not much info available to determine how it might function
in Australia)
If anyone has updates/corrections to these comments, I would be
interested in hearing.
I would be interested in becoming involved in the development of a
reasonably priced USB2 capture device for the Australian market (despite
being an almost absolute newby), but haven't found much info on the USB2
capture device being designed/constructed in-house linuxtv.org, so if
anyone can direct me to appropriate links, it would be much appreciated.
Basically all communication is going over the mailing list, so browse
the mailing list archives for details. The actual design files are
hosted in the LinuxTV CVS, directory dvb-hw/. You can browse this online
on