[linux-dvb] Re: Full featured cards

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

"Carlo E. Prelz" wrote:
> 
>         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.

There is already work going on on implementing a "softdevice" plugin
for VDR, which does the MPEG decoding in software and uses your graphics
card for display.

See http://www.k13zoo.de/vdr.

Klaus


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