[vdr] VDR and analogue video in/out

[Stephen Davies <steve@daviesfam.org>]

Hi,

You will all know that in the UK BSkyB has locked up most of the potential
of Satellite DVB behind their closed encryption and all that.

Which limits the applicability of VDR for us living here.

Some free-to-air DVB is available via DVB-T, however I don't think that
there is a Linux supported card.

(BTW: will the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T be supported by the DVB driver?)

So I had to go down the analogue path.  I have now assembled all the
necessary bits to capture video to MPEG1, control external receivers,
output video to the TV, gather and store program information etc.

It all works well, can capture and playback simultaneously, could perhaps
even capture two streams of lower resolution and playback another.

I use this lot in practice in place of my (broken) VCR.

What remains is tying it all together with a user interface.

So - would VDR stand up to some abstracting such that I could add:

 - Channel selection and capture using an external program
   (eg lirc's "rc" to select channel, mp1e to capture to mpeg1)

 - Merging programme information captured externally with any
   EPG seen via DVB cards

and maybe:

 - video output using mplayer, either externally or integrated,
   plus osd classes for regular display.

 - vdr changes to run with no DVB cards.


This must have been discussed before - is this practical or
sensible?

Perhaps such an effort would be broadly useful by:

 - Adding analogue input for VDR generally
 - Providing people with only lower cost DVB cards (with no
   mpeg2 decoders) with a display solution.

Steve