[vdr] A modular VDR.

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

My VDR PC has no available PCI slots.
One of the things that I would like to add, is a third
DVB card, so I can do two recordings while watching.

Not too long ago, I said that I like Klaus' minimalist
concept of using the full potential of the DVB-S card,
i.e. taking advantage of its video output and its on
screen display.

On the other hand, a PC does not work without a graphics
card and I cannot put anything else into the AGP slot
anyway. 

So, while I am making good use of one of my DVB-S cards,
my graphics card is kind of wasted in my VDR PC.

A second thing that speaks for the use of the graphics
card for video output is the fact that DivX ;-) replay
via the DVB-S card takes more CPU power than my humble
450 MHz VDR PC is able to come up with, while mplayer
works just fine on the same PC when playing back via 
the graphics card.

As a third argument, I believe that with OSD enabled,
the firmware has less buffer space available, which may
cause occasional problems.

For all those (and more) reasons, I am wondering if a
modular VDR architecture would not be a great improvement.
Would it not be nice to have a bunch of non-interactive
modules that take care of things such as timed recordings,
replay of the various media etc. plus a small interactive
module that presents the OSD and controls all the other
modules? The display module could take advantage of TV-out
for graphics cards that have it or display on VGA.

A minimum configuration would be a lot cheaper, as it
could consist of a budget DVB card and a cheap graphics 
card which together cost less than a full DVB-S card
and provide more benefit.

With that architecture, the DVB cards could concentrate
on what they do best: get the data from the sky.
The graphics card could also concentrate on what it does
best: show the images.
With only one DVB card, we could do timeshifting, etc.
With a weak CPU, we could play back DivX ;-).
The OSD would not cause playback distortions or other
problems in the firmware. It could also be as large as
we want with as many colors as needed and would still
perform well.
It would be easy to add modules for MP3, DivX ;-), DVD,
etc. without having to patch VDR.


Am I missing anything that makes this a bad idea?
(except for the obvious, of course, that it may
be a lot of work to recycle the current VDR components
into a new architecture)

Carsten.