[vdr] Re: Building a VDR box

["Rene Bartsch" <vdr@bartschnet.de>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vesa Holopainen" <vholma@pp.htv.fi>
To: <vdr@linuxtv.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 5:47 PM
Subject: [vdr] Re: Building a VDR box


> On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 21:17, Rene Bartsch wrote:
> >
> > Can be done with the MPlayer/MP3 patch/plugin
> >
> >  play some games,
> >
> > Use your linux-box as PC.
> >
> >  maybe even
> > > read my e-mail.
> >
> > Use your linux-box as PC or send your emails to TV-screen by svdrp-port
> > (There was a patch around some month ago ...)
> >
> >  I've understood that playing movies is possible by
> > > decoding the video stream and re-encoding it to mpeg2. But I've got a
> > > matrox g400 card which I could use in my box so I'd like to know
whether
> > > it would be possible use the tv-out feature of the g400 card in the
VDR
> > > framework.
> >
> > The full-featured DVB-cards have a V4L-interface where you can grab the
> > picture and send it to the Matrox. For this, you can use kvdr
(especially
> > written
> > for VDR) or a patched version of Xawtv.
> >
> >  The pros would be obvious but what would the cons be, if any
> >
> > The picture quality will be less than with a DVB-S for movies ...
> > and you have to run X.
> >
> > > (given that it would even be possible)?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance
> > >
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'use your linux box as a PC'? The thing
> is, that I'm planing on not connecting a monitor to the box, only a TV.
> And I only have one free slot on my receiver, so I can't connect both
> the g400 and a dvb-c board to the tv. And I'd like to be able to use the
> box as a PC via tv occationally but I don't know if I can do that, ie.
> use a browser in the tv for example, if I have only connected the dvb
> card to the tv.
>
> Is it really so that if I circulate the picture via the g400, the video
> quality will suffer noticeably?

In your situation I'd suggest to connect the Matrox to the TV either by
TV-out or RGB
(better quality, but if you plug a receiver between, it may lack of the
wiring-through)
and use KVDR or XawTV to display on X.

With RGB you have to build a cable from Matrox' VGA to SCART and DVB's and -
by need - soundcart's audio-out.
(look for with google, there are a lot of descriptions ...). But be careful.
You have to experiment
with the framebuffer/XFree-settings - and if you use horizontal frequencies
above 16 kHz or vertical
frequencies above 54 Hz, your TV may explode!

But this way you can use your TV like a Monitor.

With RGB the picture shouldn't be much worse than DVB's, but definitely
better than with TV-out.

>
> Thanks for your patience in answering these probably stupid questions.
> As you can see I'm pretty new to the scene. thanks.
>

None of us have been born to know everything - we all had simple questions
at the beginning ;o)

P.S.: Your PII 233 should be fast enough for all VDR-apps except
MPlayer-PlugIn.
You need about 800 MHz to reencode to MPEG1 or about 450 MHz to replay MPEG2
or DivX
on the Matrox with software decoding.

With the setup mentioned above the MPEG1/2-decoding is done by the DVB-card
(some on the ML told it works with a P1 100 MMX (didn't got it working
flawless with a P1 133 Classic)
but as most DVDs use AC3 now, I think it's critical slow).