Thanks for your views.
Here are some of my opinions:
- Channel changes in LiveTV are much faster in VDR (MythTV with DVB-T is painful, and I think this still applies to 0.19) It's also more reliable (MythTV 0.18 often crashed when zapping a lot, I don't know if it's better now)
Still crashes and still painfully slow on changing channels....
- LiveTV is not recorded to disk in VDR, unless you pause it. This means you can't say "I missed that one, let's go back and see it again" as with MythTV.
Never used that feature anyway, so no problem.
- Programming recordings is easier in VDR, especially for non-tech users. It's not so heavily epg-oriented as MythTV. This is good for countries like Spain where you can't trust the epg timetables.
Our EPG is quite good, but the kids and wife wouldn't mind an easier interface
- You have DVB radios in VDR, I think they're not yet available in MythTV.
OK.
I also noticed that VDR can record one stream from the same MUX when you watch another. If this works it would be very useful here in Finland with currently two MUX:es and my having only one DVB tuner (so far).
- No (dis)advantages on watching DVDs, and the same for DivX/etc if you use xineplayer from xine plugin (it needs no reencoding)
That's good as it is in heavy use here.
- VDR doesn't compare to MythTV for viewing images. This is the reason why I still stick to MythTV, as my parents spend a lot of time viewing photos. I use MythTV for this, and VDR for everything else.
This is a disadvantage as we also use this feature. On the other hand isn't the Myth interface that good either. Need to take a look at this.
Thanks Dag
On 7 Mar 2006, at 19:46, Dag Nygren wrote:
I also noticed that VDR can record one stream from the same MUX when you watch another. If this works it would be very useful here in Finland with currently two MUX:es and my having only one DVB tuner (so far).
It can also record all the channels and the same MUX at the same time, which begs the question how many channels can you record at the same time with so many cards without having issues. Anyone?
From: "Robbo" ml@the-view.eclipse.co.uk
On 7 Mar 2006, at 19:46, Dag Nygren wrote:
I also noticed that VDR can record one stream from the same MUX when you watch another. If this works it would be very useful here in Finland with currently two MUX:es and my having only one DVB tuner (so far).
It can also record all the channels and the same MUX at the same time, which begs the question how many channels can you record at the same time with so many cards without having issues. Anyone?
Well I've got two cards and I have tested recording nine channels at the same time with no problems. The channels were from to muxes naturally. And I live in Finland. Almost every day I record three channels at the same time. And I've got only 600MHz PIII and one SATA drive for recordings. I did not check the cpu load at that time but can do that if someone wants to know.
\Kartsa
I demand that Kartsa may or may not have written...
[snip]
Almost every day I record three channels at the same time.
That means little without bandwidth stats (or disk space used per hour) for those channels.
On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:35:13 +0000 Darren Salt linux@youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk wrote:
I demand that Kartsa may or may not have written...
[snip]
Almost every day I record three channels at the same time.
That means little without bandwidth stats (or disk space used per hour) for those channels.
On average under 3500 kbit/s = 1.5 GB/hour for most Finnish channels, at least on DVB-T, and I doubt cable is any better here.
--Niko
I demand that Niko Mikkila may or may not have written...
On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:35:13 +0000 Darren Salt linux@youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk wrote:
I demand that Kartsa may or may not have written... [snip]
Almost every day I record three channels at the same time.
That means little without bandwidth stats (or disk space used per hour) for those channels.
On average under 3500 kbit/s = 1.5 GB/hour for most Finnish channels, at least on DVB-T, and I doubt cable is any better here.
That's 437.5kB/s.
Let's double that to take account of PCI->memory transfer and processing time taking a chunk out of disk I/O time and assume typical maximum IDE bandwidth of 30MB/s on PII/PIII boards.
That gives 35 channels.
I'm not saying that this is in any way accurate, though :-)
From: "Darren Salt" linux@youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk
On average under 3500 kbit/s = 1.5 GB/hour for most Finnish channels, at least on DVB-T, and I doubt cable is any better here.
That's 437.5kB/s.
Let's double that to take account of PCI->memory transfer and processing time taking a chunk out of disk I/O time and assume typical maximum IDE bandwidth of 30MB/s on PII/PIII boards.
That gives 35 channels.
I'm not saying that this is in any way accurate, though :-)
But I'd say close enough. And I use SATA drive which gives a bit more throughput that IDE. Too bad I do not have more dvb cards to try this out :) And if I had I dont have enough free channels :)
\Kartsa
From: "Niko Mikkila" nm@phnet.fi
On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:35:13 +0000 Darren Salt linux@youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk wrote:
I demand that Kartsa may or may not have written...
[snip]
Almost every day I record three channels at the same time.
That means little without bandwidth stats (or disk space used per hour) for those channels.
On average under 3500 kbit/s = 1.5 GB/hour for most Finnish channels, at least on DVB-T, and I doubt cable is any better here.
And because the original question concerned Finnish channels I thought that was irrelevant because I also live in Finland :) And I have understood that here in Helsinki HTV is "just" putting the streams from the air to cable.
I have not really analysed the average bitstrean but I doubt if it is even near 3500 kbit/s. So low quality it is.
\Kartsa
-
Dag Nygren -
Darren Salt -
Kartsa -
Niko Mikkila -
Robbo