My current vdr-1.4.7 (compiled 2 years ago as of tomorrow!) is still serving me well.. I have a Technotrend FF DVB-C doing all the heavy lifting, but as time moves on and HD content becomes more prevalent, I'm thinking of moving up.
Right now I have an EPIA 800MHz quiet PC with the Technotrend giving me lovely SCART RGB out... if I got a nice LCD TV, what setup would be ideal for driving the HDMI input?
Most of the content is still SD, and I am a real pedant about smooth video / interlaced output for scrolling text / live sports. Any time that I've played with vdr-xine or xineliboutput over my years with VDR, it's always been a bit juddery due to VGA timing not matching up with the TV.. is that improved any in the world of HD / HDMI?
Just interested in hearing your thoughts, since I'm sure there are a dozen different ways to approach this!
I can't possibly afford a reelbox at £1100, so if I'm going to do it, I'll have to roll my own :)
Cheers, Gavin
En/na Gavin Hamill ha escrit:
My current vdr-1.4.7 (compiled 2 years ago as of tomorrow!) is still serving me well.. I have a Technotrend FF DVB-C doing all the heavy lifting, but as time moves on and HD content becomes more prevalent, I'm thinking of moving up.
Right now I have an EPIA 800MHz quiet PC with the Technotrend giving me lovely SCART RGB out... if I got a nice LCD TV, what setup would be ideal for driving the HDMI input?
I don't have a nice lcd/plasma tv, so I don't use hdmi. I currently play hd content (from a handful of satellite channels, only one of them, bbchd, carrying real programming) on my laptop (1680x1050 resolution, a tad smaller than the full-hd 1920x1080), which has a nvidia card, using xine-plugin on the vdr pc and xine-vdpau on the laptop. With vdpau almost everything is offloaded to the graphic card, so it needs really little cpu, it's possible it could also work on your epia, provided you can add a pci/agp card with a suitable nvidia chipset and are willing to use their closed driver. I have to say that the result seems pretty good to me. Ati/Amd and intel will probably offer some hd acceleration in the near future, however I don't think they offer anything right now for linux. I found this benchkmark:
http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/en/blog/2009/06/22/video_decode_acceleration_...
Most of the content is still SD, and I am a real pedant about smooth video / interlaced output for scrolling text / live sports. Any time that I've played with vdr-xine or xineliboutput over my years with VDR, it's always been a bit juddery due to VGA timing not matching up with the TV.. is that improved any in the world of HD / HDMI?
Again, I cannot tell about hdmi (though I think I'd get similar results), but on my laptop screen sd content is upscaled acceptably by xine-vdpau (the scaling and deinterlacing is done in hardware with vdpau). Horizontally scrolling text is not very good IMO. I your tv scaler is better than the nvidia one (though it has to be a high end tv set for that) I suppose that you can feed sd content through hdmi, though everybody is suggesting to scale on the pc and feed the tv with its native resolution.
Bye
Luca Olivetti wrote:
Again, I cannot tell about hdmi (though I think I'd get similar results), but on my laptop screen sd content is upscaled acceptably by xine-vdpau (the scaling and deinterlacing is done in hardware with vdpau). Horizontally scrolling text is not very good IMO.
Is the laptop LCD refreshed at 60 Hz?
I never got smooth TV motion on a 20" Viewsonic computer monitor. It supports all refresh rates up to 75 Hz but the visual output looked always the same as in 60 Hz mode. Televisions have native 50 Hz support so the result is better. I have now a full-HD TV as 32" computer monitor / bedroom TV.
BR, Seppo
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Gavin Hamillgdh@acentral.co.uk wrote:
My current vdr-1.4.7 (compiled 2 years ago as of tomorrow!) is still serving me well.. I have a Technotrend FF DVB-C doing all the heavy lifting, but as time moves on and HD content becomes more prevalent, I'm thinking of moving up.
Right now I have an EPIA 800MHz quiet PC with the Technotrend giving me lovely SCART RGB out... if I got a nice LCD TV, what setup would be ideal for driving the HDMI input?
Most of the content is still SD, and I am a real pedant about smooth video / interlaced output for scrolling text / live sports. Any time that I've played with vdr-xine or xineliboutput over my years with VDR, it's always been a bit juddery due to VGA timing not matching up with the TV.. is that improved any in the world of HD / HDMI?
I have a few VDR boxes and all of them now are using Nvidia cards and vdpau. I output the audio/video to my nice fancy tv with DVI->HDMI cables. It works great. I'm not sure what you're really asking though when you say what setup is ideal. That completely depends on _your_ needs & wants but the only people I know with 'juddery' playback only experience it because the video card they have doesn't really have enough horsepower for the higher end hd content. Which could be solved by simply buying a different inexpensive video card.
And what DVB cards that support HD and are supported by current kernel drivers are in favorites now?
I have a few VDR boxes and all of them now are using Nvidia cards and vdpau. I output the audio/video to my nice fancy tv with DVI->HDMI cables. It works great. I'm not sure what you're really asking though when you say what setup is ideal. That completely depends on _your_ needs & wants but the only people I know with 'juddery' playback only experience it because the video card they have doesn't really have enough horsepower for the higher end hd content. Which could be solved by simply buying a different inexpensive video card.
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 9:18 AM, Andrey Kuzminmaillists@egodot.net wrote:
And what DVB cards that support HD and are supported by current kernel drivers are in favorites now?
I don't keep a list of dvb cards & drivers but you should know that dvb cards don't care if you're watching sdtv, hdtv, or whatever else. They don't care if the stream is mpeg2, mpeg4, etc. The only thing that is important is whether or not your dvb card supports the method the stream is broadcast (ie: modulation, fec, etc). The only exception is if you want to use a "full featured", or in others words a card with an onboard mpeg decoder. In that case the onboard decoder needs to support whatever encoding is used in the stream (ie: mpeg2, mpeg4).
I don't keep a list of dvb cards & drivers but you should know that dvb cards don't care if you're watching sdtv, hdtv, or whatever else. They don't care if the stream is mpeg2, mpeg4, etc. The only thing that is important is whether or not your dvb card supports the method the stream is broadcast (ie: modulation, fec, etc). The only exception is if you want to use a "full featured", or in others words a card with an onboard mpeg decoder. In that case the onboard decoder needs to support whatever encoding is used in the stream (ie: mpeg2, mpeg4).
So old WinTV Nexus DVB-S is enough for those experiments?
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Andrey Kuzminmaillists@egodot.net wrote:
So old WinTV Nexus DVB-S is enough for those experiments?
As long as it supports the modulation & fec of your provider, yup.
En/na VDR User ha escrit:
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Andrey Kuzminmaillists@egodot.net wrote:
So old WinTV Nexus DVB-S is enough for those experiments?
As long as it supports the modulation & fec of your provider, yup.
I'm using a skystar 2 and it's perfectly ok for dvb-s. If your channel is using s2, you'll need a dvb-s2 card. There are not that many hd channels using dvb-s (I can only see bbchd, itvhd, luxe tv, fashion tv), there are many more using dvb-s2, but I think most of them are encrypted.
Bye
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:35:11PM +0100, Gavin Hamill wrote:
My current vdr-1.4.7 (compiled 2 years ago as of tomorrow!) is still serving me well.. I have a Technotrend FF DVB-C doing all the heavy lifting, but as time moves on and HD content becomes more prevalent, I'm thinking of moving up.
Right now I have an EPIA 800MHz quiet PC with the Technotrend giving me lovely SCART RGB out... if I got a nice LCD TV, what setup would be ideal for driving the HDMI input?
Most of the content is still SD, and I am a real pedant about smooth video / interlaced output for scrolling text / live sports. Any time that I've played with vdr-xine or xineliboutput over my years with VDR, it's always been a bit juddery due to VGA timing not matching up with the TV.. is that improved any in the world of HD / HDMI?
Take a look at these patches:
http://lowbyte.de/vga-sync-fields/
I believe they are useful also for HDMI/HD stuff. I haven't tried them yet myself.
Original announcement: http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2008-July/017347.html
For Intel: http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2009-January/019330.html
-- Pasi
Dear list,
Am Samstag, den 15.08.2009, 14:41 +0300 schrieb Pasi Kärkkäinen:
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:35:11PM +0100, Gavin Hamill wrote:
[…]
Most of the content is still SD, and I am a real pedant about smooth video / interlaced output for scrolling text / live sports. Any time that I've played with vdr-xine or xineliboutput over my years with VDR, it's always been a bit juddery due to VGA timing not matching up with the TV.. is that improved any in the world of HD / HDMI?
Take a look at these patches:
http://lowbyte.de/vga-sync-fields/
I believe they are useful also for HDMI/HD stuff. I haven't tried them yet myself.
Original announcement: http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2008-July/017347.html
For Intel: http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2009-January/019330.html
the Web site with more information is: http://frc.easy-vdr.de/
Thanks,
Paul
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Goga
Most of the content is still SD, and I am a real pedant about smooth video / interlaced output for scrolling text / live sports. Any time that I've played with vdr-xine or xineliboutput over my years with VDR, it's always been a bit juddery due to VGA timing not matching up with the TV.. is that improved any in the world of HD / HDMI?
Take a look at these patches:
http://lowbyte.de/vga-sync-fields/
I believe they are useful also for HDMI/HD stuff. I haven't tried them yet myself.
Original announcement: http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2008-July/017347.html
For Intel: http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2009-January/019330.html
the Web site with more information is: http://frc.easy-vdr.de/
On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 16:33 +0400, Goga777 wrote:
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
Progressive content is very difficult to mess up - precious few people could tell the difference between a movie varying between 24 / 25 frames/sec, where it only takes microseconds to cause the interlace fields to jump out of sync.
Cheers, Gavin.
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
but to run nvidia geforce 8/9 series cards with "1080i 50Hz" mode is not so easy
or could you run 1080i mode on vdpau card with good result ?
Goga
On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 06:37:36PM +0400, Goga777 wrote:
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
but to run nvidia geforce 8/9 series cards with "1080i 50Hz" mode is not so easy
or could you run 1080i mode on vdpau card with good result ?
At least you should be able to run 1080p50 and let vdpau do deinterlacing for you.. I believe it should be possible to get 50 fps progressive output from 50i material using vdpau deinterlacing.
-- Pasi
On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 04:29:38PM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 06:37:36PM +0400, Goga777 wrote:
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
but to run nvidia geforce 8/9 series cards with "1080i 50Hz" mode is not so easy
or could you run 1080i mode on vdpau card with good result ?
At least you should be able to run 1080p50 and let vdpau do deinterlacing for you.. I believe it should be possible to get 50 fps progressive output from 50i material using vdpau deinterlacing.
.. But you might get better results if you outputted 1:1 interlaced material using 1080i50 mode and let the LCD tv do the deinterlacing..
Not sure if that's possible with Nvidia hardware/drivers. At least 'vga sync fields' patches are not atm working with nvidia.
-- Pasi
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
but to run nvidia geforce 8/9 series cards with "1080i 50Hz" mode is not so easy
or could you run 1080i mode on vdpau card with good result ?
At least you should be able to run 1080p50 and let vdpau do deinterlacing for you.. I believe it should be possible to get 50 fps progressive output from 50i material using vdpau deinterlacing.
yes, my PCI Geforce 8400 card on GPU G98 can do 1080p@50 but with the simplest bob deinterlacing only. I prefer to use more advanced deinterlacing algorithm - temporal_spatial or temporal. But with them I have jerky video
.. But you might get better results if you outputted 1:1 interlaced material using 1080i50 mode and let the LCD tv do the deinterlacing..
Yes, exactly what I want to try, But I couldn't run properly 1080i@50 - even in xorg.log I have the report about validated 1080i@50 mode - my LCD TV Philips 9703PFL reported about 1080p source from hdmi
Not sure if that's possible with Nvidia hardware/drivers.
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/185.18.29/README/chapter-19.... yes it's possible
Chapter 19. Programming Modes
The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver supports all standard VGA and VESA modes, as well as most user-written custom mode lines; double-scan modes are supported on all hardware. Interlaced modes are supported on all GeForce FX/Quadro FX and newer GPUs, and certain older GPUs; the X log file will contain a message "Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU" if interlaced modes are supported.
Note that when validating interlaced mode timings, VertRefresh specifies the field rate, rather than the frame rate. For example, the following modeline has a vertical refresh rate of 87 Hz: # 1024x768i @ 87Hz (industry standard) ModeLine "1024x768" 44.9 1024 1032 1208 1264 768 768 776 817 +hsync +vsync Interlace
Goga
Linux/VDR форум http://www.forum.free-x.de/wbb/index.php?page=Portal
On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 20:16 +0400, Goga777 wrote:
for you.. I believe it should be possible to get 50 fps progressive output from 50i material using vdpau deinterlacing.
yes, my PCI Geforce 8400 card on GPU G98 can do 1080p@50 but with the simplest bob deinterlacing only. I prefer to use more advanced deinterlacing algorithm - temporal_spatial or temporal. But with them I have jerky video
Hm, do you think you were only able to use simple deinterlacing because of limitations in CPU speed, bus bandwidth (only PCI - I've been thinking about one of the 8400 GSs myself so I can play with it in my PCI-only VDR box..), or power within the G98 GPU itself?
.. But you might get better results if you outputted 1:1 interlaced material using 1080i50 mode and let the LCD tv do the deinterlacing..
Yes, exactly what I want to try, But I couldn't run properly 1080i@50 - even in xorg.log I have the report about validated 1080i@50 mode - my LCD TV Philips 9703PFL reported about 1080p source from hdmi
:( Native output and letting the TV do the grunt work would be my prefernece, too - in what way doesn't it work? No output at all or very juddery output ?
gdh
for you.. I believe it should be possible to get 50 fps progressive output from 50i material using vdpau deinterlacing.
yes, my PCI Geforce 8400 card on GPU G98 can do 1080p@50 but with the simplest bob deinterlacing only. I prefer to use more advanced deinterlacing algorithm - temporal_spatial or temporal. But with them I have jerky video
Hm, do you think you were only able to use simple deinterlacing because of limitations in CPU speed, bus bandwidth (only PCI - I've been thinking about one of the 8400 GSs myself so I can play with it in my PCI-only VDR box..), or power within the G98 GPU itself?
I don't know exactly there's report that on G98 temporal works well. I believe in it So, I suppose that PCI bus is limited
nvidia mentioned http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/185.18.29/README/appendix-h.... In order for either VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL or VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL to operate correctly, the application must supply at least 2 past and 1 future fields to each VdpMixerRender call. If those fields are not provided, the VdpMixer will fall back to bob de-interlacing.
.. But you might get better results if you outputted 1:1 interlaced material using 1080i50 mode and let the LCD tv do the deinterlacing..
Yes, exactly what I want to try, But I couldn't run properly 1080i@50 - even in xorg.log I have the report about validated 1080i@50 mode - my LCD TV Philips 9703PFL reported about 1080p source from hdmi
:( Native output and letting the TV do the grunt work would be my prefernece, too - in what way doesn't it work? No output at all or very juddery output ?
I could reach more less good quality output for 1080i@50 , but I decided to come back to 1080p@50 because that mode was better than 1080i@50 (I repeat mt TV set always informed me about 1080p mode , never - about of 1080i)
Goga
On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 22:20 +0400, Goga777 wrote:
I don't know exactly there's report that on G98 temporal works well. I believe in it So, I suppose that PCI bus is limited
nvidia mentioned http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/185.18.29/README/appendix-h.... In order for either VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL or VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL to operate correctly, the application must supply at least 2 past and 1 future fields to each VdpMixerRender call. If those fields are not provided, the VdpMixer will fall back to bob de-interlacing.
OK yeh the PCI bus, especially with HD content, could fail to supply that amount of raw data. Obviously this is hand-waving since I have no idea of the volumes of data involved :)
I could reach more less good quality output for 1080i@50 , but I decided to come back to 1080p@50 because that mode was better than 1080i@50 (I repeat mt TV set always informed me about 1080p mode , never - about of 1080i)
Right, so it could be a problem with the TV set itself - nothing is ever easy! :)
gdh
On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 05:38:47PM +0100, Gavin Hamill wrote:
On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 20:16 +0400, Goga777 wrote:
for you.. I believe it should be possible to get 50 fps progressive output from 50i material using vdpau deinterlacing.
yes, my PCI Geforce 8400 card on GPU G98 can do 1080p@50 but with the simplest bob deinterlacing only. I prefer to use more advanced deinterlacing algorithm - temporal_spatial or temporal. But with them I have jerky video
Hm, do you think you were only able to use simple deinterlacing because of limitations in CPU speed, bus bandwidth (only PCI - I've been thinking about one of the 8400 GSs myself so I can play with it in my PCI-only VDR box..), or power within the G98 GPU itself?
.. But you might get better results if you outputted 1:1 interlaced material using 1080i50 mode and let the LCD tv do the deinterlacing..
Yes, exactly what I want to try, But I couldn't run properly 1080i@50 - even in xorg.log I have the report about validated 1080i@50 mode - my LCD TV Philips 9703PFL reported about 1080p source from hdmi
:( Native output and letting the TV do the grunt work would be my prefernece, too - in what way doesn't it work? No output at all or very juddery output ?
Here are parts of a discussion I had with a Nvidia developer 4 months ago:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm interested in getting 1:1 output of interlaced DVB broadcasts using Nvidia gfx cards. For this you need to be able to vsync to each interlaced field separately.. afaik Nvidia X.org driver does not support this?
I just tested VDPAU, and it looks like this is possible, to some degree. Specifically, with 480i output over S-Video, I find that the presentation queue flips at 60Hz, not 30Hz, so it's definitely only syncing to fields not frames.
The hard part is that there's no way to specify if you're outputting a top or bottom field, so it'll end up being random if your surface gets displayed as top or bottom, which kinda makes the whole thing pointless.
We did acknowledge that this use-case might exist, but were of the opinion that it was extremely rare; most users will simply de-interlace their content and display it one their progressive display. Does your display device not support any progressive modes?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hard part is that there's no way to specify if you're outputting a top or bottom field, so it'll end up being random if your surface gets displayed as top or bottom, which kinda makes the whole thing pointless.
Yeah the field order you need to be able to specify or figure out..
I did some investigation, and it doesn't look like our HW exposes any status indicating top v.s. bottom field, nor any way to request syncing of display to top v.s. bottom field.
Sorry this isn't more useful! I will keep this request around as an RFE (request for enhancement) just in case we can implement it on any future HW.
Oh, and it looks like we do support 50Hz output; see the README that comes with the driver, and search for the TVStandard option.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you know if VDPAU supports "full-fps" deinterlacing? ie. 50 fps progressive output for 50 hz interlaced video..
Yes, out with an n Hz field rate, you should be able to derive either n Hz frame rate or 2n Hz frame rate. The exact details are explained in the vdpau.h documentation on video mixer usage, with some additional notes in the driver README.
-- Pasi
2009/8/16 Goga777 goga777@bk.ru:
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
but to run nvidia geforce 8/9 series cards with "1080i 50Hz" mode is not so easy
or could you run 1080i mode on vdpau card with good result ?
You can't do it with the composite output (using the nvidia supplied breakout cables).
You can do it using normal dvi/vga output though, and use a transcoder, or with a tv supporting rgbhv signalling, or just plain vga/dvi/hdmi.
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 01:38:09PM +1000, Torgeir Veimo wrote:
2009/8/16 Goga777 goga777@bk.ru:
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
Now that I think about it, I believe this is what I was really asking about.. is it perhaps that good LCD TVs have so much smoothing/deinterlacing processing circuitry that the interlace timing is less of a problem when provided by VGA or HDMI?
but to run nvidia geforce 8/9 series cards with "1080i 50Hz" mode is not so easy
or could you run 1080i mode on vdpau card with good result ?
You can't do it with the composite output (using the nvidia supplied breakout cables).
You can do it using normal dvi/vga output though, and use a transcoder, or with a tv supporting rgbhv signalling, or just plain vga/dvi/hdmi.
.. but you still have the problem of not being able to figure out the field order? See the other mail I sent to this thread..
-- Pasi
Goga777 wrote:
I'm wondering - does the problem with timing and sync also important and for for vdpau nvidia cards ? or that project is important only for intel and ati ?
I think the problem is that you can't patch the binary driver.
On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 14:41 +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
Take a look at these patches:
http://lowbyte.de/vga-sync-fields/
I believe they are useful also for HDMI/HD stuff. I haven't tried them yet myself.
:) I'm very familiar with this patches - Thomas and I spent many hours trying to debug a sync problem on an old Dell Optiplex - turned out there was not enough PCI bandwidth, and the machine didn't have an AGP slot..
gdh
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Andrey Kuzmin -
Gavin Hamill -
Goga777 -
Luca Olivetti -
Pasi Kärkkäinen -
Paul Menzel -
Pertti Kosunen -
Seppo Ingalsuo -
Torgeir Veimo -
VDR User