On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 13:47 -0600, Mark Paulus wrote: > > Carl L. Gilbert wrote: > > I am trying to decide between the Hauppauge HVR-1600 or the PVR-150. > > > > I plan to use this card in a server in the basement that I will never > > watch video on. Its only a server to decode the TV signals and provide > > the DVD feeds, etc. My OS will be the latest Mandriva and I am running a > > XP3200+ on what I think is an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe with nforce2 with an AGP > > RIVA128 video card. (Don't hate!) > > > > > > I see the HVR-1600 is not 100% supported so it concerns me as I am an > > ivtv/MythTV noob and don't want to bite off too much new stuff at once. > > Haven't > > even installed it yet. Plus, do I really need clear QAM? is that any > > better than the same channels on analog cable? > > Digital video comes across your Cable company's cable via QAM. They have > a choice of sending either encrypted QAM-64 or QAM-256 (I believe QAM-256 > is more prevalent in the US), or clear QAM. Tuner cards currently can > process clear QAM, because there aren't any cards that are able to handle > the different encryption routines used by the Cable monopolies. There > are some external tuners that can use a Cable card, which one then would > need to hook up to a capture card via analog, or s-Video, etc. Then you > could capture Digital via analog. > > I believe that QAM captured shows will be clearer in the case where you > have fuzzy pictures from your cablevision. Normally, that's probably not > the case, so you probably won't notice much different. > > One other thing to be aware of. When you capture from mythtv with a > PVR-150/250/350/500, you will be capturing MPEG-2 PS (Program Stream) > video, ready for playing with. When you capture QAM, you will be > capturing MPEG-2 TS (Transport Stream) video, which may require a > bit more effort to de-multiplex and do something with. Also, you will > get AC-3 audio from QAM, and mp2 audio from PVR-xxx. This could > be an issue, depending upon what kind of Frontend you are using. > >
When you say "caputure from MythTV" you mean mythTV sends out a signal for whatever I am watching in MPEG-2 PS format? and that vs. capturing straight from the hardware? Is this what you were talking about below when you said you can capture multiple channels at once if they are in the same something or another? Like the tuner can set to a particular QAM channel which may have multiple programs encoded in that channel? So each QAM channel has an mpeg-2 TS, and when I get that, I must somehow pull out the individual program streams? So eventhough I can only "tune" to a single channel, it may have multiple program streams in it? But then you said it would require multiple capture cards? I wonder, can I capture the raw TS then demux it later? Also, can the card demux the signal up front? Is the demux on the card, or is it in software? I assume its on the card since the recorded stream has to be encoded first and this card offers hardware encoding right? Sorry for all the questions, but I am trying to learn. Its gonna take a while.. One thing I am grasping is the capture card vs. encoder card. If I am watching a live feed on a remote box and I only have a capture card, will that have to be encoded then sent out to the remote box, or is it send out to the remote box in the raw MPEG TS that it comes in? If I had an encoder card, would that mean it would decode the MPEG TS, then reencode an MPEG PS and send that out to the remote box? CL
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