On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 09:42:56AM -0000, Edward Wildgoose wrote: > Hi, I am interested in getting started with VDR, but need a > recommendation for a DVB-T card. (By far the cheapest method seems to > be "Freeview" and so I appear to need a DVB-T card? I presume that > DVD-S cards don't work?)
DVB-T is the only solution in the UK at the moment, although from June 1st, the BBC will be broadcasting all of its services via Astra 2D in unencrypted Free-To-Air, rather than using SkyDigital's VideoGuard. You won't be able to receive ITV, C4 or C5 via DVB-S, so this news is of limited use. You /can/ get DVB-T cards featuring an on-board MPEG decoder, but they are /expensive/ - Hauppauge in the UK quoted me $329 (dollars since it's an import item) not including postage... > Can I also try and glean a little other info which isn't immediately > obvious without having a card to play with: Do the drivers offer a V4L > interface to the extent that I can use xawtv, or even mythtv to view > the picture? Does this still apply if I have a card without an MPEG > decoder (obviously I realise that the CPU load will be higher). You're on the right track :) The full-feature (onboard MPEG decoder) do provide a V4L /dev/video0 interface, whilst the Nova-T and other budget cards do not (they are just tuners with a COFDM decoder and spew out a raw MPEG Transport Stream). The 'standard' VDR setup in the UK is a Nova-T (about �100) and a seperate Creative Dxr3 or Sigma Hollywood+ MPEG decoder card (about �25 on eBay), since there is a plugin for VDR to use one of these cards as the primary output device. The plugin isn't perfect yet, but it's under active development and each monthly release squashes a whole box of bugs.. Cheers, Gavin. -- Info: To unsubscribe send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe linux-dvb" as subject.
