Subject: [linux-dvb] Full featured cards Date: Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 11:24:10PM -0000
Quoting Adrian P Challinor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
Does anyone know where you can get the full featured cards that are needed by VDR? My understanding is that I need at least one card that support DVB-IN, DVB/TV-OUT and has an MPEG decoder on board. These seem to be in very short supply on the open market, so if you know of a card that is available I would be very glad to hear from you.
It appears vdr was targeted to the Hauppauge Nexus-s (that is, the old Technotrend full-featured) card. Here in Holland it can be easily found, albeit at a shamefully high price (I found it at a shop of the Mycom chain: www.mycom.nl). I understand that this was the first card that was available to developers.
VDR makes use of the V4L-compatible video out that was developed for the Nexus, as well as of the OSD and CAM interface code. I understand that VDR was developed in parallel with the dvb driver.
With a Nexus, VDR works perfectly. The unpleasant fact that I am finding out is that the Nexus is old technology: it includes the saa7111 DSP, that does not allow you to extract the complete multiplexed stream - only specific PIDs, and I am experiencing, with the same level of signal, a much higher error rate in the extracted MPEG stream, if compared with the Hauppauge Nova (budget) card.
Otherwise, any reason why I cant use a hi-end AGP card with a TV/DVI-out
capability?
In order to generate a video output, VDR needs the capability
(provided by the driver) of onboard MPEG conversion, and of on-screen
display. I *think* you can use VDR with a budget card for recording,
but you cannot see the set-top-box-like output. Porting it to using
software MPEG decoding is, I believe, not trivial.
In fact there are possibilities to use VDR with a budget card only and a graphics card output, e.g. the softdevice output plugin. Nevertheless, stability of such a solution heavily depends on the linux support of the graphics card, before you go for such an option you should be absolutely sure, that your graphics card (esp. the tv out, which is the non-trivial part) is fully supported.
Niklas
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