1.3. Overview

Figure 1.1. Components of a DVB card/STB

Components of a DVB card/STB

A DVB PCI card or DVB set-top-box (STB) usually consists of the following main hardware components:

Figure 1.1, “Components of a DVB card/STB” shows a crude schematic of the control and data flow between those components.

On a DVB PCI card not all of these have to be present since some functionality can be provided by the main CPU of the PC (e.g. MPEG picture and sound decoding) or is not needed (e.g. for data-only uses like “internet over satellite”). Also not every card or STB provides conditional access hardware.