[linux-dvb] Re: FF cards alter PTS'?

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

Holger Waechtler wrote:
> 
> Oliver Endriss wrote:
> > On Thursday 20 November 2003 15:59, Robert Schlabbach wrote:
> >
> >>From: "Klaus Schmidinger" <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>
> >>
> >>>Robert Schlabbach wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>AFAIK, the specs for the TT designs have never been published either,
> >>>>and the drivers you have now are the result of guessing and reverse
> >>>>engineering. I don't see why this shouldn't be repeated for more
> >>>>up-to-date designs than the old TT ones...
> >>>
> >>>True - but soembody actually has to _do_ this ;-)
> >>>Apparently the interest in this isn't high enough, yet...
> >>
> >>Maybe the incentives just aren't high enough - why bother reverse
> >>engineering a design that's technically no improvement over the TT ones?
> >>Now if there was a card that was actually a technical advance (e.g. a
> >>DVB-S2 card, or a hybrid DVB-C/T card, or a card with a better suited PCI
> >>bridge with a deep FIFO, or a card with a much quicker sync'ing
> >>demodulator), I'm sure someone would get into reverse engineering it...
> >
> >
> > Exactly, that's the point.
> >
> > IIRC some recent budget cards also require closed-source firmware,
> > which has to be taken from the windows driver.
> > This is a step in the wrong direction.
> 
> Get real. These cards are again Technotrend cards. Or do you know
> another design which is using the TDA10045 demod?
> 
> > There is no advantage except that these cards are really cheap.
> 
> ?!? sorry, I don't understand you. They do their job and are cheap,
> isn't this advantage enough?
> 
> You accept silently all the limitations of the av711x: a OSD that is far
> from what you expect for a modern STB (the OSD is not even able to
> display 8bit DVB subtitles correctly), no way to pass a high-bandwidth
> stream to the host and process it there, no way to decode HDTV or even
> MPEG4 sources. Their cheap alternatives provide you all this,

What?? They have a better OSD? I thought they don't have an OSD at all
(let a lone a TV out)?!

> they don't
> force you to do anything on the card what can get done much easier and
> better on the host processor.
> 
> > Why should we waste out time with cards which are not better than the
> > old ones?
> 
> open your eyes. they are. Simplicity and reliability is a significant
> improvement in my eyes.

Holger, please realize that we are talking about FULL FEATURED cards here!
IMHO a DVB card that is really worth using (as primary card, of course),
must provide TV out (which implies MPEG decoding and OSD). Of course
there may be people (like yourself) with different opinions, who are free to
use VDR with the necessary plugins to do the output via graphics adapters
and soundcards. I for myself prefer the way the FF DVB cards do it, even at
the cost of limited OSD capabilities. I don't need all that "eye candy"
stuff that's often talked about. What counts most is functionality, not beauty.
After all, what I want to use this for is watching TV, recording stuff and
replaying it. Whether or not the OSD menus have thousands of colors, a
"graphical" interface (I never understood why some people are so afraid of texts)
or fancy background images doesn't matter. The really important functions
are somewhere else.

Klaus


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