[linux-dvb] Re: DVB-T cards for Australia

[John Dalgliesh <johnd@defyne.org>]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, [iso-8859-1] Måns Rullgård wrote:
>
> We are looking for DVB-T cards for use in Australia.  We do not need
> hardware decoder, but we do need full access to the transport stream.
> Will any card work anywhere in the world?

Now that is pretty much the case for normal TV (but there are some DVB-T
modes I'd never heard of mentioned in the reply to your other email!)

In Australia we use 7 Mhz bandwidth for all defined channels: VHF channels
5-12 then UHF from 27 to 60-something. They all run at about 28 Mbps IIRC.

We don't have the system where multiple 'channels' share the same mux
like in the UK (and Germany?), rather each frequency is controlled by one
company. There are 6 channels you can tune: 3 commercial, 2 government and
a datacaster.

None of the commerical channels are allowed to use their bandwidth for
multichanneling (something about diluting the advertising market) so they
generally run one HD feed (1080i/576p) plus one SD feed all the time of
the same thing. If they don't have HD source for what's on the SD channel
they either upconvert or show a demo loop. For sporting events they
occassionally will turn off the HD and have another SD channel or two
showing a different view of the action - doesn't happen very often, but
a/v pids do move around enough that you can't easily put them into a
fixed channel list.

One of the government channels (ABC) doesn't have enough money to
multichannel so it does the same SD + HD thing as the commercial ones.
(It used to have two other interesting channels 'tho). The other
government channel (SBS) has a second channel: 24 hr world news / weather
taking feeds in different languages from all round the world.

The datacaster has about a dozen really low data rate channels, all
boring. The most interesting one is static shots taken from traffic cams
with the odd surf report + piccy.

There's like 3 or 4 (DVB) radio stations around but nothing exciting.

I think that pretty much sums up the state of DVB-T in Australia. I'm sure
others will have different takes on it :)

> The Hauppauge WinTV NOVA-T
> model 928 looks like it might fit the spec.  Do the Linux drivers
> support this card?

Yes. Just :)

> What about the Technisat AirStar2?

Hmmm I think so.

Other cards:
- DVICO FusionHDTV DVB-T1 and DVB-T Lite (2 different cards, seem pretty
good)
- AverMedia AverTV DVB-T (might have some problems?)
- TwinHan/VisionPlus DVB-T (pretty sure)
- DPANDA DVB-T PCI (OEM of TechnoTrend DVB-T from www.dpanda.com.au)

I think the Nebula DigiTV is supported to.

> Multiple cards in the same machine must be supported.  The Hauppauge
> website talks about limitations there.  Is that just for the windows
> driver?

Yes lots of people have multiple cards in linux.

> ISTR something about problems if installing several different
> cards based on the same chip (was it bt878?).
>
> I'd be thankful for any recommendations regarding a good choice of
> card.

Hmmm.. this reply wasn't nearly as informative as I meant it to be when I
started it. Sorry about that :)

> --
> Måns Rullgård
> mru@mru.ath.cx

{P^/