[vdr] Re: OT: a rant regarding DVB-C cards

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Juha Pahkala wrote:

>The problem I see with full featured cards is the fact that using them
>you can only output mpeg streams and osd stuff to the television. I do
>know that lots of different plugins exsist to do various things in the
>OSD but I really would like to be able to for example play 3d games with
>the same machine that is connected to the TV. The cpu requierment to do
>mpeg2 decoding in software is the common argument I've seen against a
>setup I've just proposed. But if I'm not mistaken, it's still less than
>transcoding a mpeg4 stream to mpeg1 and feeding it to the full featured
>card in order to play mpeg4 movies on the machine, which I intend to do
>anyhow, so some cpu power is needed nevertheless.

For 3D games you'll anyway need a separate video card, I'd think.

>Some questions regarding full featured cards. As I understand, there are
>basically two supported cards in the linux world. The
>Hauppauge/Techotrend card and the Siemens card. The Hauppauge/TT card
>seems like quite a safe choice, but also a bit expensive. I think I
>could order a Hauppauge/TT from Germany for around 230 euros and a
>Siemens for about 150,-. If I've understood correctly the Hauppauge/TT
>should work well with linux. But at least a couple of months ago there
>was some problems with the Siemens card. I'm connected to the HTV cable
>network in Helsinki, Finland, and the problems with the Siemens card had
>something to do with HTV's usage of both qam-64 and qam-128 in their
>network if I remember correctly. Have these problems been resolved yet
>or should I just go with the Hauppauge/TT card.

You might be interested in this page by Jaakky Hyvätti:

	http://hyvatti.iki.fi/~jaakko/dvb/

He has a channels.conf for HTV there, and it contains (afaik) both qam64
and qam128 bouquets. I have a Hauppauge DVB-c "full" card, and it works
excellently in the Turku,Finland cable network using Jaakko's patches.

>Another thing with full featured cards is the capablility to output
>streams in RGB or at least s-video format. Or do they all support only
>composite output?

My Hauppauge has only composite out, and it is a pain for me. My amplifier
that handles all video streams (dvd, mp3-box, vdr, video) can use either
composite or s-video, and *all* connectors must be of the same type. As
the Hauppauge doesn't give me s-video I'm forced to connect it directly to
the TV instead of through the amp.

>One more stupid one: Any recomendations on where to buy the card? Are
>there any proven good, cheap providers?

I got mine from http://technikdirekt.de/ for 269€, but apparently
http://usa-x.org/ is cheaper. Or maybe not, looking at the site tells me
this:

	WIN DVB-C 2.1 Digital Cablecard 
	Euro 20.900,00 inc (US$ 22.055,72)

which is a *little* bit expensive. :) Both the "outside Germany" and
"inside Germany" show the same "interesting" prices. I guess that the
prices are just fubar, for lots of 100 cards or that we're just being
screwed in the eye.


-- 

             Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.
                                              -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods



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