[vdr] Re: Beginner questions

[Jörg Knitter <joerg.knitter@gmx.de>]

Hi,

> > ...If you only use one card, you can only do
> > multiple records if the channels use the same transponder
(frequency).
> > If you have more cards (e.g. again a full featured one or a
Hauppauge
> > Nova - but this might not be available for terrestrial
> > broadcasts), you
> > can also record channels from different transponders.
> 
> How do I know which channels use the same transponder?

Just test it switching the channels during a recording - all channels,
that are not on the same transponder, will not be displayed.

> How/why would I use more than one card?

Just install it in your system. You would use more than one card to
record e.g. two channels that are on different transponders.
Additionally, you could use the second card to make an epg (electronic
program guide) scan in the background (as far as I know) as normally
only the epg of those channels is stored that you have visited. So if
you don´t visit German or French channels regularly, you won´t get epg
information, so that you can´t see what´s running there before you
actually switch there. There are e.g. around 40 german FTA channels, so
if I want to get an complete overview of all broadcasts (e.g. with the
tool vdradmin), I need the epg of all channels.

> > The card is being connected using FBAS out.
> 
> What is FBAS?

Composite = chinch cable out = color and brightness on one cable.
Professional users/video enthusiasts prefer S-Video output because color
and brightness is separated there so that you get a (slightly) better
image.

> > If you also want S-Video
> > out, you have to get a card with hardware revision 1.3 (maybe
> > also 1.6),
> > but not the new 2.x cards, because they don´t have the famous
> > J2 jumper
> > that offers S-Video out. This is for DVB-s cards, don´t know about
the
> > DVB-t cards.
> 
> How do I know what hardware revision the card uses?

You only get the latest versions in the stores. If you want an older
revision, visit ebay etc. The disadvantage of the older revisions is
that they are said to become hotter, so some need extra cooling.

> I think I read somewhere that Hauppauge's Nexus cards had the onboard
> MPEG-2 decoder, but the Nova does not. Is this right?

Yes.

> Do the buffer overflows still happen, at all?

No, my last recordings were okay. There is just still this sync problem
but currently not known if Klaus will fix this for VDR 1.2 or if this
will be included in the next 1.3 developer versions. According to the
last mails, not using PCR information is a missing feature but most of
the channels work without it.

> Thanks again for your help.

No problem, we all were beginners (and I would not call myself an
advanced user as VDR is quite complex).

Jörg



--
Info:
To unsubscribe send a mail to listar@linuxtv.org with "unsubscribe vdr" as subject.