[vdr] Re: VDR commits ritual suicide on HD signal to FF card

[Michal Dobrzynski <michal@appl.com.au>]

Hi Klaus,

Thanks for the great work with VDR.

Such a solution may be the best solution. But is it going to happen? If 
not then curing the symptoms is the only thing that can be done in the 
meantime.

I don't automatically add channels in my system so that particular 
problem wouldn't affect me. The workaround to the problem could further 
be improved by channels which are added automatically being marked as 
potentially HD.

At any rate it could be done so that a single config option (ie HD 
incompatible output device = yes) could set these behaviors such that 
the workaround was robust.

The problem is real and the best solution seems unlikely given that the 
firmware isn't opensource. How could this be done in the firmware 
anyway? What exactly can the decoder on a FF card handle? Can it do 
720x576p (defined as HD in Australia) ?

I don't know what the actuall limitations are, and whether possibly 
adding more RAM to the card would enhance its decoding capabilities (ie 
reducing all HD to 720x567i). If so then I would even be interested in 
that money pit given that there don't seem to be any other real 
solutions to TV out :/

Regards,
Michal Dobrzynski

On 19/10/2004, at 5:42 PM, Klaus Schmidinger wrote:

> Michal Dobrzynski wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would like to be able to record HD transmissions on my VDR box using
> > the usual procedures but I would like to PREVENT the display of said
> > transmissions on a per channel basis.
> >
> > The primary problem is that once a recording of a HD signal commences
> > my dual budget DVB-T system with FF DVB-S card for output will send 
> > the
> > HD data to the FF card which will go nuts with firmware errors to the
> > extent that the computer MUST be rebooted in order to for VDR to 
> > become
> > usable again.
> >
> > Could a method for marking un-decodable channels be added to VDR?
> > Ideally this method could also tag the recordings made from such
> > channels in the same manner (ie. This channel/recording contains a HD
> > video stream. Are you sure you wish to continue?" and have this 
> > feature
> > triggered when appropriate (primary output is a FF card) or when
> > enabled by the user.
> >
> > Am I thinking about this the right way or am I completely off?
> Implementing such a method would only prevent the symptoms, but
> wouldn't cure the cause. What if a new channel with HDTV comes
> up? The first time you switch to it, it would crash again.
>
> The best way to fix this would be to make the driver/firmware more
> robust, so that it doesn't crash in the first place.
>
> Klaus