[vdr] HDTV w/ FF card

[Dr. Werner Fink]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 01:24:36PM +0200, Carsten Koch wrote:
> 
> Gee, back 5 years ago when I bought my first FF card to build
> a VDR system out of an old 150MHz PentiumPro PC, it seemed
> like a nice idea to have the MPEG decoder on the card.
> Today, given the facts that
> 
> *  a FF card costs as much as 3 or more budget cards
> *  a FF card has smaller bandwidth that a budget card
>    and thus can record less streams in parallel
> *  a FF card contains closed source firmware that
>    crases on various perfectly legitimate occasions
>    (such as distorted signal due to bad weather or
>     HDTV signals)
> 
> I am wondering how well the alternative solutions which
> do not require a FF card work.

I'd like to see a HW decoder (Mpeg 1/2/4), S-Video and
DVI out for 720p and 1080i on a graphic card with an
open source driver supporting this decoder.

The question is: will this ever happen?

> Is a FF card still the most stable solution (except for
> bad weather or HDTV of course)?
> How reliable is the latest xine plugin?
> How reliable is the latest framebuffer plugin?
> Are there more solutions that work with a budget card alone?

The main problem is: you need CPU power and therefore
you'll get a system which can not passive cooled and
even a low noise cooling is a big problem.

           Werner

-- 
  "Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having
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