[linux-dvb] Re: Dvb in uk

[Gavin Hamill <gdh@acentral.co.uk>]

On Thursday 02 January 2003 3:52 pm, you wrote:
> Thanks Gavin
>
> Interesting spin on the gov't's definition of 'free to air' then ;-)
> isn't there a watchdog to prevent this type of behaviour?

LOL :D Do you really think the government have any power over someone like 
Rupert Murdoch? :)))

> I understood that it wasn't an issue of signal strength, and that they
> were having to use different shaped aerials 

The best thing is to just try it and see - no point in shelling out £70 for a 
new aerial if the current one is OK..

> - the chap mentioned that he
> has a good view of the transmitter from his window, but still can't
> extract the digital signal as it's transmitted over a larger frequency
> range.

It's not. Each digital multiplex takes up 8MHz of spectrum - just the same as 
the analogue stuff - that's the reason the ITC website will describe the 
various muxes as being on 'channel 57' in the same way they do with analogue 
broadcasts.

> Any tips on what I should be looking for in a dvb-t card (eg don't get a
> budget as you can't view the images ?) or are they much of a muchness
> and I should aim cheap ? (who sells these damned things anyway?)

In the UK, again you have little choice...

The de facto card is the Hauppauge Nova-T retailing from dabs.com and the 
like for about £100 inc. VAT.  It's a budget card. If you want a full-feature 
DVB-T card, Hauppauge can get them for you if you ask them directly.

The catch is they'll charge about $320 (they told me why they quoted dollars, 
but I forget...) and take a month to deliver.

So, apart from trying to source one of those, you could get a full-feature 
'Nexus' card for DVB-S and just use the MPEG decoder on it... or you could 
get a dxr3 / Hollywood+ card from eBay. (about £20 -> £30)

This is stuff specific to VDR, but there's nothing to stop you from using a 
budget card and using MPlayer / Xine to view the MPEG2 streams.. 

Of course, that's not really a comfortable solution for watching TV from your 
armchair :)

Cheers,
Gavin




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