[vdr] Re: VDR developer version 1.1.3

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

Carsten Koch wrote:
> 
> Klaus Schmidinger wrote:
> ...
> > - It is now possible to record several channels on the same transponder with "budget
> >   cards". VDR automatically attaches a recording timer to a card that already
> >   records on the appropriate transponder. How many parallel recordings can actually
> >   be done depends on the computer's performance. Currently any number of recordings
> >   gets attached to a card, so you should carefully plan your timers to not exceed
> >   the limit. On a K6-II/450 it was possible to record three channels from transponder
> >   12480 with a single WinTV NOVA-S.
> 
> IIRC, it has been mentioned here (or on the dvb list), that a
> full DVB-S card can also record more than one channel, just not
> all channels on one transponder, as the budget card can.
> Is this true or am I imagining it?

My first experiments in that area were done with a full featured card,
and I was pretty happy to see that I could record several channels on
transponder 12188 (the "RTL" transponder) that way. However, when I
tried the same with transponder 12480 (Sat.1), the recordings showed
some heavy distortions. Ralph means that maybe the data on the Sat.1
transponder is multiplexed differently than the one on the RTL transponder,
so that the first one works, while the second one doesn't.

There is also another problem: you can't record the channel that is currently
being viewed and at the same time record others on the same transponder.
Apparently there are very big chunks of data from the viewed channel, which
causes problems with the other channels' streams.

I therefore made it so that a full featured card will only record one
channel (although you _can_ do overlapping recordings with such cards, too).
Apparently those "budget" cards are the ideal "secondary" cards for a VDR
system - unless you want to use a CAM, which only works with a full featured
card.

Maybe somebody can continue these experiments and will find a way to do
multiple recordings even with full featured cards...

Klaus
-- 
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Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10
CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40
Hofmark 2                               Email:   kls@cadsoft.de
D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de
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