[vdr] Re: Building a VDR box

[Antti O Lammi <alammi@cc.helsinki.fi>]

On 9 Sep 2002, Vesa Holopainen wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm kinda new to this PVR scene, but now that I've read stuff about PVR
> systems in general and about VDR in particular, I'm about to build
> myself a vdr box. So here are a few questions, hope you guys can help me
> out. Firstly I'd like some advice on which card to buy. I live in
> Finland and I'm connected to a cable network, so I guess I need a DVB-C
> card. What sort of things should I look for when buying a dvb card for a
> vdr box? And is there a recomedable store somewhere in europe where I
> could order such a card for a good price.

TechnoTrend DVB-C "Premium" and Hauppage DVB-C (not the NOVA el cheapo
model) are proven to work in Helsinki Cable Network. Multiplex 8 (138MHz
with discovery etc) can not be tuned at least with the current drivers.
Somebody mentioned getting the multiplex work in Windows but i have no
further info on that (Or interest to test Windows drivers my self).
NEWSTRUCT driver should work "as is" now when Jaakko made a patch for it,
and the old driver works if you fine tune "tuner.c" a bit.

I have no other information on the "Nova" (Hauppage Nova, Technotrend
"Budget") cards than Pay TV channels are not supported (Common Interface).

Siemens Activity cards do not work in HTV network.

I bought my Technotrend "Premium" card from www.ebay.de. Hauppage card is
also available from www.avitos.de for affordable price.

> And secondly, I'd like to be able to do other thing as well with my box,
> ie.watch movies in all formats, play some games, play mp3:s, maybe even
> read my e-mail. I've understood that playing movies is possible by
> decoding the video stream and re-encoding it to mpeg2. But I've got a
> matrox g400 card which I could use in my box so I'd like to know whether
> it would be possible use the tv-out feature of the g400 card in the VDR
> framework. The pros would be obvious but what would the cons be, if any
> (given that it would even be possible)?

MPlayer can decode all formats and encode them to MPEG-1 in real time, so
your DVB card can output them to your TV.