[vdr] Re: Building a VDR box

["Rene Bartsch" <vdr@bartschnet.de>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vesa Holopainen" <vholma@pp.htv.fi>
To: <vdr@linuxtv.org>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 7:00 PM
Subject: [vdr] Building a VDR box


> 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.
>
> And secondly, I'd like to be able to do other thing as well with my box,
> ie.watch movies in all formats,  play mp3:s,

Can be done with the MPlayer/MP3 patch/plugin

 play some games,

Use your linux-box as PC.

 maybe even
> read my e-mail.

Use your linux-box as PC or send your emails to TV-screen by svdrp-port
(There was a patch around some month ago ...)

 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 full-featured DVB-cards have a V4L-interface where you can grab the
picture and send it to the Matrox. For this, you can use kvdr (especially
written
for VDR) or a patched version of Xawtv.

 The pros would be obvious but what would the cons be, if any

The picture quality will be less than with a DVB-S for movies ...
and you have to run X.

> (given that it would even be possible)?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
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