[mythtv-users] HD Tuner Cards

Neil Sedger mythtv-users at moley.org.uk
Sat Jan 6 21:43:01 UTC 2007


Nick Fosteras wrote:

> I'm using a Technotrend TT-budget S-1500 DVB-S card, add-on CI
> daughter card and DragonCAM (Firecrypt) CAM to capture Sky here in
> the UK.  It works perfectly (using a recent SVN) decoding all the
> channels I subscribe to (Artsworld, Discovery, etc).

Good-o!
Is there any way to add more tuner(s) to that setup?
Can the CAM decode more than one channel at one time?
Or can the CAM be used in 'playback' mode - so you record encrypted mpeg to HD and then run it through the CAM when you play it back? (I assume this is how Sky+ works)

> I don't use the premium channels (Sky Movies or Sports) - so can't
> vouch if those work or not.

Hmm I'll have a root around the avforums, if people can view those channels and/or the HD ones, with similar Windows setups then it should be fine for us too.

Is the current BBC HD channel on Sky FTA, encrypted as FTV or encrypted along with the normal 'Sky package' channels?
Thats odd that Sky broadcast the BBC's HD channel in DVB-S but their own in DVB-S2!
I assume that the BBC one will move to DVB-S2 at some point...


> I can also play back the BBC HD stream from my more powerful system
> (a C2D E6400, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7100GS).  It plays with no stuttering
> and uses ~40% of one core and 10% of another when playing/ decoding.

Thats promising. Is this using standard mplayer and the ffmpeg codecs that come with it?
What format is the BBC stream you tested? 1080i/720p/1080p?

I've read that the Core H.264 codec (Win32, non-free) is multithreaded so hopefully the the ffmpeg one can go that way too. But 40% is fine... my current frontend is a Celeron500 :-)


This fella: <a href='http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/01/03/shuttle_unveils_x200/'>Link to Shuttle XPC Mini X200 review</a>
takes a CoreDuo and might make a nice quiet HD front-end...


Cheers
Neil


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