[mythtv-users] Australia, Freeview and MythTV

Nick Rout nick.rout at gmail.com
Mon Mar 16 03:41:48 UTC 2009


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 4:23 PM, sonofzev at iinet.net.au
<sonofzev at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> We've been duped..
>
> Australia has a new Digital system being launched.. I'm writing just to check and
> see what I/we will need to do if this does eventuate.
>
> Freeview has announced that there will be a move from the current MPEG-2 based
> (DVB-T)system to an MPEG-4 based system... and here's the catch (that I'm dubious
> of) "only Freeview branded set top boxes and TV's will be able to see those channels"
>
> Aside from the fact that aside from the proposed "Internet Filter", this will
> make Stephen Conroy possibly the most unpopular parliamentarian in Australia's
> history (How many people have bought new LCD's with built in HD tuners
> anticipating the big switching off of analogue tv only to find they will need a
> new set top box??)...
>
> While I'm sure this simply means that Australia will be changing over to a newer
> technology that supports MPEG-4.. Does anyone have an idea what this is, and is
> it likely my tuners will support it?
>
> (FYI I have a dvico dual express and a dvico fusion lite)
>
> cheers
>
> Allan

In NZ our DVB-T freeview [1] is based on h.264 video and he-aac and/or
ac3 audio. It is unencrypted. Any DVB-T card will receive it, and it
can be played without any form of decryption.

That doesn't mean it is easy to play back. H.264 video is far more
processor intensive than MPEG-2, and the linux (read ffmpeg) support
for PAFF interlacing and he-aac is there now, but not in mythtv-0.21.
There are hacked versions of myth [1] that will play this stuff fine,
either with or without vdpau. However without vdpau you are going to
need a machine far gruntier than your present minimum specs on mpeg2.
Also XvMC is not going to help like it can on MPEG-2.

So I suspect what the announcement is saying is "your digital tv with
mpeg-2 codec in it won't play this stuff".

But unless they mean encyption is coming, myth should be able to
handle it, albeit with an upgrade to your CPU or your video card,
along with the "hacked" versions of 0.21.

[1] there is also an SD service running basically the same channels
from satellite over DVB-S via MPEG-2 video.

[2] https://launchpad.net/~paul-kcbbs/+archive/ppa (without vdpau)
http://avenard.org/media/Home.html (with vdpau)


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