[mythtv-users] UK greenfield site... DVB-T or DVB-S?

[Nick Morrott]

On 12/03/2008, Dan Gravell <dan.gravell at talk21.com> wrote:

> In a greenfield site, would one choose terrestrial or satellite? I'm
> interested from a MythTV perspective; obviously I know the viewing and
> content implications. It seems that DVB-T cards are a bit better supported,
> is this true? Are there things I need to check in order for a DVB-S card to
> work? Can these work just pointing to the standard Sky satellite? Is HD ever
> likely on terrestrial?

If I was not going to take up a contract with Sky (only wanting access
to FreeSat) I would opt for DVB-T with at least a couple of DVB-T
cards. On close inspection, you may find the recording quality
slightly higher on DVB-T than DVB-S (especially the high bitrate
channels like BBC1), and you can also take better advantage of the new
multirec features in the new 0.21 release of MythTV. With 6 DVB-T
cards, you can potentially record everything that's being broadcast on
Freeview at the same time*

The channels Nick F mentions as requiring a Sky card _should_ be
available as Free To View later this year, once Channel 4's current
carriage agreements finish. I have been testing a DVB-S card on my
MythTV network (we moved to a property with an existing dish, so I
thought I'd use it) and it makes a useful addition to my 3 DVB-T and 2
VirginMedia sources. There are a lot of FTV channels available on
DVB-S that are not available on Freeview or VirginMedia, but these are
nice additions, not prerequisites for using the service. Having had a
good experience with Freeview and MythTV, I don't think I would opt
for DVB-S in preference to DVB-T if I was starting out from scratch.

DVB-T cards are generally cheaper and more numerous than DVB-S cards,
but both types are well supported in current kernels. If you want to
use >1 DVB-S card, you'll need to get an LNB with sufficient outputs.
If you want to use >1 DVB-T card, you just need a splitter or multiway
booster. I'd take a guess that overall, a DVB-T solution would work
out cheaper. The best sources of information on suitable DVB cards are
on the LinuxTV wikis at linuxtv.org, and the MythTV wiki.

* although it's unlikely that consumer hardware would allow this, due
to the storage demands of recording 30+ simultaneous streams. Note
that multirec also support DVB-S cards - it's just that there are less
channels per transponder on the satellite, so multirec is less
beneficial than on DVB-T.

-- 
Nick Morrott

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