[dundee] Digital TV in Linux

[Bruce Stewart]

On Tuesday 15 May 2007 09:35, Andrew Clayton wrote:
> On Mon, 14 May 2007 21:57:14 +0100, James Le Cuirot wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 May 2007 21:43:08 +0100
> >
> > Andrew Clayton <andrew at digital-domain.net> wrote:
> > > I've never really understood what exactly you plug into the card
> > > when doing DVB?
> > >
> > > Cheers for reading.
> > >
> > > Andrew
> >
> > I'm not an expert but I gather there are different kinds of DVB
> > cards/boxes. I bought a USB-based DVB-T (terrestrial) box off eBay a
> > while back. It probably would have worked but I then discovered that
> > you can't get Freeview here. Bummer.
>
If you have a DVB-T card, you just plug in RF output from your aerial, as 
if you were plugging into a TV or a VCR.
Currently you can only capture one channel at a time per tuner, so if you 
need to capture multiple channels at a time (ie the one of the reasons why 
you need a PVR) you need multiple tuners. There is supposedly a project to 
allow the capture of multiple channels off a mux at the same time. 
As I understand it the Nova-T 500 is supported in the 2.6.20 kernel.

> I'm seeing where my confusion was stemming from. For some reason I was
> thinking the Hauppauge PVR 150/250/etc are DVB cards..
>
> I now see they do a DVB-S and a DVB-T card. WinTV-NOVA series.
>
The PVR x50s do a analogue video to MPEG2 steam capture/conversion, great 
if you have a low powered PC.
You can use this to capture from an existing Cable/Satellite/DVB-T STB, to 
allow capture of premium content, but you really need to combine it with 
an "IR-Blaster" to send signals to the STB to change channels.

> So if I got a DVB-T card I could get Freeview on that without needing a
> Freeview box?
>

Yes, you get are able to get the "Freeview" streams, without a separate 
STB, by using a WinTV Nova or similar.

> Still looking over the Linux DVB wiki:
> http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> > If you have a satellite dish then I think you can just get a DVB-S
> > (satellite) card/box and plug that right in. I'm not very familiar
> > with satellite but I'm guessing you can't use a dish with more than
> > one piece of equipment at a time?
>
> Heh, I'm not overly familiar with it myself, it may be possible to get
> a splitter of some sort?.

If you need to get more than one satellite tuner, you need to have a dual 
or higher multiple LNB, also if you need to pick up multiple satellites.

>
> > *still on the bog standard 5 channels for now*
> > James
>
> Andrew
>
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BTW there was a new KnoppMyth  ( http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html ) 
release at the weekend (R5F1), the changelog hasn't been updated yet.

Bruce S.