What DVB-s2 PC card to get for HDTV viewing and recording

yeahman

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:D
I'm guessing this is the want list for my PCI card:
- I'm looking for a card that has Lnb Loop thru, or preferably twin reciever
- Can record HDTV - preferrably with mpeg4 onboard compression so the cpu is free to watch other channels (Does a card have to be DVB-S2 to see HDTV and what is the advantage of an mpeg4 card - surely an mpeg2 card can see HDTV???)
- Can take softcams or CI slot
- Diseqc version 1.2 - as I want to drive a V-box with a 36V motor up top.
please help me I'm confused.
 

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yeahman said:
:D
(Does a card have to be DVB-S2 to see HDTV and what is the advantage of an mpeg4 card - surely an mpeg2 card can see HDTV???)


No a DVB-S can recive MPEG2 and MPEG4 HD, if you have the correct codecs installed and a really beefy proccessor, MPEG4 isnt perfect.

What a DVB-S card cant receive is the new DVB-S2 transmissions that seems to beeing paired alot with MPEG4 these days.
 

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yeahman, the dvb card you want isn't manufactured never was and I doubt it would ever be. But the next best thing would have to be a skystar1, dig into it and see if it meets your expectations.
I hope in the near future someone get an ati chip and put it o good use, that could 'the bomb'.
 

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Agreed.

Who on earth would pay £300 for a twin-tuner PCI/USB2/Firewire DVB-S2 satellite card/box with hardware MPEG4 decoding on-board, DiSEqC 1.2 & USALS compliance and support for MD compliant plugins?

Everyone!
 

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:) Fair call mate - you're right I'm dreaming.........:)
Thanks for all the replies, I guess I was a little ambitous about the specs i'm looking for. Thanks for clearing up the mpeg4 issue, I'll just upgrade the computer to dual core and let it sort out the recording side of that.
As for the skystar1 I've been reading - but it's confusing as there're many flavours and I can't really see why it's better than the cheaper ss2, and it appears more software cams are supported with this one..
It appears not all ss1 cards have mpeg2 processing onboard as with this one.
http://www.sateuropa.co.uk/product_overview.asp?id=656&catid=1&subcat=7
SS1 - desecq1.2 mpeg2 isn't onboard (software solution)

Then I found one that does below:
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_nexus.html
nexus - s - ss1 - mpeg2 encoding disecq1.2 - looks great but it doesn't do dvb-s2

So I'm got new priorities, and I still need your help/advice.
- My priority is HDTV sport - so does that mean that deffinately need dvb-s2, also having a card that can pick up sky/videoguard using software cam is pretty important - I believe others broadcast it as , (can't tell if ss1 or ss2 support these? - do you know if they do?). Few websites tell you if it supports dvb-s2 - and the ones that do are german. http://www.knc1.com/
Also I'm going to be setting up a M to M 85cm dish with 36V motor and V-box to whatever card I choose. Just a thought - lets say I get 2 cards with deseqc - and you have 1 dish but want to see 2 satellites that are far apart - will the software have the intellegence to give one channel priority over the other?
 

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LOL, I wasn't being sarcastic, I really can't wait for this imaginary card. Someone's got to produce it and the sooner they do, the sooner they can get rich and we'll all be as happy as a pig in some poop.

Lot of questions there m8. I'll let someone else have a go at the latter ones but as far as the SS1 question goes, the older SS1's and Nexus-S cards (based on SS1 chipset) had MPEG2 decoding hardware on board and were superb. You could get a card-reader attachment for them which would obviously carry a subscription card. The later ones had the hardware decoding removed (WTF?!? :-doh!) and the card reader module moved onto the main PCB.

Don't ask, it's a mystery. They must be mad.

STICK
 

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Wow, did you see the hardware requirements for that baby!

For HDTV (1080i / MPEG4 (AVC/H.264) )

3.4 GHz P4 (Single Core with Hyperthreading) or
2.2 GHz AMD 3500+ or
Dual Core P4 D820 / D830 or
Dual Core AMD X2 3800+
with graphics card:
ATI X1600/X1800 or NVidia 6600GT/7600GT

I guess all DVB-S2 PCI cards are going to be much-of-a-muchness.

 

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Damnation! HD on pc with a card that needs so much cpu power is just a bucket of badly written codecs.

@ yeahman
So you have a little taste of the stuff...
At the moment I have a SS2 + progdb + s2emu and it sucks up between 7 to 15% of my 2.2ghz A64/512ram system. No HD decoding at present as I have my dish pointed at 30ºW, don't really care much for HD as of yet.

Image quality is similar to a HDTV rip, sort of DVD quality on most channels and the sound is great on a 5.1 system. It's all dependent on how good the codecs are and channel compression.
On some channels image quality is a disaster, it gets fuzzy because of motion blur, sports can be a pain. I have tryed a few codecs but couldn't find a fix for it, I guess software decoding only does so much. (If anyone knows how to fix this please let it out)
Also, image quality is very dependent of what gfx card you have if you plan to use the tv-out feature, I find ATI better in this respect. If you use the old style control panel it's even better, it's faster and easier to set things up.
About encryption... With a good softcam + dvb viewer program the SS2 will open channels by the truck load, this is the easiest part of them all. There's plenty of software around, some will work just fine with almost any dvb card. Progdvb is a fine example, you have plenty of working softcams available.

Bottom line hardware decoding is the way to go if you are able to find a good card, cam or no cam.
 

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BGonaSTICK said:
Wow, did you see the hardware requirements for that baby!

For HDTV (1080i / MPEG4 (AVC/H.264) )

3.4 GHz P4 (Single Core with Hyperthreading) or
2.2 GHz AMD 3500+ or
Dual Core P4 D820 / D830 or
Dual Core AMD X2 3800+
with graphics card:
ATI X1600/X1800 or NVidia 6600GT/7600GT

I guess all DVB-S2 PCI cards are going to be much-of-a-muchness.


And a nice price of just 129 euro, Aprox 88 stg.
 

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Just wondering............
After updating the processor & Graphics card, Could you add on a dragon cam insert your sky card????? would there be a need for a sky hd box then. Although a need for a sky box for updating the card frequently.
 

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john_graydon said:
Just wondering............
After updating the processor & Graphics card, Could you add on a dragon cam insert your sky card????? would there be a need for a sky hd box then. Although a need for a sky box for updating the card frequently.



Well ......Could we discard the new hd box then ?????
 

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I think you would have to have at leat the normal skybox to be able to update the card. But then again I don't know nothing about sky reception. :-doh!
 

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My reading of this is that if you bought the additional CI board then you could add the Dragon CAM, but the Dragon doesn't do keep-alive's so you would have to have a digibox also. You might find that any digibox would work though, and so you may not need an HD box.

You could also do it the other way, and use a Dreambox with HD card (incl working authorisation/keep-alive processing) as a cardserver + say GBOX running as a client on the PC.

Is that last bit crap? I'm too tired to understand my own answer, but I think it's right (as long as the HD sub-cards are not fundamentally different from the standard-issue cards, which is of course a real possibility).

Only time will tell.
 
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