Hashimoto Posted May 27, 2004 Report Share Posted May 27, 2004 In Europe the DVB is the way to go. Here in Finland the analog sendings will be killed in 2007 so all analog receiver cards will be useless after that. My TV and VCR are now some 14 years old. The end of their life can't be very far, so I have been looking for replacements. I was thinking about making a PC based digital recorder/TV and run into this project: VDR Needless to say, I'm quite interested, but so far had neither money nor time to actually start. Has anybody on this forum done it? Any success? Hashimoto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted June 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 Hello all ! It's been a while since I've last come to the boards. I may be able to come back now and then, from now on. This topic is now old, and I've bought my TV card. Here's my experience for those interested: - I first bought a Hercules SmartTV Stereo, one of the last TV card selling with a BT8x8 chip. But it was too big for my case so I had to return it. - As a replacement, I bought a PCTV Stereo, the only existing TV card that is low-profile! Luckily, it is stereo, as the name implies. The PCTV Stereo is based on the saa7134 chip, and its support is very recent. Even the saa7134 driver coming with Mandrake10 is too old! So you have to get a kernel (I downloaded 2.4.25), and apply the saa7134 2.4.25-rc1 kraxel patch, that is OK for kernel 2.4.25. The result is excellent! XawTV displays the TV perfectly either in a window or in fullscreen, and stereo sound is automatically detected on a per-channel basis! Quality-wise, the SECAM tuner is really good. It is better than my TV's, or than my VCR's: image quality is better, only maybe not very sharp. On the sound side, it is acceptable, though far from excellent, but then it is in comparison to my newly acquired TV (the real one), that is not an entry-level model. I should add that XawTV also successfully displayed the VCR's picture (S-Video capture), as well as my wife's digital camera's picture (Composite capture). Concerning the supplied IR remote control, I don't know if it works, because for now, I did not even try applying the lirc kernel patch to my self-compiled kernel, so I miss the lirc-serial module. As for MythTV, I cannot tell, because for now, I have issues with MythTV+Alsa... Bye, Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 In Europe the DVB is the way to go. Here in Finland the analog sendings will be killed in 2007 so all analog receiver cards will be useless after that. My TV and VCR are now some 14 years old. The end of their life can't be very far, so I have been looking for replacements. I was thinking about making a PC based digital recorder/TV and run into this project: VDR Needless to say, I'm quite interested, but so far had neither money nor time to actually start. Has anybody on this forum done it? Any success? Hashimoto Hashimoto..... i have a partial box but I am waiting for digital in france! its meant to be arrivig in paris SOON I know i can get a digital card in the UK for £50 (E75) so Im hoping I can use a UK one in France becuase TV's are really expensive here compared to the UK... (I dont know how expensive they are in Finland but I doubt they are cheap) MY friend inthe UK has an Asus Pundit with a Hauppage Dig Terrestrial card and it works perfectly ...he also has a MSI box int he other room as a myth frontend. All of this is built on MDK 10 CE but with a recompiled kernel. (He refuses to use any Mandrake kernel since they are undocumented so i dont know if it would have worked on the MDK one since he didnt try) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted June 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 Concerning the supplied IR remote control, I don't know if it works, because for now, I did not even try applying the lirc kernel patch to my self-compiled kernel, so I miss the lirc-serial module. It's now done. I compiled and installed LIRC 0.6.6, and it's working perfectly. It does not even require a kernel module. Nice, isn't it? Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hashimoto Posted June 18, 2004 Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 Gowator, Just let me know your experience when you get it running. We got the digiTV already, so it's just a question of buying/building the equipment. Prices in France are almost the same as up here (I lived down there Mulhouse for two years, so I know). Actually, what I would like to have ("I have a dream", but don't shoot me) is: A diskless thin client (maybe based on fanless mini-ITX) with a DVD. This connected to the server with a DVB card and a huge HD for saving movies, music and for time shifting. All progs run through network in a true terminal way. I'm just afraid that setting up a system with mini-ITX based terminal (using it's HW based TV-out ), ltsp, DVB card and VDR software is a all too much for my linux experience. So maybe I got to start by setting up a stand alone VDR on the mini-ITX. When I have the time and the funds. Hashimoto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted June 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 Maybe I'm wrong, but from my experience (provided your network interfaces are correctly configured), when you use Unix/Linux, most of the configuration is making a standalone machine do as you want. Making it network-aware is just natural with Unix, and does not require a lot of work. Myself, I recently built a VCR-sized PC, with EPIA-M10000N mb., which includes a VIA C3 Nehemiah processor (1GHz), the cle266 grahic chipset, and TV OUT, with a PCTV Stereo card (saa7134). Making all that work is actually quite hard (and I swear I'll never again buy anything just because proprietary drivers are available; open-source drivers are mandatory, IMHO). On the other hand, making it serve video, mails, ... to other PCs will be just a "slight" addition at the end. Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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