[mythtv-users] DVB cards and encoding

Edward Wildgoose Edward.Wildgoose at FRMHedge.com
Tue Dec 9 06:00:03 EST 2003


> _Some_ of the DVB cards also have hardware DEcoders. As far as I am
> aware these are not supported very well in Linux (if at all). 

That's not quite true.  In fact they are supported very well and the output quality is extremely good.  You can even get RGB scart output on most of the cards if you build a connector to the internal socket.

The main program which supports output via the full featured cards is called VDR.  It's an excellent piece of software and very well maintained.  The main differences against myth are in the eye candy - the OSD on the DVB cards is extremely limited to just a few bytes of display memory and you can't really do that much with it, so the screens are like teletext screens really.

You can also output to the cards via mplayer and xine I think (and perhaps others).

However, the cards with hardware decoding are very expensive, circa £200+ in the UK.  Basically Myth does not support output via the DVB cards, VDR *ONLY* supports output via the DVB card, so pick your software and buy your card...  (I have one of each for what it's worth..)




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