Tuner Card

[Dave Baumann]

Mmmmmmmm...

http://www.mediapc.tv/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=p43.html

Shame its not actually available yet, and apparently not even listed on Terratec's website yet.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

What's so different about that Dave?
All the features it supports have been out for ages(in Australia at least) under just about every brand.

There have been dual tuner cards for a while.

 

[Skrying]

Even PCIe ones? Lol.

Looks awesome, I wonder how much it will cost. I've been looking at tuner cards a lot lately.

 

[Simon F]

Mmmmmmmm...

http://www.mediapc.tv/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=p43.html

Shame its not actually available yet, and apparently not even listed on Terratec's website yet.

I think the question that has to be asked is "What's the software like?". I bought one of these USB tuners - the hardware seems good but the software could be a lot better.

 

[Dave Baumann]

What's so different about that Dave?
All the features it supports have been out for ages(in Australia at least) under just about every brand.

There have been dual tuner cards for a while.

Dual DVB-T Tuners are not particularly prevelent yet; this is the first Ive seen with PCI Express as well.

I think the question that has to be asked is "What's the software like?". I bought one of these USB tuners - the hardware seems good but the software could be a lot better.

Well, the most important fact for me is the fact that it says it has Media Center drivers; I bought a copy of Media Center some time back and it just been lying around since, if I got this or something like it then I'd move my main PC over to Media Center, nullifying the 3rd party software aspect somewhat.

 

[MuFu]

Nice price too.

 

[Sxotty]

I am curious what exactly does this card do?
Does it have mpeg encoding in hardware?

Is it digital signals, or regular old OTA television?

A dual HDTV tuner/decoder and encoder would be pretty darn nifty.

I am just curious as at some point I am sure I will be upgrading and a pcie card is nice in and of itself.

 

[Dave Baumann]

This is a Europe thing.

DVB-T is terrestrial digital broadcast, so this is digital TV picked up over a standard RF aerial. Because the broadcasts are already digital the board just needs to demodulate the feed and out pops an MPEG2 stream.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

When I'm viewing my programs on my Leadtek DVB1000 T it is fully uncompressed.
The only time MPEG2 comes into play is when I record the stream and tell it to use MPEG2 compression.
This is VERY noticeable due to the fact there are MPG2 compression artifacts(like a DVD) on the recorded stream while this is not the case when watching it in real time on your tuner.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[stevem]

Because the broadcasts are already digital the board just needs to demodulate the feed and out pops an MPEG2 stream.

This is usually a transport stream format. You'll need to transcode to MPEG2.

This is VERY noticeable due to the fact there are MPG2 compression artifacts(like a DVD) on the recorded stream while this is not the case when watching it in real time on your tuner.

It depends on the quality of the transcoder, output size & bitrate. Leadtek outsource their WinFastPVR software to Ulead, so I'd imagine the codecs are from them, too. Saving a TS as a native 1920x1080 MPEG2 without artifacts may need a higher bitrate than DVD's VBR.

Edit: Re: Terratec DVB-t PCIE card. I would have preferred silicon tuners, but I hope they're using Thompson instead of LG/Temic cans.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

You can save it as a TS but here's the thing.
Currently a 22 minute movie encoded down into MPG2 is 1.33GB.
Australia's definition of HDTV is not 1080i(only 1 channel I know of uses this resolution and it looks damn good) it's 540p.

Do I realy want to record movies uncompressed?

 

[Simon F]

This is a Europe thing.

DVB-T is terrestrial digital broadcast, so this is digital TV picked up over a standard RF aerial. Because the broadcasts are already digital the board just needs to demodulate the feed and out pops an MPEG2 stream.

Actually, Dave, DVB seems quite wide spread - well, at least my tuner software lists a lot of countries.

 

[Sxotty]

Thanks for the response, so it is in the digital tuner class anyway showing that there is a market for that type of thing. I just did not know machines were powerfull enough to record a 1080i stream to HDD and display another at the same time w/o chocking, perhaps a dual CPU system could come in handy for that eh?

 

[Simon F]

I just did not know machines were powerfull enough to record a 1080i stream to HDD and display another at the same time w/o chocking, perhaps a dual CPU system could come in handy for that eh?

I would have thought doing the first would be OK. IIRC the (max?) data rate for HD (well, with h264) is about 50Mbits/s so writing that to a disk should not be a problem.

Displaying/decoding the stream, on the other hand, might be a bit more taxing.

 

[Dave Baumann]

We're not talking about HD broadcasts here, these are just standard definition transmissions.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Isn't decoding the actual digital stream done on the tuner?
Wouldn't they send the decoded stream down the PCI bus and into memory for the video card and CPU to do the rest of the work?
I'm pretty sure it's a one way trip.

I've just tested recording channel 9(1080i) while recording and it runs all the same.
Don't see why it would be a performance issue.

Then again I have a 320GB SATA drive.

 

[kyleb]

Living in America I have never used at DTV card or paid much attention to the details, but surely decoding is done on your videocard just like with a DVD or any other MPEG2 file.

 

[Simon F]

Isn't decoding the actual digital stream done on the tuner?

Well, I can't speak for all solutions, but my DVB tuner outputs the MPEG stream and lets the CPU decode it.

 

[Simon F]

We're not talking about HD broadcasts here, these are just standard definition transmissions.

Which (given the recordings I've made ~2.2 Gbytes/hour) probably means about 4.x Mbits/sec for UK broadcasts.... though how they do that with several channels per 8Mhz is beyond my knowledge :|

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Well, I can't speak for all solutions, but my DVB tuner outputs the MPEG stream and lets the CPU decode it.

I had assumed this was the case but now I'm not entirely sure.
Given the visible artifacts when I capture in MPEG2 mode which are not there when I'm watching it through the TV software.