On Sat, 2003-07-19 at 15:33, Mark Courtney wrote: > If you're using a digital signal, like DirecTV, you'll also have to consider > that a WinTV card isn't gonna be able to decode the digital stations. That > is unless you specifically have a digital tuner card. > > I'm pretty sure MythTV is designed for use with an analog signal and a > regular WinTV card. If you're going to use a digital TV signal like digital > cable, etc., I'd recommend checking out this link: > > http://linuxtv.org/ Yeah, there's some discussion of that stuff in the mailing list archives on that site, although the main pages there appear to be geared more toward the DVB receivers used in Europe (though some DVB stuff does hit American shores). In the U.S., terrestrial digital TV receivers are generally set up for receiving ATSC signals transmitted with 8VSB modulation. The digital coding schemes used in satellite and cable systems, however, appear to vary from provider to provider (QAM64 and QAM128 are popular choices). Fortunately, it looks like almost everyone has agreed on using MPEG2 system streams for the actual video and audio data. (Sidenote: Just because I'm throwing out these abbreviations doesn't mean I understand any of them. It's sufficient to just know that one is generally not compatible with another, though I guess I saw some hinting that European DVB cards might work with U.S. cable and satellite stuff. Maybe.) In theory, it wouldn't be too difficult to get MythTV or other PVR software to handle digital TV streams, since it can already handle the MPEG2 stream coming off of the WinTV PVR-250 and -350 (among others). Of course, having enough CPU power to decode the MPEG2 stream would be a challenge. Also, one big question is the availability of Linux-compatible hardware that will merely pass the over-the-air (or over-the-wire) stream directly to the system without unnecessary transcoding. Someday, when processors are running in the tens of gigahertz, dedicated hardware won't be needed because the GNU Radio project will then be able to decode the various modulation schemes in realtime. But, that's quite a while off.. -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ We don't live in America. / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ America lives in us. \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20030721/80e3ac4c/attachment.pgp