Buying DVB-Satellite PC Card - advice?

David C

Howyall,
As I was saying in another thread, I want to get a DVB-S card for the pc..
- Can anyone advise a good site to buy it on?
Found this one so far, anyone have any experience with them? The prices seem good but I can't really find much to compare it with...
http://www.usa-x.org/1shop/default.php?cPath=1

There's various different options on that site.. anyone know the difference between the 1.3 & 1.6 versions of the WINDVB-S card?
Also anyone know what an "SPDIF" cable is?
Think i'll just get the remote and scart lead with it...
Special offer until the end of the month

watty

Dinna buy anything related to TV from america... They got funny TV.

Technotrend make a VERY good card for many folks including Hauppauge (Nexus / DVBs PCI card) and Siemens.

www.technotrend.de

I bought a Hauppauge branded one a year ago and it is super.

Drives TVs and HiFis and records MPEG2 direct.

It has its own DSP to unravel the MPEG to PAL or NTSC to avoid making your PC crawel or picture jerky if an old P166 (Will work on one).

I tested it on Win98, NT4.0 and XP with various drivers and all worked. On P166, AMD K6 233 and P3-933 all OK.

More info if you want.

Avoid the cheap £60 variety with no DSP or media bridge as they are really for Data reception and not much good for HiFi TV/Radio (The PC has to do all the work in SW).

jasgrif11

Sorry to jump on this thread but am I right in saying that you can record digital tv onto your computer with one of these cards?.

Also I have an NTSC video camera, is it possible using this card to convert from NTSC to PAL and write back out through the scart to Video?

And last how much do they cost?

Many Thanks

Saruman

You can usually record with them.. check the box/info first though.. usually they have PVR capability so in otherwords have a real time mpeg encoder so it encodes to mpeg and compresses as its recording. Works the same way as a Tivo or Sky +

David C

Good to know it's working well..

The site I quoted is German, despite the misleading URL..
I'm assuming they are basically the same as what you have.
The 1.3 has a Philips tuner, the 1.6 has a Grundig..
I know that Technotrend make all of these cards on Hauppuges behalf, their own site doesn't seem to have have any prices or option to purchase so it's not much good.

Originally posted by watty
Dinna buy anything related to TV from america... They got funny TV.

Technotrend make a VERY good card for many folks including Hauppauge (Nexus / DVBs PCI card) and Siemens.

www.technotrend.de

I bought a Hauppauge branded one a year ago and it is super.

Drives TVs and HiFis and records MPEG2 direct.

It has its own DSP to unravel the MPEG to PAL or NTSC to avoid making your PC crawel or picture jerky if an old P166 (Will work on one).

I tested it on Win98, NT4.0 and XP with various drivers and all worked. On P166, AMD K6 233 and P3-933 all OK.

More info if you want.

Avoid the cheap £60 variety with no DSP or media bridge as they are really for Data reception and not much good for HiFi TV/Radio (The PC has to do all the work in SW).

watty

Originally posted by Saruman
You can usually record with them.. check the box/info first though.. usually they have PVR capability so in otherwords have a real time mpeg encoder so it encodes to mpeg and compresses as its recording. Works the same way as a Tivo or Sky +

Tivo and Sky+ don't work the same way...
Satellite Digital is already in MPEG2. No coding required. So Quality of Sky+ or Digital TV card for PC is IDENTICAL to original, TIVO has to recode an analog signal so is always worse.

The cheap cards have NO MPEG2 decoder, using the PC.
The good cards (about 230 Euro) have true HW DSP chip like in a Digibox or HiFi DVD player to make video from the MPEG2.

The satellite data layout is different to a DVD so a PVA file is created, but this can be transformed to actual DVD layout to "burn" a DVD WITHOUT recoding the MPEG2. A SVCD (or VCD) of course requires the video and audio to be recoded.

There is no real time MPEG encoder, just a realtime decoder for the built in TV out.

watty

Originally posted by jasgrif11
Sorry to jump on this thread but am I right in saying that you can record digital tv onto your computer with one of these cards?.

Also I have an NTSC video camera, is it possible using this card to convert from NTSC to PAL and write back out through the scart to Video?

And last how much do they cost?

Many Thanks

No you can't, unless you have your own Satellite TV station..

With a 800MHz PC minimum and Hauppauge Win TV ANALOG card or Pinnacle TV PCI TV card (60 Euro) and various not included free download software (and 40G free disk space) you can indeed convert analog NTSC to PAL and viceversa and even edit videos, make SVCDs that play on DVD players etc (I do that too).

watty

I reckon the card listed on the site in the first post is the excellent Hauppauge / Technotrend card


Top right is DSP chip. Middlish bottom is Multimedia Streaming controller/Bridge and connector is for the CI board for a CAM to allow pay TV cards. (But not Sky's :-( ... )

SPDIF is digital.

I reviewed 1054 FTA TV/Radio on my card. Not one had dolby 5.1. All (if stereo) just ordinary stereo.
I'd say unless you hjave:
1) Dolby 5.1 Decoder
2) CI board option
3) Pay movie subscription (not Sky)

Unless above are true you won't be using the digital Audio Out. I never have.

It does record the MPEG1 Layer2 digital audio straight to disk without sound card etc as well as feed HiFi. (extra connector to feed Sound Card for PC Speaker sound too). You can then convert the files to WAV, MP3 or Red Book CD Audio using additional utilities (The Card will play back its own PVA files and even "imported" MPEG2 files without running any utilites,, on TV/HiFi /Sound Card etc)

Mine was bought in PC World in Blanchardstown (They opened since in Limerick).

Check out "What Satellite" mag too. Aviod the £60 / £70 versions as they have no DSP chip and no Media Bridge.

The Hauppauge model uses indentical remote to the analog card, alowing Radio/TV switching, favorites, teletext, volume and channel all the be changed.

Teletext is not reinserted like Digibox. Only on the PC screen, but it caches ALL the pages and clicking on a page number on a page works.

It loads the Swiss/German "Nextview" guide on selected stations and shows now/next for all FTA Sky and any other stations sending it.

ThunderStorm

Hi all,

i am new to DVB satellite world. I have browsed the net for few days and have gone through few forums, but couldnt find out the difference between DVB-S and WinDVB-S. If WinDVB-S is Hauppauge's product then y it is listed under the TechnoTrend category in many places ?
Lastly, which one is more preferred one (i just want to watch TV and sometimes record a really good prog (if any) in acceptable video and autdio quality (VCD or SVCD) thats all i need)?

thanks in advance.

TS

watty

VCD = MPEG1 and only 354 x 288 approx

SVCD = MPEG2 and 480 x 576

VCD worse than good VHS (but less noisy)

SVCD about same as S-VHS, but less noisy.

The HighEnd / Premium / Nexus cards will play back SVCD MPEG2 tracks to TV out connector but not VCD MPEG1.

Compatibily of either on DVD players depends on model and is similar.

An unstretched 4:3 SVCD video can be simlar quality to a 16:9 DVD visually on a WS TV.

Blade

Hi, a quick note to let you know of a web site I made about 3 years ago on the wintv-dvbs card and pay tv:

http://www.esatclear.ie/~lorenzo/dvb/

It's out of date and hasn't been updated but it may still have some information that'll be of help. Things have changed since, for example you can now get software emulators to act as a CAM on your PC, so you can do without the module adapter and CAM itself. I believe Sky's CAM is in software already but I don't know if it's freely available to the public yet.

I don't know the legalities of software emulation or if this is breaking any rules here, I don't frequent this forum. Feel free to edit my post if theres any problems.

The site maybe still of some interest to someone.

spuddy

Originally posted by David C
...
Also anyone know what an "SPDIF" cable is?

Sony Philips Digital InterFace

Icehouse

I've recently sold my desktop PC and am contenting myself with my new super-duper laptop. Anyone know if there are external (USB(2) or Firewire connecting) DVB receivers available, and question 2: Can one connect a VCR to these cards to encode a tape recording to MPEG2 or 4, or if not, if I also have a capture card, can I then harness the use of the MPEG2 encoder chip on the sat card?? I'm presuming it encodes in real time...

watty

The reason why Sky+ and PC Satellite cards work MUCH better than Analog WinTv or Tivo is that no MPEG2 encoder is required at all (for hard disk recording or streaming on LAN, firewire or USB)

The satellite info is already MPEG2.

The "good" PCI cards for multimedia / Satellite (not Skystar2, which is good for data and can be used for TV) have a DSP, not for ENCODING, but for REAL TIME HW DECODING to drive builtin TV out or do PC overlay with very much less SW overhead.

Yes Technotrend/Hauppauge do have a USB version Satellite and UK DTT adaptors. They do work better than WbCams or analog TV USB (because the data is already MPEG2) but nothing like as good as a PCI card and they (mostly) can't drive a TV set. If you can find Firewire much better than USB. There IS a very expensive DV convertor from Analog to Firewire, one of the Dazzel products. I think a Digital Camcorder with Analog in / pass thru to Firewire via DV is better value at only about 70 Euro more.

Definately if buying a Digital Camcorder, check not just for Firewire IN (to archive edited DV back to tape from PC) but for the Analog AV connectors ideally with s-Video and "loop thru" (you don't want to have to record to tape and then play back to capture analog to DV for firewire.

Unless you have a seriously modified VHS / VCR (which has been done since 1978) you can only record Analog TV on it. Ideally from a High End PCI satellite card with MPEG2 DECODER. But such a card can record flawlessly to hard disk and play back through card to TV later like Sky+

I have a WinTV (Analog video capture) and a DVBs PCI card in same PC. With the right settings and a chaep video display you can actually have windows from both. With a better (TNT 64 or so) you can have 2 hardware overlays.

The Satellite card can either output video or s-video in real time with NO PC assistance (I've killed the task in Task manager and external TV still has picture and sound). The WinTV card can't do ANYTHING except change channel without massive amounts of CPU (A SkyStar2 would be similar as it is a SW Satellite TV solution).

The only way to use the MPEG HW on the Sat card (other than for Satellite) is to record analog via capture card, using free HUffy codec (2:1 compression Ouch!) or bought MJPEG (Like DV codec at 5:1). Then about 7 hours per 20 minutes of video useing TMPEGENC MPEG2 encoder (beats any realtime HW like tivo by a mile) on 933MHz CPU (so about 2 hrs on a new PC). The resultant SVCD or DVD format MPEG2 file can be written to CD or DVD. The MPEG2 file (but not menus etc) either on hard disc, DVD or CD will play back at correct aspect ratio (Yes even 480x 576 SVCD plays correct) on Video Overlay or built in video out connector on satellite card.

MPEG ENCODING is a quite different assymetric task to MPEG DECODING. You want to analyse a large sliding buffer of video for best keyframe points etc. Decoding has the keyframes.

I haven't yet seen any realtime HW MPEG coding as good as Xing for MPEG1 on Win 3.1 or Tempgenc for MPEG2 or MPEG1.

Realtime SW MPEG2 encoding is rubbish.

Decent digital cameras don't attempt MPEG2 at all. They use a form of 5:1 compression Motion JPEG called DV. It is very similar codec (but different) to MJPEG, the actual "motion" or video version of JPEG, i.e. earch frame is treated as a separate still picture and JPEG compressed.

I dunno why anyone bothers with VCD. Though the solid areas are less grainy than VHS and there is almost none of the infamous VHS "colour bleed" it has only the same horizontal resolution and unique in all video formats of repeating each interlace frame exactly on playback, only having thus 240 lines NTSC and 288 PAL vertically! The MPEG1 gives horrid artifacts on any sharp edges or text.

SVCD is as good a resolution as S-VHS with less noise and colour bleed. In 4:3 format on a WS TV it is actually visually the same quality as a 16:9 DVD, if properly done.

SVCD like VCD and DVD is a real standard too. MiniDVD, XSVCD, etc are not. And SVCD supports 720 x 576 stills & 720 x 576 menus and MPEG2. It supports lots of stuff I havn't yet found SW to author!


Analog Tape to SVCD
Preprocessing VHS or 8mm analog tape captures done at 704 x 576 in Virtual Dub to 480 x 576 gives best result. Ideally you want to video capture at twice the horizontal resolution of your analog source to avoid aliasing artifacts. Ideally 768 or higher capture with post filtering down to 720 for DVD or 480 for SVCD per line is best.

watty

Originally posted by Blade
Hi, a quick note to let you know of a web site I made about 3 years ago on the wintv-dvbs card and pay tv:

http://www.esatclear.ie/~lorenzo/dvb/

It's out of date <snip>

Not a lot.

But it is a bit sparse on actual setup.


My Hauppauge DVBs PCI card is the same as the Tecnotrend card illustrated.

Using "the Season" inteface to watch encypted TV is piracy. Using a software emulated cam (a HW card reader still needed) is perfectly legal with a proper viewing card.

I just use mine for FTA TV/Radio, free Casablanca SatAtOnce internet "push" service and playback of Testcards or home encoded MPEG from my own photography.

Id get a CAM (hard or soft) if I thought a regular Sky card would actually work in it (the same as in the dogybox). Various places would light up like Christmas if it did. Also the card would probabily need put in the Digibox every night or it would miss keys (harder to figure on a softcam). You could spend hours wait for card to reactivate just as your favorite UKGold or Sky 1 prog was about to start.

Icehouse

Hi Watty - thanks for the info (as always!)

Next week's Channel 4 Adam Ant documentary will hopefully be the ideal opportunity to test the foillowing: Record Channel 4 on Digibox to my VCR. VCR to my Sanyo DV videocam (which is supposed to be audio-video in and out) - I can't do the DV recording live as I won't have time, even if loop-through works (never tried, but I assume it does).

From my DVcam I'll use my firewire connector and convert the DV directly to DivX using Dr. DivX which I can then burn to CD

AFAIK the only reason VCD is so popular is because it was promoted as a royalty-free alternative to DVD's by the Chinese Government and adopted as a piracy standard by the Malaysians.

I bought rakes of the things, both legal and a little dodgy while in Asia. DivX is much better quality though. Haven't tried MSMedia9 format video, but I'm told it can be v. impressive also.

watty

Actually VCD you used to pay Philips royalty. They give away the offical VCD2.0 authoring SW. Except it creates a CD image almost nothing understands how to burn. A Philips in house mastering prog and one enduser CD Writer app from a defunct compay understand the offical Philips VCD image file!

SVCD is actually the royalty free version of DVD. No royalites.

Just for completeness
There was an inbetween stage of Chinese development variously called CVCD, Chogi Video, China Video CD etc. It is a somewhat higher quality than VCD. But suffers from still beign MPEG1 and less time per disk (three or four disks per film as compared to VCD two disks).

At "best" quality, i.e. 4:3 SVCD indistigushable from DVD animorphic 16:9 on the same WS TV unzoomed, a SVCD only gives 40 minutes on a 700M CD. Still fine for DIY wildlife photography or home movies. VCD gives 70 min on 650M CD.


Why not get twice to three times the quality by record digibox direct to the Camcorder? Or even record live via camcorder from Digibox to PC from Digibox????


Even more baffling completeness:
DVDs of original SW trilogy are all pirates. The "good" ones AFIK are from analog Laser Disk.

There is actually *REALLY* a 4:3 P&S *OFFICAL LUCAS* VCD edition of original SW trilogy!!!! Produced in Malaysia. Of course many far east pirate copies exist of that too. Did Lucas licence it to try and reduce the piracy of the Laser Disc editions as VCDs? Dunno. Who understands anything Lucas does.

The official Malaysians as opposed to Criminals they haven't caught, do actually regard piracy as a crime. Honest.

I bought VHS of the two newest SW films till he stops editing them and brings out the 6 disk box set DVD edition (which will not be the same as any of the six VHS I'll have by then). Since I will probabily be bedridden and retired by then will have lots of time to watch them.

Icehouse

Originally posted by watty

SVCD is actually the royalty free version of DVD. No royalites.

That's what i was thinking of!


Why not get twice to three times the quality by record digibox direct to the Camcorder? Or even record live via camcorder from Digibox to PC from Digibox????

I may try that, but may not be around the house at transmission time.
There is actually *REALLY* a 4:3 P&S *OFFICAL LUCAS* VCD edition of original SW trilogy!!!! Produced in Malaysia. Of course many far east pirate copies exist of that too. Did Lucas licence it to try and reduce the piracy of the Laser Disc editions as VCDs? Dunno. Who understands anything Lucas does.

Yeah, I don't understand why he lost it - I love the 1st 3 movies (Ep's 4 -> 6) but hate what he's done lately, and the CGI he added to the originals.

The official Malaysians as opposed to Criminals they haven't caught, do actually regard piracy as a crime. Honest.

I know - they clamped down on the night markets while I was there and banned the sales of all VCD's outdoors.

I bought VHS of the two newest SW films till he stops editing them and brings out the 6 disk box set DVD edition (which will not be the same as any of the six VHS I'll have by then). Since I will probabily be bedridden and retired by then will have lots of time to watch them.

But will they be watchable? IMHO, no. Stick with the original unretouched trilogy! The Back To The future Official VCD's were massivley successful as well, btw (long before the DVD's were released)