joeybloggs

What is transmitted and received is a TransportStream http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_stream which may contain any number of audio, video, teletext, data etc streams (some of which may be mpeg2 encoded video). So in general you need to decode the TS to split out the streams you are actually interested it. Most apps will then just remux the selected video and audio streams as received without encoding. However it's possible with some apps to decode the video and re encode it as DVD compliant MPEG2 video (basically different packet sizes 2k vs 188 bytes)

Yes the received the TransportStream from the card needs to make it into ram across the pci bus (or usb hub) be decoded, the relevant audio and video streams extracted before being written out to the hdd. So you will need the system to be responsive enough to keep processing the streams the entire time you are recording. If the game is very demanding or fails to relinquish the cpu / ram fast enough then the recording may fail or have glitches in it... Windows is not a realtime OS.

Ok it results from my incomplete understanding of how DigiTV is now working. For example Nebula - Tuned to ABC (Watching Live) Dvico - Tuned to SBS for some reason Request a channel change to SBS, DigiTV swaps tuners. Reasonable I guess as there are two free and one is actually tuned to the channel you have just requested. Nebula - Tuned to ABC Dvico - Tuned to SBS (Watching Live) So to get to SBS on the Nebula it's necessary to now request a different channel (Say 9) Ok neither tuner is tuned to this channel, so it just retunes the Dvico. Now request a change back to ABC to force a tuner swap back to the Nebula. Now request SBS again, as neither tuner is now tuned to SBS it will just retune the channel on the Nebula Hate to have to try that in the UK where it's all multi channeling... Or option B just disable the use of the Dvico device.

Development of UltraDTV was suspended late last year. As there did not seem to be enough interest in it to justify the continuing development cost. We had a couple of hundred beta downloads from around of the world and it apparently either worked fine or the testers gave up, as we got very little feedback (esp of the ATSC implementation) ~

No idea about the DViCO FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 4. Which would presumably give you three tuners... But DigiTV PCI plus Fusion DVB-T PCI seems to work ok (well until you hit the 2 min timeout). IMHO the timeout should ONLY apply to the 3rd party BDA devices not the Nebula ones, it's a PITA. Esp because IIRC the Nebula has actually been reverted to the WDM drivers, so it should just work

A long long time ago there where USB 1.1 tuners available. They demuxed the TS in hardware and only sent the selected audio and video streams across the usb interface (thus almost sometimes scrapping under the theoretical 12 Mbit/s limit of USB 1.x). I doubt you could buy one today even on eBay but you never know ~ Even if you find one it won't have BDA drivers, won't work with any software but it's own. It's a dead dead end. Probably better to put the money into a newer laptop or a portable tv. The PCMCIA card route might work. You could also look for something like the Avermedia PCMCIA tuner card which was being sold very cheaply on eBay for a while last year... But firstly install a s/w dvd player on the laptop and make sure it has enough grunt to even cope with decoding and displaying video at all...

IIRC it was simply adapted from the BDATest sample that shipped with the DirectX 9.0 ~ SDK. The original sample was hardcoded to ATSC and we hardcoded it to DVBT. It certainly doesn't do anything special or use less resources than later developments. It also doesn't scan frequencies, deal with multiple devices, allow you to specify audio and video decoders and renderers etc etc If you want a skinny DVBT viewing app then try DigitalWatch. As far as a list of 3rd party DVB BDA Apps. This is about the most complete one I'm aware of http://www.digitalrise.biz/support/software/

On the contrary TwinHan (soon to be AsusTek I guess) are great value for money As far as skipping ads digital devices don't tend to allow pausing whilst recording because it would mean syncing to a start of GOP frame <google it> What you do is skip the ads during playback ie use software that allows you to instantly jump forwards xx seconds / minutes. Or if you are going to burn the recording to DVD then various editing packages will enable you to cut out the ads after recording but before burning.

@tonygib cheer up You are completely right and most of the rest of them are too stoooopid to even see the problem... And the funny thing is I don't remember being asked by my government what I wanted and how it should be implemented. So incremental changes in public policy under the table without any public debate or input and the media cartels get away with murder The price of freedom is eternal vigilance or some such Well... I guess the sugar growers will be able to say but look they pay billions in subsidies every year to their sugar producers

It depends on whether it's the BER before or after the FEC correction. If it's after then obviously the TS has an error in it. It then depends how big / long the unrecoverable error was and what packets where affected. ie did packets in the audio stream or video stream or both get hit... or if you're really lucky maybe it just glitched a teletext packet. Then again maybe it was in a stream / service that you are not watching...

IMHO all Microsofts efforts in terms of Hardware Protected Content Paths was a complete waste of time, effort and money. From my POV it was driven by the cartels rather than MS. What they should have done is said to the cartels that's not an appropriate development path <sic> for us and just not bothered. See how long it would have taken the HD-DVD and BlueRay camps to gain any market penetration at all with only CE devices available. They could have released their wm9 formats (without any drm ****) into the wild and waited to see an ecology flourish~~~ Still could i guess... EMI warns that ditching DRM will increase prices http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37868 EMI has already said that it plans to dump DRM, which it admits was a costly mistake which had done nothing to stop the spread of piracy.

Micro$oft are missing out on their big chance to move into the home entertainment segment by siding with the media cartels rather than the consumers ie us Agreed they don't actually own much if any content (unlike say Sony). But siding with the cartels is just plain stoooopid. It's a lose lose scenario.

IIRC you have to have made 10 posts to start a thread these days... It's to slowdown / stop the spammers from posting I see you've discovered the difference between cheap and inexpensive About the only advice to give is to try and get your money back

Of course it's legal to produce products that don't implement DRM and that's what everyone should be doing. F**k the media cartels.

Most of the USB 1.x tuners where unusable rubbish. They relied upon hardware based demuxing and pid mapping to cut down the TS stream to a data rate passable over the low speed usb link. As has already been mentioned the modern USB 2.0 products that pass the whole TS across for processing won't work on a USB 1.X port (not to mention that most derive their entire power supply from the port these days, so it really needs to be able to supply the full 5V 500ma spec) and a lot of old laptops probably won't meet that spec... PCMCIA card. may be a better option... But given the laptop specifications it's a really marginal proposition ~

The vast majority of video products are DirectShow based and already support VMR rendering modes. So they shouldn't have problems operating under Vi$ta...

Not recommending it, never used it, but as you don't seem to be able to google for it http://blogs.msdn.com/toub/archive/2005/05/12/416874.aspx

Have you or your neighbour installed a wireless lan recently ~ Does you system work fine at another location

Why are people saying RAID 5 is slow A decent controller will scatter / gather across the xx drives potentially beating just about any other configuration

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34104

Have you tried just pushing the reset buttons on the receiver and then the keyboard...

http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-keyboard.htm

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33595

Move the wireless antenna away from the PC