mythtv and digital tv

[Frank DiPrete]

Ben Scott wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 7:11 AM, Frank DiPrete <fdiprete at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>  Encoding or decoding?
>> Encoding on the backend where the card goes.
> 
>   If you're capturing digital TV (OTA or cable), no encoding is
> needed.  The "stream" is already encoded, digitized, compressed,
> folded, spindled, and mutilated.  This doesn't mean encoding is done
> on the host CPU; it means there's no encoding to do, period.
> 
>   This is *why* there's a big push to switch over to digital TV, even
> for standard definition channels.  Digital TV uses a lot less
> bandwidth than analog NTSC, because it's compressed.  They can fit
> something like six standard definition digital channels into the
> bandwidth consumed by one NTSC analog channel.
> 
>   The only way the host CPU would be doing any encoding would be if
> you wanted to transcode to a different format, e.g., for a player that
> doesn't do MPEG, or something like that.
> 
>> The goal is to write mpeg2 files to the server for playback like the pvr-250
>> does via its encoder.  I'd like to believe that the term "digital streams"
>> means mpg2/aac ...
> 
>   ATSC is MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio.  I've read digital cable is
> basically ATSC with different modulation and a few extra tweaks.
> 
> -- Ben

Thanks again - I checked to make sure that mythtv 0.20-2 compiles with 
the dvb option to support the card and it does.

Now whether I can use the card to receive the programming is another 
story. Seems to be shrouded in mystery.

Thanks to this thread I now know that my frontend via M1K will choke on 
playback even if I can receive the signal.

arg. <- denotes pirate project.




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