Video codec choice for DVB-S

[BigMoose]

I dont get audio on the test card either. I've never had audio through GBPVR but this was when the other forum said there wasn't any so I wasn't overly concerned about it...

[Dabbs]

Thanks for the info. I'll play around with the GBPVR settings tomorrow.

[BigMoose]

Can you let me know how you get on?

[Dabbs]

Sound now ok, my cache settings were incorrect, here is the modififed version.

T:11428,H,27500,23~NID:32~ONID:59~TSID:10510~P:54207~V:3401~VTYPE:H264~A:3402~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:3400~TXT:1405~PCR:3401~N:>itv hd

[Dabbs]

Just noticed a space has appeared 542 07 should be 54207 of course.

[BigMoose]

Cool - thanks for that. I noticed something odd with your old settings (not had a chance to try the new ones to see if it solves) that when going from the BBC HD channel to ITV HD I got sound and a rediculously jerky picture. Going from any SD channel to ITV HD I got silky smooth picture and no sound...

[Bathman]

BigMoose

Any chance you could give me an idea of the system that you are useing (cpu, graphics card, codec, DVB-S or 2 card etc) and what sort of cpu levels you are getting when playing back both the SD and HD content.

I thinking of setting up freesat including the HD channels as my next project.

[BigMoose]

I'll give a little background in where I have got to today in case it helps anyone decide what parts to buy... I originally built a Myth/linux based PVR with a Celeron 2.5Ghz CPU, 512Mb RAM, 200G disk, PVR-350 (TV out worked fine under Myth/linux) and had it connected to an NTL cable box mostly. Then we moved somewhere with a dish so I started to play around with HD. Had a Skystar2 DVB-S card kicking about and got it working fine for SD FTA channels but couldn't get anything out of HD. Machine wouldn't play HD samples, so I bought myself an AGP HD2600XT and 750G HDD to go in hoping that was the cheap upgrade. The ATI drivers for linux were poor as in no HD hw acel support, so I moved to Windows XP (tried Vista also but machine a bit slow) and GBPVR (so far haven't looked back, although I got on well with myth!). It almost worked. I could never get VMR9 FSE to work (horizontal lines) and EVR was a no no, even overlay was annoying, so VMR9 custom was the best I could get. It wasn't at all bad but had a few dropped frames. BBC HD playback was good, although choppy if the guide was up. I could never get it working in any way usable in 1080i25 or 1080p60 (not given the option for 1080p50 by ATI CCC) so had it running in 720p50. Used the ATI mpeg decoder and PDVD for DVD (I could never get DVD playback working on that machine) and PDVD for H264. AC3 Filter for sound via SPDIFF to the amp.

The dropped frames in SD was what really annoyed me. Football/sport panning or news tickers was obvious, so I bit the bullet and recently upgraded to:

AMD/ATI 780G motherboard, with built in HD3200 graphics (inc HDMI out), 45W dual core 2.4Ghz CPU (nice and quiet, low power etc), 2G DDR2 (probably over kill, but hey, it was cheap enough), still got the Skystar2 DVB-S and 750G HDD in it, and treated myself to a blu-ray drive. Running either vista32 or 64 produces excellent results in EVR - again at 720p50. I've not yet managed to work out how to force ATI to do 1080p50 although believe it is possible. 1080i25 gives smooth playback but shite deinterlacing and I'm not sure why yet. There's a rediculously long forum re HD2x00 cards and drivers and it took a long time to get working well, so maybe there's one for 3200 that'll sort my interlacing out for me. But 720p is fantastic. SD, HD, with or without the guide - all pretty perfect. Still using the ATI mpeg decoder for SD, PDVD7.3 came with the blu-ray drive so using that for DVD playback (oddly works perfectly on this new machine) and PDVD H264 for HD playback. I've had the audio sync issues with HD recording playback but the thread and accompanying patch fixes perfectly.

This is a far bigger waffly reply than you asked for, but I hope it helps in deciding what hardware is worth spending money on! All I have left to do is sort out 1080p50 mode and work out how to add the custom menu for Blu-ray playback... The wife is now happy using it as our main TV viewing/recording box! Except when I insist on recording HD versions of things instead of SD, as currently it wont playback correctly while the prog is still recording... I'll have a look at CPU usage for SD/HD playback later and will post results.

Forgot to say, if buying the DVB-S card, I guess an S2 would be the smart move as it's possible some/all of the HD channels will move to S2 in the future, but for now DVB-S works fine with BBC/ITV/Luxe.

[Bathman]

Thats a great reply.

I couldn't decide wether to go for a ATI 3450/3650 and an updated 2.0 Ghz pentium M but by the sound of things I think I may well be better off replace the motherboard with an AMD/ATI 780G.

As for DVB-S or DVB-S2 change over is there any date for this to occur? I was looking at a Pinnacle 7010i PCIe Dual DVB-T / DVB-S/ Analogue TV / FM Radio / Tuner

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/667/874/-/5...type=genre

But if it's obsolte in a weeks time then I guess I be better off buying DB-S2 but there doesn't seem to be any Dual DVB-S2 tuner about.

[BigMoose]

To be honest I have no idea! I cant see why the launch of ITV HD tests would be DVD-S only for them to move to S2 in a short time. But then again who knows! The folks over at Digitalspy might have a better idea. I'm hoping it doesn't happen in the short term, I've seen no indication that it is about to...