On 09/11/12 20:52, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote:
Hi,

Every now and then I think I may get a DVB tuner for my computer. Now
that Hannington has been upgraded to HD I could even watch/record stuff
in HD (in theory) on my computer - our TV is still ye olde CRT.

The Hauppauge PCTV Systems DVB-T2 290e nanoStick HD is apparently
supported in Linux on 3.0 Kernel and above. It's also not so expensive
on Amazon and other online retailers.

Questions:

1) Do these kind of devices actually work? is the signal strength in
Hampshire strong enough to get a decent picture without a proper
external aerial? We can see the Hannington transmitter clearly from our
house and our set-top DVB tuner has always claimed excellent signal
strength.

I don't know, living in an area with very poor reception. I use a Hauppauge PCI card with input from the amplified roof aerial.

2) Other than the kernel module, what other software is required? I see
that both VLC and Kaffeine offer up digital TV as a video source.

Those should work for plain old-fashioned viewing. Or you could consider the complicated world of MythTV for recording stuff.

3) What kind of CPU/GPU is required to render HD video? My desktop PC is
a first generation AMD64 and the graphics card is a last generation
basic AGP graphics card, so neither are whizzy by modern standard. They
can playback MP4 files downloaded from the BBC fine but I wouldn't
describe the playback as perfect.

Now that telly is digital, less processing power is required to display the pictures than when analog video had to be converted. I've got an Acer Revo displaying telly, including ITV and C4 HD. Note that BBC HD uses DVB-S2 (rather than DVB-S), which requires different receiving hardware.

4) I'm in no way attached the USB device I suggested and would welcome
comments about it and of alternatives.

As ever, thanks in advance.

I hope that helps.

cheers

Chris

--
Chris Dennis                                  cgden...@btinternet.com
Fordingbridge, Hampshire, UK

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