RE: [vdr] rambling newbie questions

2007-01-23 Thread Tony Grant
Le lundi 22 janvier 2007 à 19:54 -0500, Russell Treleaven a écrit :

 I would like to make the system very small.
 
 http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/gnap.xml 

Because you asked... Here you are rambling up the wrong track. Sorry!
Read the page carefully, do you see HTPC or PVR? No. Gentoo embedded
works for firewalls routers and whatever.

A video appliance is a good idea but you want loads of RAM and
acceleration for your video decoding. It can be done with specialised
hardware (I use a VIA EPIA-M) or in software with a fast CPU.

With VDR you can have a video server which uses a low power CPU because
the machine is just writing DVB streams to disk or to the network. The
client will need the power to decode the stream however.

Cheers

Tony
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Re: [vdr] rambling newbie questions

2007-01-22 Thread Tony Grant
Le dimanche 21 janvier 2007 à 21:19 -0500, Russell Treleaven a écrit :

A mail with correct subject line! Congratulations! =:-D

 Is VDR the correct tool?

I am not sure that vdr is the best tool for recording/time
shifting/whatever encrypted analog video. It is the best tool for
digital (DVB-S, DVB-T...) by far.

I feel that the best tool for encrypted analog video is a set top box
with PVR functionality. This is a personal opinion not shared by all
here I guess.

The best way to play the other media - avi etc - is xine. 

Have you checked the MMS project?

Cheers

Tony

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Re: [vdr] rambling newbie questions

2007-01-22 Thread Niko Mikkila
On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:19:27 -0500
Russell Treleaven [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I would like to make a small PVR appliance. I have digital cable and it
 is my understanding that I could get a DVB card that captures an MPEG
 stream but most of the content is encrypted and to my knowledge no one
 has figured out how to decrypt it. Since I want the premium content I
 need the cable companies settop box to decrypt it.

So the digital television standard your cable company uses is really
DVB-C, but content scrambling is not based on DVB-CA (Conditional
Access)? Interesting, what company is it and which system are they
using then?


 MythTV seems too big, requires a database and X
 Mplayer seems too big and requires X
 VLC seems to big and requires X

Well, MPlayer and VLC are not necessarily that big and I think you can
compile MPlayer without X support (or you can install X headers and
libraries to compile MPlayer, if it can't be done otherwise). In any
case, running these programs doesn't require running an X server.
I wouldn't use MPlayer as the primary media frontend though, just as
a video player.


 I have installed the following
 ivtv 0.8.0
 vdr 1.4.4 
 vdr-pvr350 0.0.4_pre1
 vdr-analogtv 1.0.00-r1
 
 I can't figure out how to get VDR running
 localhost media-video # /etc/init.d/vdr start
  * Preparing start of vdr:
  *   config files ...
 [ ok
 
  *   Some plugins could not be loaded!
  *   Waiting for prerequisits (devices nodes etc.) ...
  * could not start vdr: dvb device not found

 [ !!
 
 -
 localhost media-video # cat /var/vdr/vdr-start-log
 Startlog for VDR
 I: vdr-pvr350: plugin not found

Seems that there were problems loading both the analogtv and
the pvr350 plugin, since VDR complains about the DVB device.
Perhaps analogtv is not configured properly. The pvr350 problem
is probably packaging-related (as in a bug in the ebuild).


 Another thing I would like to be able to do is play avi files, wmf and
 other video file formats through the tv-out.
 Is VDR the correct tool?

Not exactly, you need to use MPlayer through the vdr-mplayer plugin to
play those files.


Regards,
Niko Mikkilä

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Re: [vdr] rambling newbie questions

2007-01-22 Thread Niko Mikkila
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:54:40 +0100
Tony Grant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  Is VDR the correct tool?
 
 I am not sure that vdr is the best tool for recording/time
 shifting/whatever encrypted analog video. It is the best tool for
 digital (DVB-S, DVB-T...) by far.

Agreed.


 The best way to play the other media - avi etc - is xine. 
 
 Have you checked the MMS project?

Unlike MPlayer, My Media System and Xine don't support ivtv output
without X, but I'd also say that MMS and Freevo are worth taking a look
at if you are willing to run a lightweight X session (it's not that
heavy anyway; ten years ago I used X happily on ~ 100 MHz Pentium
machines and 64 MB RAM).


Niko Mikkilä

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RE: [vdr] rambling newbie questions

2007-01-22 Thread Russell Treleaven


  no one has figured out how to decrypt it. Since I want the premium 
  content I need the cable companies settop box to decrypt it.
 
 So the digital television standard your cable company uses is 
 really DVB-C, but content scrambling is not based on DVB-CA 
 (Conditional Access)? Interesting, what company is it and 
 which system are they using then?
 
Rogers cable and I am just paraphrasing what I read elsewhere
cable ATSC (QAM-256) 
I have heard from multiple sources that most of the digital channels are
encrypted.
Also I would not be able to pay per view or on demand stuff
 
  MythTV seems too big, requires a database and X
  Mplayer seems too big and requires X
  VLC seems to big and requires X
 
 Well, MPlayer and VLC are not necessarily that big and I 
 think you can compile MPlayer without X support (or you can 
 install X headers and libraries to compile MPlayer, if it 
 can't be done otherwise). In any case, running these programs 
 doesn't require running an X server. I wouldn't use MPlayer 
 as the primary media frontend though, just as a video player.
 
I would like to make the system very small.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/gnap.xml 


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