Best FTA PC Card

[PopcornNMore]

I am looking to buy a FTA PC card that will do the following:

• Display MPEG4 Signals
• Display HD Signals
• Work w/ TSReader Application
• Work w/ MyTheater Application

Perhaps one of the Twinhan models?

 

[VinceT3]

I have two cards.. twinhan 102g and the SkyCard 2.. SkyCard seems to be far better in my opinion.. twinhan works maybe sometime, if the moon is right, the sun flares hit just right, etc..

But I've heard that's an issue with them that they are prone to having more flakes then the skycard..

 

[PopcornNMore]

After reading the review posted on the VisionDTV Starbox USB unit and seeing it on sale at Sadoun I am very interested in getting one.

Does it support MPEG4?
Do FTA plug-in cards outperform the USB plug-in?

 

[WyrTwister]

After reading the review posted on the VisionDTV Starbox USB unit and seeing it on sale at Sadoun I am very interested in getting one.

Does it support MPEG4?
Do FTA plug-in cards outperform the USB plug-in?

Look at it from the other direction . Does MyTheatre support the USB unit ?

Also , with a PCI card , you need somewhere in the range of a 3 ghz computer for HD . Even at that , do not know if USB 2 supports high enough data transfer tare for HD ?

Wyr

 

[qwert1515]

USB 2.0 has a maximum transfer speed of 480Mbps or 60 Megabytes a second. I have a Twinhan 102g card and a 3.0 GHz P4 and I can play HD very well. I also have a USB 2.0 OTA HD tuner and it also works well.

 

[vfrjim]

MPEG4 Signals

Pretty much Genpix or the http://dvbtech.net/ unit would fit your needs.

 

[PopcornNMore]

Thank you vfrjim. Now with the all-in-one enclosure and is able to tune the following formats it is a good choice.

DVB-S
Turbo-coded QPSK
Turbo-coded 8PSK
Turbo-coded 16QAM
Digicipher II Combo
Digicipher II Split (I/Q)
Digicipher II Offset QPSK

 

[genpix]

btw, there is NO single DVB-s card which can not receive MPEG-4
cause MPEG-4 is signal content (not signal modulation or FEC).

All DVB-s cards receive analog signal (modulated for retransmission), and convert it into transport stream (digital stream).
And neither DVB-s card cares about what's inside that transport stream (data, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-6, or anything else).

Thus, the answer to your question (can it receive MPEG-4?) is:
yes, it can. As a matter of fact, you can use ANY card name instead of "it" in the previous sentence.

 

[genpix]

USB 2.0 has a maximum transfer speed of 480Mbps or 60 Megabytes a second. I have a Twinhan 102g card and a 3.0 GHz P4 and I can play HD very well. I also have a USB 2.0 OTA HD tuner and it also works well.

Actually, 480Mbps is a theoretical maximum speed for USB 2.0.

Due to some overhead, in real life, sustained speed is up to about 320Mbps (on more or less recent Intels chipsets; I'm not talking here about very old USB 2.0 chipsets).

Still, 320Mbps is much faster then any transport stream I ever saw.

Thus, USB 2.0 is a bit slower then PCI (with DMA enabled). But still much faster then you need for any sat reception.

 

[digiblur]

I am looking to buy a FTA PC card that will do the following:

• Display MPEG4 Signals
• Display HD Signals
• Work w/ TSReader Application
• Work w/ MyTheater Application

Perhaps one of the Twinhan models?

MPEG4 was already covered but if I remember right MyTheater doesn't support MPEG4. DVBDream supports and of course you can view MPEG4 with TSReader. I get excellent results with TSReader w/MPC for HD MPEG4 streams.

A big plus but a little more money would be a device that does 8PSK...that being said I love the Genpix device.

 

[vfrjim]

btw, there is NO single DVB-s card which can not receive MPEG-4
cause MPEG-4 is signal content (not signal modulation or FEC).

All DVB-s cards receive analog signal (modulated for retransmission), and convert it into transport stream (digital stream).
And neither DVB-s card cares about what's inside that transport stream (data, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-6, or anything else).

Thus, the answer to your question (can it receive MPEG-4?) is:
yes, it can. As a matter of fact, you can use ANY card name instead of "it" in the previous sentence.

thanks for clarifying this, because we are all waiting for a hardware accelerated h.264 solution, till that comes, a BIG cpu is your only option.

 

[digiblur]

I think the hardware accelerated h.264 solution you look for is really overrated especially with the prices of CPU's these days.

1080i MPEG4 HD works just fine on my AMD 4200 X2 even in single core mode.

No need to get fat video card with a bunch of hype...just get the best CPU for the buck and you'll be good to go. Plus the bigger CPU will help when you start re-encoding MPEG2 content to MPEG4.

 

[MotleyFool]

SNIP
Plus the bigger CPU will help when you start re-encoding MPEG2 content to MPEG4.

I've been thinking about building a MPEG2 to MPEG4 transcoder system. The DGStation Mutant 200s has the capability to stream MPEG2 on the network, if you use the Enigma s/w, basically dreambox code for the Mutant/Relook. Since I already have a couple of Mutants laying around, couldn't pass up the US$50 BIN deals on eBay. I figure just build a transcoder system only so I can stream low bw MPEG4 out onto the Internet, give me something to watch/listen to at work, while I wait for code to compile.

Yeah, I could put my 1020a in the same box, but it's a hobby.