DVB-S2, 4.2.2, 4.2.0 Questions

[swantzilla]

I see these terms being used (DVB-S, DVB-S2, 4.2.2, 4.2.0) and they are unclear to me. Can someone please explain them?

 

[Mr Tony]

DVB is the most common for FTA.....
DVB-S2 is a new version...saves on bandwidth

info on DVB & DVB-2
DVB-S
DVB-S2


Here is about 4:2:0 & 4:2:2
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4:2:2"]Chroma subsampling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Question_book-new.svg" class="image"><img alt="Question book-new.svg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png[/ame]

All FTA boxes (DVB) can get DVB-S & 4:2:0
DVB-S2 is new and only a few boxes can pick that up
4:2:2 the only receiver that can get that is the Quali-TV and costs 700 bucks (they dont make them anymore)...most folks go the PC card route for 4:2:2

 

[swantzilla]

Thanks Ice. I was playing with this stuff a while a go (I watched MTV go on the air) but got away from it. To hijack my own thread, can you recommend a couple of PC cards to get and ones to stay away from?

 

[ACRadio]

Thanks Ice. I was playing with this stuff a while a go (I watched MTV go on the air) but got away from it. To hijack my own thread, can you recommend a couple of PC cards to get and ones to stay away from?

I'll jump in and recommend the TechnoTrend S2-3200 PCI card which will do all of the above. Some people are using the DVBWorld card but I have never used it. One thing about PCI cards though...they are not plug and play. There is a learning curve involved, especially with graph making and getting the codecs working properly. There are enough people on this forum that will answer questions so it shouldn't be a frustrating experience for you, and once you get it operational it is quite gratifying. Also remember that with high definition reception it takes some computer horsepower, but for standard definition any fairly current computer will work fine.

 

[swantzilla]

Thanks AC. I am tired of not having blindscan on my Viewsat 9000HD along with all the other bugs. I think I will give it a try. How much processing horsepower is required for HD with this card? I was thinking of making a system dedicated to my home theater and I have a 2gig system available. Or if more is needed, I will keep an eye on Comp Geeks specials.

 

[gillham]

My MythTV box has a Core Duo 2 2.33Ghz. It can playback MPEG2 HD (PBS@125) without a problem, even with no video card acceleration. I can watch Apple HD movie trailers (H.264/MPEG4) as well, though my decoder is single-threaded so really complex scenes peg one core and I'll see some issues. My video card is integrated on the motherboard and does not support XvMC acceleration so my HD is mostly driven by the cpu.

I would say if you have a dual 2.5Ghz or better cpu you should have no issues, but high cpu load if you do not have a video card with HD acceleration. Slower cpus like my 2.33Ghz should be decent, but not flawless, unless you have a good video card.

I only have DVB-S HD, I'm assuming DVB-S2 is similar just with a MPEG4/H.264 video codec.

 

[brentb636]

Here's my DVB PCI setup:
-DVB setup
AMD Athlon dual core X2 5600+
ASUS mobo
2 GB ddr ram
ATI 2600HD XT 256 MB GDDR4
Genpix skywalker-1
TT s2-3200

The cpu power is probably more than I need, but I want it anyway. The ATI video card can handle h.264 compression onboard, so when and if, the codecs mature, it will be a pretty smooth solution. I have successfully watched a DVB-S2, 1920x1080i, 4:2:2 chroma sporting event on it. This was a 67Mbps bitstream , according to Tsreader, and it looked darn good.
Using Nvidea Purevideo codecs for Video and Audio, Elecard codec for 4:2:2 in DVBdream,
and CoreAVC (currently 1.85) for h.264 decoding.

 

[ACRadio]

Thanks AC. I am tired of not having blindscan on my Viewsat 9000HD along with all the other bugs. I think I will give it a try. How much processing horsepower is required for HD with this card? I was thinking of making a system dedicated to my home theater and I have a 2gig system available. Or if more is needed, I will keep an eye on Comp Geeks specials.

I'm running a Core2Duo E6600 at 2.4 Ghz, only 1 gig RAM, and an ATI HD2400 vid card. All unnecessary processes and TSR's are turned off in XP since this machine only does satellite. It seems the cache RAM is very important in choosing a processor for an HTPC. As far as blind scan there is no PCI card that has blind scan, except for an older version of one of the cards that's not used very much any more. Most all of us keep a STB connected just for blind scanning.