multi-tuner dvb-s2 cards

[jowski]

Anyone have any suggestions for a multi-tuner dvb-s2 card? Experience with it would be nice but will accept a young trainee. Also, a source would be good too.

Thanks and Merry Christmas,
Jim

 

[TheTechGuru]

Never seen one, my suggestion would be when building a PC for this, get a full size tower and select a motherboard with many PCI slots and install more than one tuner. I have both a PCI ATSC and a PCI DVB-S2 tuner in mine plus a PCIe HDMI/Component capture card.

 

[jowski]

After I posted, I found some TBS cards that were dual tuner but their linux support isn't really open source from what I can tell. I can multi card my current pc and still might end up going that route.

Jim

 

[Anony55]

...plus a PCIe HDMI/Component capture card.

I've been looking at something like that. Which one did you get? How do you like it? Does it capture & have an option for displaying Closed Captions?

Cheers

 

[TheTechGuru]

I've been looking at something like that. Which one did you get? How do you like it? Does it capture & have an option for displaying Closed Captions?

Cheers

Intensity Pro™

Blackmagic Design: Intensity Tech Specs

 

[brex2001]

From the side of the package it states that the Intensity Pro will NOT capture from copy protected HDMI video sources. I have one to install in my HTPC project.

These are Windows, Mac OSX 10.5 & 10.6, Linux .deb & .rpm compatible.

 

[wildboys]

Intensity Pro™

Blackmagic Design: Intensity Tech Specs

The intensity pro only capture in avi format uncompressed video.You will need a raid setup to use this card.

 

[TheTechGuru]

The intensity pro only capture in avi format uncompressed video.You will need a raid setup to use this card.

That is not completely correct. It has a MotionJPEG option which works for non-raid setups. I have used it on both PATA and SATA hard drives without a problem.

 

[wildboys]

That is not completely correct. It has a MotionJPEG option which works for non-raid setups. I have used it on both PATA and SATA hard drives without a problem.

You are correct.Are you capturing the AVI file and encoding it to Mpeg 2 or H.264 format?I don't understand what you
would do with a large AVI format video capture.

 

[TheTechGuru]

You are correct.Are you capturing the AVI file and encoding it to Mpeg 2 or H.264 format?I don't understand what you
would do with a large AVI format video capture.

Yes, you need a bit of buffer space to work with then post convert it to MPEG4/AVC or high bitrate MPEG2. Any BluRay, ATSC HD, or DVB HD standard works fine.

Here is something I recorded with it a long time ago and converted to MPEG2 at about 13mbps (not near as high as I should have made it).

http://txnj.net/directvhd/The%20Wild%20Sample.mpg

 

[wildboys]

Yes, you need a bit of buffer space to work with then post convert it to MPEG4/AVC or high bitrate MPEG2. Any BluRay, ATSC HD, or DVB HD standard works fine.

Here is something I recorded with it a long time ago and converted to MPEG2 at about 13mbps (not near as high as I should have made it).

http://txnj.net/directvhd/The%20Wild%20Sample.mpg

The sample looks pretty good.What program do you use to convert the files?

 

[TheTechGuru]

The sample looks pretty good.What program do you use to convert the files?

Reference: MainConcept

 

[gariac]

Probably usb tuners would be the simplest solution. If you really need tuner cards, one thing to consider is most motherboards these days have a mix of PCI slots. Some regular, some PCIe .You can't get mobos with a lot of the older PCI slots. There are two work arounds. One is to get a PCI bus extender cage such as those made by Magma. You really don't want to get a new one since they are incredibly overpriced. I got a used one for around $250 and it enabled me to add 6 extra PCI slots. You lose one slot on the mobo to plug in the host card. You lose a second slot on the Magma backplane to plug in the bus driver card.. So an 8 slot PCI card bus extender gets you 6 new slots. For multiple sound cards, this works fine. Modern windows and linux kernals already have the drivers. You just need to insure you turn on the Magma before booting the PC. The other alternative would be to get small form factor PCs, and network them

 

[SatScanner]

Have you seen this yet?

TechnoTrend . Performance on your side

http://www.tt-downloads.de/Update/engl/techspec_tt-premium_s2-6400_en.pdf

I hope it will work in the US.

 

[jowski]

We just might be on to something here.

Jim

 

[Vorg]

Too little too late, and given how long they've been working on it. Only supports 1080i where most new TV's will support 1080p. While looking for my new TV, NONE where 1080i. They where all ether 720p or 1080p and my new Sony KDL-32EX710 doesn't even support 1080i on the HDMI ports according to the manual.

Also, card only goes up to 8PSK while there are cards that do 16/32PSK. And no blind scan.

 

[SatScanner]

What are these better cards you are talking about? Can they do hardware based video/audio decoding?

I originally had used a hardware based PCI card and always got great results when viewing/recording and editing recorded video. I later switched to a software based USB device and the video seemed soft, not sharp, and I couldn't get good results when trying to edit recorded video. I only what to use a hardware based card. If you know of a better hardware card I would be interested.

 

[Vorg]

A nexus-s works great for dvb-s, but it can't do anything with dvb-s2. So the money spent on hardware video decoding is now wasted. Get a card that can tune more stuff, then let something else deal with the video streams once you get them. an 8400 based on the 98 chip or a 9400 can do 1080i and output 1080p. A GT220 and up can handle any stream in hardware under linux using vdpau.

 

[guacharaca]

I have had a TBS6980 for a year now. No complaints except that I wish it did Blindscan. I use it with DVB Dream. There was a large learning curve as I only had an STB before. I bought it online directly from Taiwan. I rarely use both tuners but I did experiment and I can successfully record and watch a channel from one satelite and watch a 2nd channel from separate satelite in a different window on my screen at the same time all in HD (W7 running on an I7 in my computer). No problems with S2 signals.