 01 - DVB-t, Frequently Asked Questions |
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 Jul 2 2004, 04:56 PM
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Forum Regular Group: FAQ Maintainer Posts: 458 Joined: 30-September 03 From: Sydney Member No.: 168 Card: VisionPlus DVB-t  |
Please post into this thread if you want to add anything. The more people adding stuff, the better :)
NOTE: Once posts are consolidated into the main FAQ they will be deleted. Please don't be too offended The Forum This forum has been set up and is run by a owner of a DVB-T card. Almost all members are, like you, users of these cards and their software. This is not the official support site for these cards. If you have specific problems with the card, you should contact the vendor you purchased the card from.
What is DVB
What is a DVB-T card?
Common DVB-T Questions Can I use my existing antenna?
Can I copy captured data to a DVD?
On a Non-Widescreen TV (4:3), why do some programs look so small?
Is there anything that can be done about this ? Yes, if the application you are using has a zoom feature it will expand a pillarboxed picture so it will fill a 4:3 screen. Not all DTV viewing applications have this feature though. VisionDTV does not but DigiVision and DigitalWatch do. Amusingly, some TV advertisements recorded in 16:9 have been given to the networks in a letterbox 4:3 format. When transmitted on Digital, they are reduced further as they are a letterbox, in a pillarbox, in a letterbox. There appear to be several channels for each network. What are they ? (AUS Only)
Following are some examples of what the network use these extra channels for. Nine, Seven, Ten, and SBS have a TV guide channel that display the days programming, this is not to be confused with an EPG (Electronic Program Guide). Seven used a channel during the Rugby World Cup to display match statistics. Network 10 use some channels to broadcast SD with AC-3 (2 Channel, not 5.1) audio instead of the standard audio stream. It is reported that networks may use these other channels to show different camera angles during sporting events etc. Can I watch TV and record at the same time (or visa-versa)?
Two answers, and to some extent this is the reverse of a VCR. A. You can record live TV and watch something that you have previously recorded, although you may need to use two difference applications to do this. Remember, as the broadcast is already a MPEG2 stream there is no encoding etc to be done. Recording a live DVB broadcast is really just a matter of buffering the data to a file on the hard drive. Watching a previously recorded program does not require the card at all, it is simple a program reading a data file. Some DVB applications may not let you do this at the same time due to internal application limitations. In some cases if you had very slow hard drive access then having one file being written to the disk and another being read could be a problem, but there have been no reports of this. B. DVB cards can only lock onto one frequency at a time. This frequency can contain a number of programs or channels, you could in theory capture more than one program at a time. Software is only now starting to address this situation.
What are BDA drivers that I keep hearing about?
The practical upshot of this will be that any BDA compliant software, should work on any BDA compliant hardware. It should be possible to mix and match the hardware and software used. This is of course in a perfect world, and we all know which one we live in !!! This is the problem. There is not a lot of BDA compliant software today other than MS' MCE, which is only available with a OEM PC, and is not available is Australia. Quotes you will have seen here are from people with access to the developer version. As for compatibility. There are a least two major digital broadcast standards DVB and ATSC. Within the DVB standards there are also some variations, like what we have here in Aust. The software would need to know a fair bit about all standards to work with them correctly. The BDA drivers (third party, not offical) for the VP card have been around for quite a few months here. Software is now being developed to use these drivers. Nova-T (and it's cousin the DPandA) and the DVICO card have BDA drivers, Twinham have also released beta official BDA drivers. That leaves AverMedia and Nebula. No doubt they will be providing drivers at some point, as without them they cannot play in the MCE space. Given that BDA is in it's early phases of adoption, there appears that not all BDA drivers are create equal. There are reports that the shortly to be released kworld card will ship with BDA drivers, but that these are not fully BDA compliant and may have issues. Although vendors are releasing BDA drivers, this does not mean that their software will support other cards. At this point in time the software is one of the main competitive advantages the vendors have. Although hopefully we will see a number of third party vendors supporting BDA, such as showshifter etc. Can I listen to FM radio with any DVB-T card?
Can I listen to digital radio with any DVB-T card?
In Australia there are some digital radio channels being broadcast by the ABC and SBS that you can listen to with this card. However, you cannot listen to the DAB (Eureka 147) transmissions that the ABC and SBS are trialling in Sydney and Melbourne. What is Digital 44, and can I get it?
What software can I used to edit captured video
There are many applications both commercial and free that can edit captured material. There are a number of good articles in this forum and on doom9.org . On the commercial front, members have had success with Wobble's MPEG2VCR and TMPG's TMPGEnc DVD Author. On the freeware front there is ProjectX and Mpeg2Schnitt (MPEG2Cut in German) to name a few. Just be aware that the application needs to specifically know how to handle a MPEG2 PS file (Program Stream), this is slightly different format than a DVD MPEG2 file. What is this Interactive TV I hear about and can I used it?
Currently no DVB applications support these services. There are reports that one of the Teac STBs does support MHP. Nebula have this feature on their development roadmap. AUS In Australia the Nine Network uses this service when broadcasting some sports events.
Can I hook my DVB-T card up to my Cable/Satellite service?
What is DXVA? A good definition of DXVA (DirectX Video Aceleration) along with may other HTPC terms can be found here. For DXVA to be of any assistence it needs to be supported by both your video card (and drivers) and your video codec. All Radeon 9xxx series cards support DXVA, and most Nvidia FX5xxx and higher so long as you have the lastest drivers. DVXA needs to be enabled in your codec. For Cyberlink (Powerdvd) this can be enabled via HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CyberLink\PowerDTV\UIUseHVA=1 (Dword). This key may be in several locations so you may want to search your registry for the UIUseHVA key. For Intervideo (WinDVD) try the following registry key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec\DXVA=1 What software can I use to watch and/or record TV?
Common Vision-Plus Questions
Where Can I Get One?
Can I plug my VCR into this card?
Can I get TeleText / Captions (subtitles)?
Can I have more than one DVB-T Card in one machine?
What other software can I use with the USB version?
Common Problems How do I tune in channels?
When I'm watching TV the video stutters. How can I fix this?
General consensus is that you need around 95% in the quality stakes for a reliable picture. It appears that the strength is not so much a problem. Some have reported success on less, but not many. When I playback a file in my Directshow based player why does it die after a few seconds?
To fix the problem you need to force your application to use the MPEG-2 Splitter filter. Some applications, such as Windows Media Player, do not support this. Media Player Classic
I can pick up some networks fine, but not others.
Also see the following post When I capture a program there is a lot of corruptions in it. NOTE: This answer is based on being able to watch live TV without errors. If you also get errors with Live TV look this is not likely to be you problem. There have been problems reported when recording to SATA drives, particularly when these are connected to an On-Board SATA controller. See this post Common Vision-Plus Problems I can't get my VisionPlus DVB-T to install. What am I doing wrong? Some conflicts with other BT8X8 chipset devices have been noted. If you have one of these cards then you might need to remove it and it's drivers to get the VisionPlus DVB-T to install. Why doesn't the remote work? See the HOW TO: Troubleshooting the IR Receiver thread. I see a fuzzy line (white dots) at the top/bottom of the picture. This is data in the DVB broadcast that is used to adjust aspect ratio. This FAQ isn't answering my question. Where can I find more help? Also, many issues have been discussed on this forum. Try searching for what you are after, Remember that the default search is only for the last 30 days. If that fails then post a thread in the appropriate section of the forum and wait for someone helpful to point you in the right direction. Please remember to provide as much information as possible. Information like hardware and software specs, any diagnosis you have done so far and how the problem can be re-produced. Links - Some useful links
Updates
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| Guest_Big Richard_* |
 Jul 12 2004, 11:04 PM
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Guests |
Thank you, thank you.
I bought a VisionPlus Vision DTV Ter card yesterday and wasted many hours with the thing giving me a frame grab of video every few seconds and very broken audio - despite very good signal strength and quality indications. I tried newer drivers and older ones, moved PCI slots, changed BIOS settings, disabled swapfile, changed video card settings, etc, etc. The following snippet from your FAQ has saved me much more frustration, hair-pulling and lack of sleep: "There are reports of interference with Wireless Network Cards. These have mostly been resolved by moving the wireless antenna further away from the computer." My wireless router normally sits on top of my PC. To install the VP card I moved the router to just beside the PC to allow removal of the PC's metal cover. I inserted the card into a slot and knowing that these things are never straightforward, left the cover off the PC - with the router about 40 cm from the VP card. Of course this must have been transmitting piles of 2.4 GHz straight into the card!!!! Turned off the wireless section of the router and I have got perfect pictures and sound now. I reckon it will probably be OK once I put the lid back on the PC to re-enable the wireless network - it is a good quality case with got EMI protection. Once again thank you  
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Jul 16 2004, 05:15 PM
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Forum Regular Group: FAQ Maintainer Posts: 458 Joined: 30-September 03 From: Sydney Member No.: 168 Card: VisionPlus DVB-t |
Updated the FAQ 16/7.
Many thanks to Joey for some of the answers above Let me know if anything is wrong or a least wildly inaccurate! Cheers Darren |
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Jul 16 2004, 05:19 PM
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Forum Regular Group: FAQ Maintainer Posts: 458 Joined: 30-September 03 From: Sydney Member No.: 168 Card: VisionPlus DVB-t |
QUOTE (Big Richard @ Jul 12 2004, 11:04 PM) Thank you, thank you. The following snippet from your FAQ has saved me much more frustration, hair-pulling and lack of sleep: "There are reports of interference with Wireless Network Cards. These have mostly been resolved by moving the wireless antenna further away from the computer." Big Richard, Glad to it was of some use to you. Sorry for taking so long to approve this post, I did not get any notification that a message was waiting and I was too slack to check! Cheers Darren |
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Aug 18 2004, 05:32 PM
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Forum Regular Group: FAQ Maintainer Posts: 458 Joined: 30-September 03 From: Sydney Member No.: 168 Card: VisionPlus DVB-t |
Hi Guys,
We are looking at reworking the FAQ section and separating it out a little more. So I need a bit of feedback from some of you. 1/ Anyone from outside of Australia who want to add or highlight anything different about how DVB-T is implemented in their country. Things like is DVB implemented as widescreen in your country, does each network get more than one channel?????. If someone could make some notes and send them too me that would be great. 2/ Can I ask if someone with a fusion, v-stream, or nebula card wants to put together some question and answers. I am quite happy for format it all out. 3/ If anything is wrong, misleading or out of date in the current FAQs, or if you have seen a post that you feel should be included in the FAQ drop me a note 4/ For those guys who feel they are forever answering the same question, drop me a note and I can link to one of your better answers. 5/ I have started an FAQ for DigitalWatch, anyone feel up to doing one for WebScheduler? Cheers Darren |
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Aug 22 2004, 06:30 PM
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Forum Regular Group: FAQ Maintainer Posts: 458 Joined: 30-September 03 From: Sydney Member No.: 168 Card: VisionPlus DVB-t |
Small update to the FAQ.
22/08/2004 - Edited: Video Stutters, VP USB. Added: Recording Corruptions Cheers Darren |
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Sep 12 2004, 12:17 PM
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Forum Regular Group: FAQ Maintainer Posts: 458 Joined: 30-September 03 From: Sydney Member No.: 168 Card: VisionPlus DVB-t |
Update to the FAQ
Added links and DXVA section. Minor updates Cheers Darren |
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