<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 14/10/2008, at 9:51 AM, Nick Rout wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Aaron Whitehouse<br><<a href="mailto:lists@whitehouse.org.nz">lists@whitehouse.org.nz</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Hello all,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I have been trying to figure out a few things and I was hoping that<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">people on this list could help me:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">1. I am running Myth on a 2.4 GHz P4 with an nVidia GeForce 4 Ti. I am<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">keen to set up Freeview on my machine (sound on the analogue and the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">lack of a proper aspect ratio definition are pretty annoying), but have<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">been waiting to see what happens with the hardware-accelerated H.264<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">decoding.<br></blockquote><br>What hardware h.264 acceleration? There is no such thing in linux. For<br>reasons why not, go ask nVidia.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">It recently occurred to me that my machine may not be powerful<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">enough, even if everything was fully accelerated. I could upgrade the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">graphics to anything else AGP. Am I likely to be able to play H.264 on<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">this machine if everything goes well, or should I just settle on MPEG-2?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><br>depends if you want to get HD or not. If you are happy with SD your<br>machine is fine, and you will need a satellite dish. If you want HD<br>you need DVB-T and a very grunty machine as well as the latest patches<br>from Paul Kendall (see other threads).<br><br><blockquote type="cite">2. Has anyone got 5.1 sound working? Is the way that people are doing<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">this using S/PDIF over coax/optical? How well does the S/PDIF<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">pass-through work with recent distributions?<br></blockquote><br>Mine has always worked fine.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Same here</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><br><blockquote type="cite">Most guides that I have<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">found are quite old. I assume that the S/PDIF carries a digital signal<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">encoded in AC3 or PCM.<br></blockquote><br>by definition I think spdif must be ac3 or pcm</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Or DTS</div><div><br></div><div>Some Amps won't accept anything other than 44.1 and 48KHz PCM which can cause issues with some internet streams, but otherwise no issues.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><br><blockquote type="cite">Is there some negotiation between the card and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the computer that lets the computer figure out which formats it can<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">pass-through and which have to be re-encoded into formats that the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">stereo etc. can support? Do you set all of that manually?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><br>I think myth does it all in software, it passes ac3 and pcm streams<br>through. other codecs it presumably converts to pcm (as it would have<br>to do for analogue output anyway). Most decent digital input<br>amplifiers will mix sound so it comes out all speakers.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">3. Does anyone know of anyone that does cheap, but decent, Freeview<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">satellite installations? Surely some student or something is doing it<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for some extra cash? The best that I have found so far is someone who<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">will install your satellite for $150 - then I could get one of TradeMe<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for ~$100.</blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>$150 is cheap for a professionally aligned dish install with dish and LNB.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><br>In ChCh I use Ascot Electronics <a href="http://www.ascot.net.nz/">http://www.ascot.net.nz/</a> . In fact<br>they are coming to install at my new place today.<br><br>I bought a dish from here: <a href="http://www.freeviewshop.co.nz/">http://www.freeviewshop.co.nz/</a></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I highly recommend Lars at freeviewshop for both equipment and instructions</div><div><br></div><div>Steve</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Steven Ellis - Technical Director<br>OpenMedia Limited<br>email - <a href="mailto:steven@openmedia.co.nz">steven@openmedia.co.nz</a><br>website - <a href="http://www.openmedia.co.nz/">http://www.openmedia.co.nz</a><br></div></div></span> </div><br></body></html>