[mythtvnz] Skystar2/Freeview Idiot questions

[Barry Clearwater]

Thanks all, very good answers.  My path to enlightenment is well
underway.

Most enjoyed reading this morning included the line on pvr.geek.nz

"Partners of geeks tend to learn this quite quickly and become fearful
of any mention of the word "upgrade", especially when connected with the
word "simple"."
This is so true, perhaps they know is well.
e.g. my wife: "I Just want it to work!" and  "Isn't that [22" wide
screen samsung 3000:1 1600x1050 res monitor] just a bit small as a tv?"
[me, silently: Hmph, not on my desktop it wouldn't be.]

and: "so we have to put up with those little pc speakers you've put in"
[not if I get my way!]
Cheers all, I'm off to find a dish.

regards
Barry


On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 15:42 +1200, Steve Hodge wrote:
> On 6/27/07, Barry Clearwater <barryc@bcsystems.co.nz> wrote:
>         Regarding the two transponders, is it therefore the case that
>         all
>         canwest channels go through one transponder  (on the dish?)
>         and the TVNZ
>         through the other?
> 
> Yes. 
> 
> 
>         Regarding being able to concurrently record, with the
>         reference to this
>         in development, how many concurrent recordings are possible
>         (or being
>         developed) with one card?
> 
> Theoretically as many as the transponder carries. In practice it may
> be limited by disk bandwidth or other factors. 
> 
> 
>         I'm still getting to grips with satellite tv - one carrier,
>         multiple
>         digital video signals - right?
> 
> Yes, sort of. With DVB-S you have one carrier (aka transponder,
> multiplex, et al. on a particular frequency and polarity). The signal
> is packetized - it's a stream of distinct blocks of data (packets),
> called an MPEG Transport Stream. Each packet makes up part of an
> Elementary Stream which is a video or audio stream, or other data (EPG
> data, service descriptions, interactive program data such as MHEG
> data, etc). So a single Transport Stream usually carries multiple
> Elementary Streams, all mixed up, and usually this capability is used
> to provide multiple TV channels. Either the DVB-S card or software
> filters out the packets that belong to the channel you're interested
> in and discards the rest, but there's nothing to stop you keeping
> everything, i.e. recording all the channels on that transponder at
> once.
> 
> 
>         I mean terrestrial television is VHF/UHF with one receiver for
>         each RF 
>         channel so if I want to record two channels I need two
>         receiver cards.
> 
> Currently (with MythTV) the situation is the same with DVB-S. The work
> that is being developed at the moment will allow a DVB-S card to
> record all channels on a single transponder at the same time.
> Hopefully this work will be complete before the end of the year. It
> will mean that instead of six DVB-S cards to record all the Freeview
> channels (One, 2, 3, C4, Maori, One Sport Extra) we'll only need two
> (one for the TVNZ transponder, one for the Canwest transponder). 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve

18 Shaw Street
Mosgiel
mailto:barryc@bcsystems.co.nz 
ph 03 4893915
mob 027 2219338