DVB PCI cards in the USA
This page documents my experience with getting/using DVB PCI cards
in the USA. (Thanks to all who provided feedback, it was very useful)
Hauppage WinTV DVB, Nexus, and Nova cards
By far, these are the most popular DVB cards. They are manufactured by TechnoTrend (www.technotrend.de) in Germany. Most software available today is designed for those cards. A good repository for software is www.happysat.de.
I happen to own a Nexus (WinTV DVB) card, but it had
to be imported from a UK distributor and it was expensive (~$300). www.pcupgrader.com in the UK sells them and will ship internationally. Also, www.usa-x.org exports them.
*Update. There have been reports that hauppage now sells the
Nexus and Nova cards in the US, and for reasonable prices. You
may have to call them directly.
Note also that the spectral inversion problem appears
to have been fixed in the latest drivers. It's my understanding that the
auto spectral inversion was not a firmware bug, so much as a lack of a
feature when they changed demodulator chips. Basically the hardware no
longer did the auto-SI, so SI had to be set manually or an auto-SI
function had to be emulated in software. I have revision 1.3 cards, so
I don't see the problem and I don't know what the current state of
software fixes are from TechnoTrend. Hello Bryan, I was talking to Technotrend support the other day and they assured
me that spectral inversion is working for all recent driver releases.
The only thing that has to be accommodated is the dialogs for the
C-Band and the quicksearch needs some recent transponder lists. Try to
download the latest driver and give it a try.
www.technotrend.de/english/download/info210.htm
If you experience problems with this, there are a couple of bouquets on
T5 that are not spectral-inverted. More specifically:
GlobeCast World TV, Freq: 12122 H, SR: 22000
GlobeCast World TV \, Freq; 11874 H, SR 22000
You can tune in Korean or various arabic TV fairly easily. I used a program called Multidec with moderate success. You’ll need to make adjustments to the LNB setup, specifically 10750 is the LO frequency for Ku band here in the states.
The software that ships with the card is useless, I could never get a signal lock with it.
My dish receives Linear-Polarity satellites only. I have not tried
receiving programming on the Echostar birds. Echostar birds
transmit with spectral-inversion turned off and
most of the content is encrypted.
Note that that the NTSC format is not well supported with most
programs or even the card. Expect lots of buggy artifacts and flicker.
But after a long fight with your card, you’ll be glad just to see a
picture. If you are using one a windows app, chances of
success will be much greater. Nexus cards can also run in
"soft mode" where, an mpeg2 directshow filter does the video decoding
work.
The Nexus cards support a hardware CAM module, however you have to purchase an additional add-on. This is unlike the VP-1030, which includes all CAM hardware on board.
About the Nova card, most software was written to work with the WinTV-s / Nexus card, not the Nova/budget model. The Nova lacks the built-in Mpeg-2 chip and TV-out capability (like the VP-1020). Hopefully more software will support the Nova in time. The more modern and cheap Twinhan cards will get better support, even in Europe (that or the Technisat SkyStar2 which is popular there as well).
Linux Support
Getting your DVB card to work under linux is a big challenge, but once done it is rewarding.
You’ll need a modern kernel (I used 2.4.19) with video-for-linux compiled as a module, the kernel source dependencies must be kept around for building the DVB driver. A modern X-server (4.1 or greater) is also required. Then you’ll need to compile the siemens driver software and other support software. Then if you’re lucky installing and executing the 16+ modules to actually get the card in a state usable by an application (like vdr) and then getting that application built, configured, and running properly, you’ll then need a program to view the framebuffer, preferably one that supports XVideo (and XVideo must be configured in the XServer too) and overlay mode.
I was able to hack up vdr 1.0.4 to work with spectral
inversion turned on and modified the code to support US C-band
calculations and NTSC framerate. Send me email if you are interested in
the source code for this. I took a couple of screenshots from various
transponders/programs on PAS9. Later versions should have
these problems fixed.
I use tuxview and xawtv for viewing on my monitor,
but both are buggy with NTSC broadcasts (note the quality of the
screenshots below).
A good site for DVB cards, vdr, etc is www.linuxtv.org. Again, most of the content there is based on the Hauppage variant of cards, and their European usage. However there are a few US members in the forums.
Twinhan VP-1020 and VP-1030 cards
As of this date there is only a few resellers of these. www.sadoun.com, www.smallear.com and www.emantechnology.com. Smallear sells just the VP-1020.
A quick word about smallear.com.. Evidently this one store goes by several names:
High Tech stuff
Possibly others. God knows why.
Anyway the VP-1020 is similar to a WinTV Nova / Budget card. All the video processing is done by the CPU. Also, some of the reports about this card (translated from Chinese) indicate it’s faster than the Nova card.
Since you can get one a VP-1020 in the US for fairly
cheap (<$100), support is bound to grow. These cards are quite
generic, and so is their usage. The Twinhan folks supply a Windows and
Linux SDK and binary-only drivers are available at http://www.usa-x.org . At the moment, the Twinhan card does not work with
v4l.
Twinhan does not supply source for its drivers. The company may very well be stealing GPLd code:
> > hi ppl!
> >
> > does one know if this one is supported? i don´t know which
chipset is on it.
> >
> > http://www1.alternate.de/html/nodes_info/jk-w01.html
>
>
> No, the twinhan card is not supported.
OK, at least the Linux drivers written by Twinhan seem to be
publically available now at http://www.usa-x.org/down/index.php
But they are using their own API and are not open sourced (only some applications which come with it). Furthermore, a short disassembly and comparison of strings reveals that at least some parts of the driver contain code from BTTV, the Bt8x8 Linux driver.
I unpacked the file installci1l20020327.tgz from the DVB-S_Xact/linux directory at www.usa-x.org, unpacked installci/driver.tgz and looked at installci/release/twinhan2.4.7-10.o. E.g., the function handle_chipset() seems to be exactly (except for exchanging some "bttv:"s with "twinhan:") like the same function in a late bttv-0.5.x or early bttv-0.6.x version. I am not certain about the bigphysarea code. Maybe somebody from the V4L mailing list can recognize if it is also lifted from GPLed code. That's why I cross-post this to the V4L list.
(subscribe to the linuxtv.org mailing list for more about this).The VP-1030 is comparatively inexpensive at a little over $100. It’s similar to the VP-1020, except that it also supports hardware CAM modules.
Like the Nova/Budget card, there’s no mpeg-2 decoder,
so a fast processor is needed (for both cards). The specs call for a
400-500Mhz PIII minimum for these. In contrast, with a Nexus, a 200Mhz
MMX Pentium is sufficient for viewing video on a monitor, and even a
slower processor would do for viewing with the built-in TV out. Of
course this is only true for standard Mpeg-2 video TV resoulutions,
which today is the most popular for DVB broadcasts.
Also, like the Hauppage cards, these cards have some support for streaming IP data http://www.cband.net/ offers a DVB-S/IP service in North America Starband, and DirecWay are proprietary.
Twinhan cards are very sensitive to PCI bus speeds. The maximum PCI bus speed I can achive with my VP-1020 is 37.62Mhz. Above that, the card goes unstable (signal meter goes max then cuts out a second later), sometimes wont lock, and pops up strange errros like:
LNB power open error!
LNB power close error!
22KHz switch select error!
Broadlogic BL-2030
These cards were for sale on Ebay for some time. However I know little about them, or know of anyone who sells them. Let me know if you have any info about these or where to get them.
FYI, Broadlogic cards, if purchased through their normal distribution channels, are quite expensive. They seem to be plentiful on eBay and I've seen them go as cheap as $10.
What can they receive?
Any C/Ku band DVB FTA DVB stream. See www.lyngsat.com
AC3 and other audio streams can be decoded with proper drivers.
EchoStar (Dish Network) FTA DVB streams.
The cards will receive FTA off of Nimiq1 (Bell ExpressVu) as well.
4:2:2/HDTV DVB ?? If included, the hardware decoder will not be useful, and hence a fast computer will be required
What can’t they receive?
Mpeg 1.5
Analog
DSS/ DirecTV streams.
Certain scrambled formats.
The VP-1020 cards do not support a hardware CAM, which may limit your ability to see certain scrambled content. However I suspect softcam and other projects will develop quickly as they did for the Hauppage cards in Europe. Even smallear is selling the VP-1020 card with the following ad:
"The best DVB-PCI card on the market, complete array of third party H*ck software can be found on the forum and several site. For example sofwtare that can strip D*TV music to MP3 directly into harddrive, view 4:2:2 feed and HDTV feed if PC speed enough."
Ethics aside, a DVB PCI card is far more versatile than a standalone unit. And probably cheaper too.
Misc
DVB cards make good additions to
M10000 boards or SV24 boxes. Take a look at www.mini-itx.com or www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bchafy/mp3.html for some standalone project ideas. For HD formats, you will
need a more powerful processor (ie 2.2Ghz+).
The Nexus card generates a lot of heat and is on the large side. However it can just barely fit into the case of an SV24. It’s an extremely tight fit, but no unnecessary twisting or bending is required.
More info
www.tforums.com - Free forum to discuss all things DVB
www.coolstf.com/mpeg/index.html - North American MPEG-2 Info
www.satforums.com - North American DVB forum
forums.delphiforums.com/mpg/start - Delphi North American DVB forum
About Delphi/Satforums:
As for the Delphi stuff the mpg forum that was there is now this forum here [www.satfourms.com]. Also, the 4dtv, trackerlee, and several other Delphi forums moved off Delphi to come here.
ScreenShots
(All taken on PAS9 with a WinTV Nexus card running under linux and a modified vdr1.0.4)
Email:
Sep 8, 2003