"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Keith G
wrote:

"PJO" wrote in message
...
I know this is rather off topic but I don't know of a TV group (is
there one?).

Freeview... Having just bought a standard set top box I was amazed
to
discover that one is unable to watch one channel while recording
another. Does anyone know of an alternative STB which can do both
jobs
with the simple press of a button?


If you want to watch one digital channel while recording another, the
best, if not *only* way (presuming no digital telly) is to daisychain
2
STBs together. There is one by (dare I say it?) Bush being advertised
for only £40 atm. (Not an undue amount, IMO.)

Well, I've just boldly gone and bought a DTTV receiver box (Nokia 221T).
Chose this one as it had good reviews and has a S/PDIF output for sound
as
well as a pair of scarts.

The 'snag' wish daisy chaining I have found is as follows:

Both the DTTV and my VHS/DVD combo unit have 'aux' scarts as well as
'TV'
scarts, so can actually be daisy-chained in either order. However
although
each outputs RGB, the each (it would seem) only accept composite or S
video. Thus the unit at the 'far' end of a scart daisy chain suffers a
loss
in image quality. Since my TV has two scarts - but only one RGB - this
is
a
pest.

At present I have opted to have the DTTV box at the 'far' end of a daisy
chain, so the DVD can still give good pictures, but the DTTV picture
suffers as a result.

When the DTTV box is connected directly to the scart RGB input of the TV
it
gives a very good picture despite our only having a poor signal level
which
causes breakup when it is raining heavily. (A better antenna is on the
list
of future improvements ;- )

I am currently investigating scart switches of the types sold by
lecktropacks, etc, to see if I can effectively give my TV two RGB inputs
by
using a suitable switch. I believe you can get 'auto' ones that switch
in
response to the inputs.

The quality for recording does not matter so much, so I'll either use
UHF
or try the aux scarts. No point in trying to give the VHS a superb image
as
the recording will be relatively poor anyway! :-)

Seems weird that units output RGB but do not accept it inwards to pass
through...

OT: Another pest with the Nokia turns out to be that the 'TV station'
and
'Radio station' lists are distinct, so switching between radio and TV is
clumsy if your TV is switched off and you are just hearing the output
via
S/PDIF. Is this standard for DTTV boxes?

The user guides for both the DTTV box and the VHS/DVD recommend daisy
chaining scarts with the VHS/DVD 'upstream' of the DTTV so far as
signals
sent to the TV are concerned. This works, and means the DTTV box can
auto
switch and pass through the VHS/DVD output, which is convenient. However
the degrading of DVD images is obvious when I do this.

FWIW I tried connecting the DTTV output to the secondary scart on the TV
(which does not have RGB inputs) but this caused problems as they seem
incompatable as to the form of composite/S video. Colour was difficult
to
obtain, and seemed to rely upon 'leakage' from one cable to another, but
I
have not yet sussed this out beyond finding it did not work! ;-)


Wah! Some pretty scary stuff in there!

As my little 'flexible friend' is now worse off to the tune of one Sagem
ITD602 STB, I hope the following list of functionality.....

Quick guided first installation
Ultra Fast auto tune
AUX scart with RGB input passthrough
Electronic Program Guide ( EPG)
Sleep timer
7 favourite lists with organizer
video freeze mode
Parental lock to control access for channels and
set up menus with a pin code
Powerful diagnostic screens

....and the following specifications......

High speed microprocessor 350 MIPS
Fully DVB-T compliant
2k / 8k and 7MHz / 8 MHz supported
Analog VHF-UHF loopthrough
MHEG5 engine UK profile 1.05
English OSD
DVB subtitles
Teletext
Software update over the air (OTA)

...... used in conjunction with the Sony digital telly will allow me to
report that, later this evening, I have had *none* of these same problems!
(I am not confident, at this point in time.....)

:-)

One thing I *do* know is (for those who still think quality of
interconnects
is unimportant) that an 'iffy' Scart lead is its own pain and will lead
one
into the very depths of misery and despair......






With the exception of the video freeze mode the Pace DT210F does all of
these as well - for £79.95 at Comet. Plus it also has a modulator and both
digital and analogue audio out connectors in addition to the twin SCARTs.


--
Woody

Hi,

In message , Jim H
writes
more from the 'Keith G school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

160 gig? - Won't take long to fill that up, me old china. (The 'power
users' in Yankland and Nippon are into *terabytes*, I gather.....!)
I'd up that spec a bit sharpish, if I were yew! (What's the standard
rate of exchange atm - 5 gig per 2 hours 'audiovisual' at DVD
quality??)

That depends. Decent resolution DV (uncompressed) would be *huge*, mpeg2
about 5 gigs or mpeg4 about 1 with no lesser quality.

I normally encode MPEG2 at about 7.5 MBits/second, but that's high -
most of the Digital TV broadcasts are at less than half of that data
rate. You're right that perceptually, MPEG4 and its cousins can give
equivalent results at much lower data rates.


It sometimes annoys me the number of devices stuck with mpeg2, given the
huge superiority of mpeg4. If DVD had used mpeg4, the disks could be
smaller, have massive data redudancy making them virtually indestructable,
have much better resolution AND hold more footage!

MPEG2 had the advantage of being a standard, when the world was still
farting about trying to ratify MPEG4. There is also a whole bunch of
stuff in the MPEG4 standard that isn't used on most currently available
CODECs. The increase in quality per bit rate is at the expense of more
demands on CPU power for encoding and decoding, which meant more money
when DVD was brought to market. It's all a doddle now, of course,
because the world is stuffed with 2GHz CPUs with not much to do apart
from run Microsoft office.


I'm not certain, but I recon a 5gig mpeg4 disk would have been high quality
enough to use in real cinemas.

I'm out of date with digital cinema systems, but I seem to recall that
the market demand (years ago) was for at least 2000 vertical lines of
video, which means a huge number of pixels. Qualcomm quoted figures of
around 35 - 55 megbits/second for compressed data, which is at least
five times the data rate of most DVDs. That's about 45 Gigabytes of
storage for a 2 hour movie including audio. Things might have changed
with recent codec advances - I don't get to play with anything above
1080 lines these days.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

Hi,

In message , Jim H
writes
more from the 'Keith G school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

160 gig? - Won't take long to fill that up, me old china. (The 'power
users' in Yankland and Nippon are into *terabytes*, I gather.....!)
I'd up that spec a bit sharpish, if I were yew! (What's the standard
rate of exchange atm - 5 gig per 2 hours 'audiovisual' at DVD
quality??)

That depends. Decent resolution DV (uncompressed) would be *huge*, mpeg2
about 5 gigs or mpeg4 about 1 with no lesser quality.

I normally encode MPEG2 at about 7.5 MBits/second, but that's high -
most of the Digital TV broadcasts are at less than half of that data
rate. You're right that perceptually, MPEG4 and its cousins can give
equivalent results at much lower data rates.


It sometimes annoys me the number of devices stuck with mpeg2, given the
huge superiority of mpeg4. If DVD had used mpeg4, the disks could be
smaller, have massive data redudancy making them virtually indestructable,
have much better resolution AND hold more footage!

MPEG2 had the advantage of being a standard, when the world was still
farting about trying to ratify MPEG4. There is also a whole bunch of
stuff in the MPEG4 standard that isn't used on most currently available
CODECs. The increase in quality per bit rate is at the expense of more
demands on CPU power for encoding and decoding, which meant more money
when DVD was brought to market. It's all a doddle now, of course,
because the world is stuffed with 2GHz CPUs with not much to do apart
from run Microsoft office.


I'm not certain, but I recon a 5gig mpeg4 disk would have been high quality
enough to use in real cinemas.

I'm out of date with digital cinema systems, but I seem to recall that
the market demand (years ago) was for at least 2000 vertical lines of
video, which means a huge number of pixels. Qualcomm quoted figures of
around 35 - 55 megbits/second for compressed data, which is at least
five times the data rate of most DVDs. That's about 45 Gigabytes of
storage for a 2 hour movie including audio. Things might have changed
with recent codec advances - I don't get to play with anything above
1080 lines these days.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:04:47 +0000
John Laird wrote:


A Shuttle, perchance ? I built myself one - nice little box,
although I think mine is 1PCI, 1AGP. The AGP slot will probably get a
video card at some point. I intend to get a USB digitv decoder rather
than use an internal one.

Im going to put an external one internally in my via epia M6000 (which
also serves my website, see below). theres four USB ports internal to
the machine, and two out back...

I may fit two tuners so I can watch one and record from the other,
although the ability to record an entire mux (or part therof) might be
good enough for me...

The epia is almost completely silent - no fans, even in the PSU, and
only the HDD makes any noise. lovely.

My Shuttle box has two fans (very quiet ones though) though its actually
quieter thanks to its seagate barracuda harddisc which is simply
inaudible (except when hammered).

Im never buying a PC with noisy parts again. now that nothing is slower
than 1GHz theres just no point in super-fancy or jet-engine cooling and
overclocking is worthless.

Im *so* tempeted to make a machine with about 20 epia boards and a fast
ethernet switch to make an entry level supercomputer. thing is every
time Im tempted, a new uni processor machine comes along at 1/10th the
price and 5x the horsepower... ah well...

--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:04:47 +0000
John Laird wrote:


A Shuttle, perchance ? I built myself one - nice little box,
although I think mine is 1PCI, 1AGP. The AGP slot will probably get a
video card at some point. I intend to get a USB digitv decoder rather
than use an internal one.

Im going to put an external one internally in my via epia M6000 (which
also serves my website, see below). theres four USB ports internal to
the machine, and two out back...

I may fit two tuners so I can watch one and record from the other,
although the ability to record an entire mux (or part therof) might be
good enough for me...

The epia is almost completely silent - no fans, even in the PSU, and
only the HDD makes any noise. lovely.

My Shuttle box has two fans (very quiet ones though) though its actually
quieter thanks to its seagate barracuda harddisc which is simply
inaudible (except when hammered).

Im never buying a PC with noisy parts again. now that nothing is slower
than 1GHz theres just no point in super-fancy or jet-engine cooling and
overclocking is worthless.

Im *so* tempeted to make a machine with about 20 epia boards and a fast
ethernet switch to make an entry level supercomputer. thing is every
time Im tempted, a new uni processor machine comes along at 1/10th the
price and 5x the horsepower... ah well...

--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:13:58 +0000
Tim Hobbs wrote:

A Shuttle, perchance ? I built myself one - nice little box,
although I think mine is 1PCI, 1AGP. The AGP slot will probably get
a video card at some point. I intend to get a USB digitv decoder
rather than use an internal one.

I believe so - it comes with the main board fitted I think. Is the
built-in sound any good?

the onboard sound in my Shuttle box is crap. the filtering just isnt up
to the job. Add to that it only has one h/ware stream, so all mux is
done in software.

It has one saving grace - optical sp/dif in and out.

That said, until I repair my Quad405 Im stuck with my knackered Rotel
amp with dodgy main filter caps, so it doesnt matter if I use the
analogue out...

At least it can produce a propper 22kHz output - the audio on my
(otherwise superb) ASUS A7M266 (may it rest in peace) was awful (HEAVILY
attenuated over 12 kHz, gone by 15kHz), and made me *thoroughly* glad to
have my SBLive! (one of the earlier non-****e ones). Its output easily
went full-range with no problems, and its input was good enough that I
could actually see the FM stereo sub-carrier from my radio scanner at
~19kHz on my little fft program (see website).

--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:13:58 +0000
Tim Hobbs wrote:

A Shuttle, perchance ? I built myself one - nice little box,
although I think mine is 1PCI, 1AGP. The AGP slot will probably get
a video card at some point. I intend to get a USB digitv decoder
rather than use an internal one.

I believe so - it comes with the main board fitted I think. Is the
built-in sound any good?

the onboard sound in my Shuttle box is crap. the filtering just isnt up
to the job. Add to that it only has one h/ware stream, so all mux is
done in software.

It has one saving grace - optical sp/dif in and out.

That said, until I repair my Quad405 Im stuck with my knackered Rotel
amp with dodgy main filter caps, so it doesnt matter if I use the
analogue out...

At least it can produce a propper 22kHz output - the audio on my
(otherwise superb) ASUS A7M266 (may it rest in peace) was awful (HEAVILY
attenuated over 12 kHz, gone by 15kHz), and made me *thoroughly* glad to
have my SBLive! (one of the earlier non-****e ones). Its output easily
went full-range with no problems, and its input was good enough that I
could actually see the FM stereo sub-carrier from my radio scanner at
~19kHz on my little fft program (see website).

--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:41:48 +0000
Glenn Booth wrote:

The
audio won't be the same as yours, as ours are Intel based (P51G, I
believe, with the i865G chipset).

Dont be so sure. the audio in the NForce 2 chipset for AMD is so similar
to i810 that it can use the same driver under linux. Not sure if the
codecs differ though.


--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:41:48 +0000
Glenn Booth wrote:

The
audio won't be the same as yours, as ours are Intel based (P51G, I
believe, with the i865G chipset).

Dont be so sure. the audio in the NForce 2 chipset for AMD is so similar
to i810 that it can use the same driver under linux. Not sure if the
codecs differ though.


--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:13:58 +0000, Tim Hobbs
wrote:

A Shuttle, perchance ? I built myself one - nice little box, although I
think mine is 1PCI, 1AGP. The AGP slot will probably get a video card at
some point. I intend to get a USB digitv decoder rather than use an
internal one.

I believe so - it comes with the main board fitted I think. Is the
built-in sound any good? I'm going for an AMD-based box simply for
cost reasons with a modest chip. I don't think monster processing
power is going to help me much.

I'm sure others would confirm that onboard sound is much like onboard video.
Workable, but no great shakes. On mine, I was rather disappointed to find
that the only sound input (other than spdif) was the microphone which turned
out to be mono. I ended up rewiring a header connection so that the mic
jack was wired to line-in (which is otherwise missing although some clever
types have managed to reassign it to the rear speaker connector). These
minor irritations are more to do with the system design than the
motherboard, which has several connectors unused (another usb pair,
infra-red, line-in as mentioned). It's amazingly compact.

I like the look of the Nebula digitv card mentioned elsewhere, so I
think I'll make sure that's what gets fitted.

Whilst I'd love to spend a day building one myself I am in the happy
position of running a computer company, so I'm letting the young pups
do it for me. I was surprised how out of date I am on PC building.

I find where PC hardware is concerned, I have to cost my own time at £0/hr
to make it worthwhile...

--
A little inaccuracy saves a lot of explanation.

Mail john rather than nospam...