Mojn, You have given no clue that I can see without research in your message as to which particular services are of interest to you, and a hint to your location, so I will have to generalise about things here... On Wed, 5 Nov 2008, Florin Andrei wrote: > A quick search on the Eutelsat website revealed that they transmit using = > DVB-S. So a DVB-S card like the Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-S-Plus which I plan = > to purchase should be able to receive it, is that right? > > (I can't receive Eutelsat from my area, but if they start broadcasting = > their HD channels on Galaxy 25, the way they do already with SD, then = > I'll be able to receive them.) In most cases I've seen, when DVB-S is used to trasmit H.264 HDTV, it's in order to share a transponder between conventional MPEG-2 broadcasts. Usually, when a transponder gets converted to HDTV only, it uses DVB-S2. I would not rely on a particular transponder remaining DVB-S if you have interest in any HDTV -- particularly if you are planning an initial investment in a card. I would suggest getting a DVB-S2 card, capable of DVB-S, and avoiding unpleasant surprises later, future-proofing yourself for some time. As a concrete example of what I mean, BBC-HD presently shares a transponder with two SD BBC services which must be received by existing non-S2-able Sky and FTA receivers. The german EinsFestival HD showcases shared a transponder with existing SD services. The present arte-HD and coming ARD and ZDF HD services have their dedicated transponder, no SD services, and use -S2. The Hotbird Hungarian and Swiss HD services share space with SD and use DVB-S. There do exist transponders which use the more efficient DVB-S2 yet carry a payload of MPEG-2 services, just as there are H.264 services on DVB-S. One does not require the other. Generally, HD services do not need to be concerned with consumer equipment that cannot receive DVB-S2, and are able to use that without concern. While nearly all SD-only consumer equipment has no DVB-S2 ability and is stuck with DVB-S2. > Right. OTOH, I expect the satellite stuff to be transmitted at a pretty = > low bitrate, also perhaps with the more complex encoding features turned = The services which use lower bitrates (for HD, less than, say, 10Mbit/sec where the broadcasts I know of start), if what I see on SD is a guide, are likely to be budget-tight commercial broadcasts or niche programming that is highly unlikely to be contemplating HD, adverts that push to the limits the frequency of keyframes or entropy of the content in order to trickle ``moving'' pictures on a budget. Or pr0n that looks to be modelled by airbrushed Lego blocks. Argh, speaking of which, the HD-pr0n that I wanted to see bitrate (technical meaning thereof) has disappeared, so I have no clue what they used while it existed, purely for research purposes, you know... If you wanted to name the service, we could tell you what bitrate is used (and many of the auto-scanning DX websites list this as well, if you want to look yourself)... Else my examples of well-funded quality-concerned Public Service Broadcasters, or of subscriber-financed subscription packages, might be inapplicable -- I pay attention to both technical and content quality where interested, and have no idea what you may have to suffer where you are. thanks barry bouwsma _______________________________________________ linux-dvb mailing list linux-dvb@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-dvb
