Klaus Schmidinger a ?crit : > Several years ago, when VDR was first developed, it was based upon a > then all new DVB card, which implemented a complete device with tuner, > MPEG decoder and optional CI adapter. > > Now, more than five years later, and with the advent of HDTV, it's time > for a new generation of DVB devices. > > Here's a list of the features such a device should have: > > http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/hdtv-dream.htm > > Ok, this is a dream I have - I don't know if any manufacturer will > ever come up with such a device. But then again, in the mid-nineties > the DVB cards we have now were a dream as well... > > Please let me know what you think about this, and if I have forgotten > anything or got something wrong. I do not fully agree with the "Full Featured vs. Budget" concept. There are plenty of non-DVB chips, cards and motherboards that are able to decode MPEG2, and MPEG4 in the near future. I envision a budget-only DVB card world, where the MPEG[24] decoding is delegated to another card, maybe onboard (on-mobo). Each card can be optimized for cost by the manufacturer. MPEG2 can already be decoded by many chipsets, on motherboards with slow and silent processors. MPEG4 will soon be (I think about VIA CLE266 -> CN400, but nVidia is on the way, and others too). The current problem is lack of completely open-source drivers : there is either a binary lib, or a binary firmware, or a complete binary driver. That's what really limit possibilities. When softdevice will be able to use the onboard hardware decoder of graphic cards, we will have achieved that part of the deal, for current DVB programs. -- NH
