DVB PCI General Info Sticky

[arboristman]

c&P:


Benefits
Some of the benefits DVB cards have over FTA boxes are:

-Multitasking: you can surf the web and watch TV at the same time on the same screen.
-Updates: usually the DVB world is a step ahead of the rest of the FTA community. The latest fixes have a way of showing up a few days early for the DVB cards.
-HD TV: this is my fav advantage. Currently only DVB cards support HD TV.
-Selection: there are a ton of DVB applications, utilities, and plugins available.
-EPG: I have two Pansat 2500's so for me the DVB EPG is a big plus.

HW vs SW DVB cards
Many people opt for a HW based DVB card (i.e Nexus) however, I don't think the HW based MPEG decoding is worth the additional cost. Until they release a DVB card that can demodulate DN's HD channels, a SW based card will be my recommendation. I'm running my setup on an Athlon XP 2600+ w/1.5G of DDR400 memory, a Radeon 9800 video card, and 1T of RAID5 storage, and my proc stays around 10% even with Vplug running.

Typical Configuration
A typical SW based DVB card (Twinhan 102G) config is as follows:

1. Satellite dish is connected to DVB card.
2. DVB card sends the MPEG stream from the satellite to the DVB app (Ritz, MT, ProgDVB, etc).
3. The DVB app uses a decryption plugin to decrypt the signal (S2Emu, Krasnal, etc).
4. The DVB app uses the configured graph to determine the codec to use to display the picture on the TV and to send the audio to the audio card. I've got a more indepth explanation of the graphs/codecs here.
5. The DVB app then sends the decoded video/audio signals to the proper output devices.

My Recommendations
Now that the basic overview is done and you are more familiar with the overall DVB setup, below are my personal recommendations for each component of a DVB PC setup:

-Hardware:
-Processor: P3 or AMD Athlon XP series proc minimium.
-Memory: Minimum 384MB of RAM (DVB is not very memory intensive)
-Video Card: Low to midrange video card
-Software:
-DVB Application - RitzDVB
-Codec: Elecard 3.0 MPEG2 codec Read About It Here
-Graph Utility: Graphmaker.exe get it here.
-Transponder ini files RITZ or other DVB Application INI files.
-Decryption: S2Emu is located here.

Quick Install Overview
Once you've got all that, below is a quick setup step-by-step that I'm typing off the top of my head:

1. Connect the DVB card to satellite.
2. Unzip RitzDVB.
3. Configure Diseqc settings in Ritz.
4. Install Elecard codec.
5. Run the keygen to register the Elecard Codec.
6. Use graphmaker to make a graph that maps the Elecard codec and your sound card to your Twinhan DVB card.
7. Save the graph in the graphs folder for Ritz DVB.
8. Extract the S2Emu files into the plugins folder.
9. Place the transponder ini files for the satellites you want in the transponders folder for Ritz.
9. Start Ritz and scan your satellites.
10. Add the channels you want to your channel list.
11. Select a saved channel and wait for S2Emu to get/write the current key to the softcam.key file.
12. You are done...you should be watching TV now.

Optimization

Once you have it all working, its time to break it. At this point I recommend doing a complete system backup, or if you are like me, create a complete image of your system and back it up to a seperate HD or RAID array. Next, download/install/uninstall other DVB apps codecs, plugins, whatever floats your boat until you have every feature you want and maybe a few you don't.

For my system, once I had all that just the way I wanted it, I reloaded my whole system and only installed the exact combination of software products that I wanted, and I haven't touched it since. There are many unwanted side effects from having too many DVB apps, codecs, and tombstoned registry keys laying around. The biggest thing you will prob want to play with is codecs. The Elecard codec is the best general starting point and its a good codec for general purpose TV viewing. If you want to play with HD however, you will need a beefier codec like the ATI codec.

For my setup, I've got an Elecard graph for watching normal TV, and a ATI graph just for HD testing.