DVB-T Capture application needed

[pandpp]

Hi there,

In Australia, DVB-T (Terrestrial) is the common solution, as opposed to DVB-S (Satellite).

I've been doing analogue captures using my ever faithful VirtualVCR for years now, but decided to move up in quality & channel numbers.

I grabbed myself a V-Stream DVB USB2, seeing as how I also want to use it on my laptop.

It comes with some capture software called DVB Plus, which, to be fair, is pretty crap. It captures in MPEG2, which I have no issue with.

The problem comes when I run ProjectX over the captures & find that the streams I captured are so VERY badly corrupted, that, regularly, when I go into Mpeg2Schnitt, I can't locate an In or Out frame! Other times, the audio stream just stops & starts at will.

I thought my problem might have been signal strength, but I am getting 60+% consistantly.
I can get reasonable results, on one of 4 machines, which is the machine I take to work every day, sadly. I've tried it on W2K & XP.

What I am looking for is some suggestions as to other capture apps that will handle DVB-T. I have tried the likes of ProgDVB, DVBPortal, TechnoTrend & WatchTVPro. Sadly, I couldn't get ANY of these to work for me, based on the fact that they all asked for my satellite.

From memory, ProgDVB listed DVB Terrestrial in it's Change List, only, I couldn't find it in the version I downloaded.

All suggestions will be greatly appreciated, seeing as how at this point, I have a fairly useless device.

Regards,

Peter.

[Ishan]

It looks like you've picked up one of the badly supported card :|
The best would have been to pick a good, widely supported PCI dvb-t card like the technotrend budget. One of the best DVB software is, imho, MyTheatre (http://www.dvbcore.com/MyTheatre.html). It outputs .mpg file wich work great with every encoding proggy I tried.
You can safely use DGIndex & DGMpgdec/avs on those file, no need for any preprocessing. The only drawback is MyTheatre isn't free but it's worth it :)
As for quality, DVB-t is the crappiest of all the dvb standard in that area. Mainly because of very low bitrate mpeg2 encoding, smaller resolution (usualy 544x576 PAL) and lazy channels providers feeding their DVB stream with crappy AV source.

[DrP]

Originally posted by Ishan
As for quality, DVB-t is the crappiest of all the dvb standard in that area. Mainly because of very low bitrate mpeg2 encoding, smaller resolution (usualy 544x576 PAL) and lazy channels providers feeding their DVB stream with crappy AV source.

In Australia, all standard definition is transmitted as 720(704) x 576, with main programs hitting > 6Mbit/sec average (in some cases > 7Mbit/sec), 4:3 material being pillar boxed (effectively the picture part being 544 x 576). Even 2nd channels such as ABC2 still reach up to ~5Mbit/sec peak. Most networks are fully digital, with only a few legacy analogue bearers in use.

pandpp, if you can dig up BDA drivers for the device, you can use webscheduler (http://dvb-ws.sourceforge.net/).

[pandpp]

Ishan,

Granted, a PCI card MAY have provided better support, but, I've never had any success getting a PCI card to work on any of my laptops.
If you had any suggestions on how to do this I could certainly try a PCI version.

I have to agree with DrP regarding quality, which runs between 5.5K - 6.5K on average.
If I compare the quality of DVB-T to the Analogue alternative, there is NO comparison.

I have downloaded MyTheatre & will give it a try.



DrP,

Thank you for the suggestion of webscheduler. Uncertain whether I have a BDA driver, but, it's worth a try to see if that works as well.
A better scheduling interface would HAVE to be a bonus, seeing as what I am using currently is next to useless...



Both of these options will have to wait until tonight when I have time.

[Ishan]

it looks dvb-t is far better than here in crappy retarded europe. even on cable the bitrate is 4 mbps max with a few exceptions.
dvb-t won't be fully operational until 2010 here... and don't speak of HDTV or anything...

[qgchen]

Hi, Please give me your email address, I can give our company commercial software for you to do beta tester for free, I did not tested in australia yet, I am pretty sure it should be OK, if you like please email to me at qgchen@yahoo.com

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by qgchen
Hi, Please give me your email address, I can give our company commercial software for you to do beta tester for free, I did not tested in australia yet, I am pretty sure it should be OK, if you like please email to me at qgchen@yahoo.com Interesting....

Does your software work with BDA driver based PCI and USB DVB-T cards?


Cheers

[qgchen]

Yes, we support BDA driver, with PCI and USB device supproted.