[gentoo-user] Re: DTV on Laptop

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-12-12, Iain Buchanan <iaindb@××××××××××××.au> wrote:

>>>>> There seem to be several devices, based on USB2 that connect
>>>>> to a computer and can receive ATSC (HDTV) or traditional
>>>>> broadcasts. The ones I've found for N. America all require
>>>>> Vista (uck).
>>>>
>>>> I've used a Freecom USB DVB stick with Gentoo, it worked well
>>>> but I didn't try it with HDTV (because we don't have that
>>>> here).
>>>
>>> What is the quality of the picture with the Freecom?
>>
>> That question doesn't really make any sense.  It's like asking
>> what the quality of the sound is with an Ethernet card.
>
> what you really want to know is how fast does it tune, does it
> do hardware mpeg encoding, does the linux driver support
> signal strength etc.  The quality of the UI is a question for
> windows users, as you usually use what they provide, but with
> linux you use what you want :)

Actually I guess the picture quality would be a valid question
for an NTSC tuner.  I had missed the fact that the OP was
looking for something that did both NTSC and ATSC (for which
the picture quality question doesn't really apply).  

For ATSC picture quality is going to be the same for all
tuners. The question is how well the tuner and demodulator can
handle multipath and low signal strenth.  With ATSC you've
pretty much either got a picture or you don't.

All USB NTSC tuners are going to to hardware video encoding.
USB just doesn't have enough bandwidth to send uncompressed raw
video (that would require real, sustained usable throughput in
excess of 200Mb/s).

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! ... I have read the
                                  at               INSTRUCTIONS ...
                               visi.com            

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