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Hmm, I have a TV cards with an SAA7134 chip - you'll have no idea how difficult it is to find decent drivers for it on Windows, and even when you do find them, it doesn't work particularly well. Perhaps it's just a poor card? Besides these chipsets, will any digital TV cards be supported? Seeing as analogue TV is to be switched off in 7 years time (I know, it's a way off) wouldn't it be sensible to support the new DVB cards being released? MHEG support will be difficult though, unless the cards themselves offer decoding... Good to see progress though . If only my RPC could run Firefox . Also, has anyone noticed that Google have released their own toolbar for Firefox now? Smiler on 31/7/05 11:38AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Yes, DVB cards on RISC OS should probably of the fully-featured kind (with MPEG2 decoder), like the Hauppauge Nexus. JGZimmerle on 31/7/05 6:45PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Robin and I have been looking into DVB cards, most seem to ask for 1.6GHz P4 or higher which suggests they are relying on Software MPEG decoding, which wouldn't be very practicle even on the Iyonix. A DVB card with onboard hardware MPEG2 decoding we think is the only solution. I would not expect hardware decoding on sub 100 GBP DVB cards Does the Hauppage Nexus have hardware decoding? CJE on 1/8/05 12:19PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

There is currently no hardware MPEG2 decoding DVB card available that fits into an IYONIX - they are all 5V only PCI cards. Pricing shouldn't be the problem, they cost around 160-180 EUR in Germany. The "logical choice" atm would be the Pinnacle PCTV Sat, because it is based on the well-known BT878 and has open source drivers available - however, no hardware decoding available here, so we would need a fast software MPEG decoder. KinoAmp, with the recent work by Thomas Milius to use XScale-specific DMA transfers, might be fast enough for 12,5 fps. However, I understand that UK users would like to have DVB-T instead... hubersn on 1/8/05 12:35PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Software MPEG isn't going to be practical on the current generation of RISC OS machines, even if it can be made to work an an acceptible frame rate. Whats the point have having the machine using almost 100% CPU time on displaying a TV picture? The whole idea is you can have a window displaying the TV picture without affecting the operation of the machine, and can occationally grab stills or clips. If you want anything else, then either a proper TV or a digital video recorder is a much better option. druck on 1/8/05 1:28PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Hello All If anyone would like to write a driver for a DVB card the Omega does support 5V PCI cards. I for one would be very pleased if someone would like the challenge. IanK on 1/8/05 11:30PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

IanK: Is documentation for the Omega's PCI API publically available? jmb on 1/8/05 11:46PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

They don't seem to be available publicly. I do have a copy, it's pretty similar to the Iyonix one. If anyone is interested in writing a driver for the Omega please get in touch. IanK on 2/8/05 12:35AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

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