Messages

1

Users / Re: Anything interesting coming out at CES?

« on: January 07, 2010, 11:21:27 pm »

freescale tablet @ $200/£125

http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsarticle&ID=1370004

2

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: HDMI over IP

« on: November 15, 2009, 11:30:02 pm »

ok, i got curious about it, so did some digging, and found this on a faq entry on a distributor site, in case anyone else was interested....
Craig

http://www.hdcable.co.uk/hdmi-over-ip-receiver.html




How it is possible to deliver full 1080p audio/video to multiple screens with "only" a 100BT Ethernet LAN?

The heaviest bandwidth consumer for HD sources currently is Blu-Ray with a maximum bitrate for Audio+Video+Subtitles set at 48Mbits. All other 1080p sources (HD-DVD, Tivo's, Vudu's, Media Center PC's, Gaming Platforms, Digital Signage content devices, etc) come in well below that bitrate. Most of the time even a Blu-Ray movie is not putting out content at this maximum bitrate (30MB-40MB LAN is the typical bandwidth).

Our HDMI over IP units can use up to 50MB LAN bandwidth for sending 1080p to a single receiver, and up to 60MB LAN bandwidth for sending 1080p to multiple receivers (NB the same multicast bandwidth is consumed whether you are sending to 2 or 200 receivers). Most of the time much less bandwidth is needed (especially for Digital Signage content). The ASIC's on the TX/RX units only use compression/decompression to reduce the bandwidth when necessary due to other network traffic, but not if there is sufficient bandwidth available on the LAN to send the full audio/video data stream. While the formal HDMI specification has much more bandwidth defined, that overhead bandwidth is not needed to send perfect 1080p audio/video sources digitally over a 100MB LAN.

While we are not the first company to figure out how to distribute HDMI over IP, all of our competitor’s solutions require expensive Gigabit 1000BT industrial switches. Our HDMI over IP solution works fine on a standard 100BT LAN (works with everyday value commonly found LinkSys and NetGear switchers/routers).

A 1000BT device will cost well over £1000 per screen to implement, while ours have a retail price of just £200 per receiver.

3

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: HDMI over IP

« on: November 15, 2009, 11:12:16 pm »

i really dont understand why they only put 100Mb interfaces into the tx/rx pairs on a new product, with multicast video streaming as its function! talk about strangle a new born

1080P@60fps is about 3Gb, 1080p@24 obviously around half, but thats uncompressed pure data.

so even at a very very basic average level of 10:1 image compression, gigabit ethernet would be more than adequate, especially when using multicast streams and dedicated vlans per group.
vlan per source is a well considered solution to get maximum throughput from a switch, assuming the backplane has the capacity

even higher compression would be possible on some source images, which would make 100Mb sustainable in some circumstances

although, they have used jpeg2000 which encodes every single frame, rather than mpeg4 which encodes a reference frame then a series of motion change updates, to try and maintain a level of output quality

mpeg4 has a lower bandwidth requirement on most streams, but images with lots of changes (fast moving full screen action) will often suffer quality problems

jpeg has a better replay quality with full data for every frame but is more sensitive to bandwidth issues.

obviously the average home user would not have vlan and igmp capable managed Gigabit switches to make best use of the technology, but why throttle the product from day one?

they have obviously gambled on predicted higher compression ratios to support average home user hardware, which is a shame.

hadnt considered these options previously, but am going to search for some other vendors now they are breaking onto the market with 1080p

craig

4

Marketplace / Re: Complete Multi room Dianemo/LinuxMCE System

« on: October 07, 2009, 10:54:52 pm »

is this all still available or have you sold it ?
PM mailbox is full so i presume you had lots of interest...

5

Users / Re: dce routing correctly, devices not acting on command

« on: February 22, 2008, 01:14:16 pm »

many thanks Andrew.
i guess a lot of the "features" that i would consider required in VDR support may already be addressed, so i will await the updated release.
Craig

6

Users / dce routing correctly, devices not acting on command

« on: February 22, 2008, 02:05:10 am »

Hi,
am trying to get a vista rc6 mce remote working with vdr/linuxmce.

the home button calls the onscreen orbiter menu, and the cursor keys move and select correctly on the UI.

but, the channel and volume buttons do not act on vdr.
some buttons do work, like the tv selector, the recording guide, but the numeric buttons do not, nor the colour shortcuts.

i have looked at the lircd.conf and vdr/remote.conf and cant really understand the correlation.

i have tailed the dcerouter.log and 31_LIRC log and can see the button press going from the remote, and being presented to vdr device, but nothing happens, then dcerouter tries other devices until it gives up.

i have tried looking through the devices, commands and other stuff on the admin interface, and cant really see how that works either. it does seem overly complicated in there!

can anyone offer me some advice on where to look now?

thanks and regards,
Craig

7

Users / Re: vdr lost t-500 - no tv option

« on: February 08, 2008, 12:49:06 pm »

Hi Colin,
yes, the xorg.conf is my next area of focus to try and sort it out.

ok, tv is samsung 42" rear projection 100hz, not HD. connected via scart, but listed as composite. i have been using both connections, scart to scart and composite to composite, i have not tried the component connection yet.

the contrast or focus is blurred with the white on black scheme, and the font size makes multi line buttons crop the second line. But that is all fairly usable.

the thing that is not very usable is the MCE launch manager and kde desktop in general, especially the web admin interface. it is just too difficult to make out the characters.

i am hoping that tweaks to xorg.conf will help with this issue.
I am also hoping that these tweaks will mean that my tv display will fill the screen and not be stuck at letterbox format. The UI uses the full screen, so i am not sure if it is a VDR config issue or not ?

Regards,
Craig

8

Users / vdr lost t-500 - no tv option

« on: February 08, 2008, 12:53:49 am »

Hi,

i have installed 710b3 onto a msi live, amd64, nvidia 6150, with T-500 card as hybrid.

from initial install, i could not get tv to work, but eventually found the details about w_scan and created a basic channels.conf, uploaded it and got a live stream and was able to watch tv.
however, the channel guide was not correct for how the channels were actually labelled, the guide still showed the pre-installed german version, but flicking through the channels showed them correctly.

but, during my using of the system, i removed the UI2 orbiter, and got dumped back to UI1. over zealous removing of the multiple entries from my unsupported n95......
i went through the setup wizard and got back to UI2, but now the T-500 is not visible to VDR. I dont get the TV option on the menu at all.

i notice that there are no pipes or anything like that defined which is what i think the problem is, but looking through the forum i only see mention that they are created automatically, and no instructions on creating them manually to suit this card.

i have tried to do this, but i seem to go round in circles.

i have noticed that there is an /var/cache/cdr/epg.data file that has been created since i have been browsing around the system, moving the channels.conf file wherever i find one....
the epg is updated with current information, so i know the card must be working and receiving signal, but i cannot get it to show on the UI to select.

i have manually added the pvr-500 tuner1 and tuner2 devices back to the core/hybrid md, and now i am stuck..

i think i have searched the forums to death trying to make sure i have got as much done as i can until this point, so any help would be appreciated, cheers.

#update# ok, the only thing i forgot to do was regenerate the Orbiter for core/hybrid which has given me my TV option back 
i have also removed the pvr-500 tuners from the hybrid/core in admin page, as i assume they are not used for my dvb card.... therefore the pipes were a non issue.... 


overall, i have mixed feelings at the moment regarding linuxmce, as i was hoping it would be a little more painless to install and configure than it actually was, however i want to stick with it until i know i have done all i can to make it work for me.
having been out of the "hands on" environment for a couple of years, all of the old frustrations have come flooding back when working at the bleeding edge :-)
however, once i am up to speed, i hope to contribute in some way

the community certainly seems dedicated and helpful, which is very encouraging, and i have noticed big advancements between releases while reading through the forums. well done to the developers so far!

however, i am a little disappointed in the quality of output to my tv, as the kde desktop and admin console are pretty much unreadable, and i have had to disable to firewall and ssh & www in externally to get a readable interface to troubleshoot with.
the bad quality extends to the UI interface looking clunky, or as my wife put it "a bit 80's atari", but i presume that will be some X config file manipulation when i have a spare few hours to kill.....

#update# i downloaded the vdradmin utility as detailed elsewhere, and that is much more friendly than trying to use my keyboard for the epg, but i appreciate that the vdr interface is still "work in progress"

how do i get the tv image to fill my 16:9 widescreen, rather than letterbox format, of varying heights, depending on the channel?

regards,
Craig