UK DVB and SKY TV

[darrenmason]

Totallymaxed - are there any other considerations as to whether your vdr work will apply and all functionality work other than the input being DVB? Australia uses DVB-T (and DVB-S) for free-to-air TV and I am really keen to know whether this will work here, too...

Hi Colin,

I think VDR is a good fit for Australia or anywhere where DVB is the adopted standard for Digital TV. Yes what we are working on will definitely work in Australia :-)

I think it would be a good fit here (Australia), especially after reading how it can adresss multiple channels from a single MUX. I have got MythTV working but I am still not comfortable enough to switch my OzTivo box off. It mainly comes down to reliability - I have had too many times when MythTV has just stopped frozen up. The family won't put up with that.
VDR seems to have a much smaller footprint and therefore should integrate better IMO.

Andrew, A couple of questions for when you get a chance.
1. How would VDR cope with an Analog signal from a PayTV STB. Can it deal with an external guide for the PayTV? and does this integrate in terms of infrared channel changing? (IR Blaster type functionality)
2. In your integrations, is it less obvious that an external application is being used? eg: with MythTV - the MythTV menu system comes up and it looks out of place when launched from linuxMCE. I am not worried by OSD for channel info and program guide etc though.

Regards
Darren

[totallymaxed]

Andrew, A couple of questions for when you get a chance.
1. How would VDR cope with an Analog signal from a PayTV STB. Can it deal with an external guide for the PayTV? and does this integrate in terms of infrared channel changing? (IR Blaster type functionality)
2. In your integrations, is it less obvious that an external application is being used? eg: with MythTV - the MythTV menu system comes up and it looks out of place when launched from linuxMCE. I am not worried by OSD for channel info and program guide etc though.

Regards
Darren

Hi Darren,

VDR has a plugin architecture for adding additional functionality. There are a number of plugins that enable analog TV to be brought into the VDR channel list. You obviously would need a video card such as a PVR150/250 with an analog input (ie you would not use the TV receiver in the card) to grab the output of your PayTV box. VDR will then treat this input as an additional channel in your channel guide. Integrating the external guide data for the external PayTV box can be achieved to through another plugin and some scripts as long as there are open sources for the data (this will depend on your local market). In 'vanilla' VDR installations controlling the external box is pretty easy to achieve using lirc etc however in an lmce installation it is more complex because of the DCErouter and associated scripts but it is possible. Again the setup/control of your PayTV box via IR will need some local config by you as its menus/IR code will probably not be in the system.

In our current lmce-0704/VDR integration when you select TV from the Orbiter UI at your local MD (ie not remotely controlling an Orbiter on another MD) you are instantly taken into the native VDR UI which is very much like a traditional STB and your remote control continues to work as it would in the Orbiter. If you are remotely controlling TV from say a Windows Orbiter or a Nokia 770/800 then you get the Pluto TV UI on the screen of your Orbiter but the VDR UI is still used at the remotely controlled MD. This is how our initial release of the vdr integration will work due to the tight coupling of the VDR on OSD. We are looking at ways to make the integration more seamless but these are not going to be in the first release. Its a trade off but it does make DVB based TV really work well inside LMCE and we think that is a trade off that is acceptable.

By the way you can see our current 'teaser site' here http://www.dianemo.co.uk ... don't forget its aimed at a non-technical audience and it is a teaser not the full site (which will have some technical info for those that want it)

Andrew