Re: [Bdadev-discuss] Webpage and binary driver

[Jani A. <ja...@ka...>]

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Robert Schlabbach wrote:

> From: "John Adcock" <Jo...@ad...>
> > I'm not quite as pessimistic as Robert on what's there but I agree
> > with the overall sentiment that there is a lot of work to do.
>
> The problem with Microsoft's (actually Intel's) BDA TIF is that it has no
> means of caching anything at all - every time you turn it on _or even
> change the multiplex_, it first has to receive all the necessary DVB SI
> tables before it can tune in to any service - and that can take up to 30
> seconds. 30 seconds to switch the station is not bearable, IMHO. And AFAIK
> there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, as there is no means to
> pass it the full information it needs - it will only take the tables from
> the live data stream, and no way other.

That's incredibly stupid, if that's how it really works. And I thought the
Technotrend's TV app was slow on channel switching...

> Another thing is the Network Provider, which IMHO has an architectural
> problem: It can (AFAIK) tune only into exactly _one_ service at a time.
> Unfortunately, Teletext is always a _separate_ service, and not a component
> of a TV service. Thus, you could only either have TV and no Teletext, or
> Teletext and no TV. Stupid, eh?

How about EPG, is it part of the TV service, or a separate service? I'd
guess it's part of the TV feed, but knowing Microsoft's style of doing
things, everything's possible...

> I think one would have to implement a completely new Network Provider,
> possibly even with a new interface, that allows tuning into several
> services on the same multiplex at once. At least 3 simultaneous services
> should be possible: TV, Teletext and IP.

Is there any good documentation available of NP's internal workings?

Some kind of dumper filter is needed for recording anyway, but that should
be easy to implement and plug into graph before MPEG-2
splitter/demultiplexer, or after that and create AVI with MPEG-2
audio/video content.

Subtitles might be quite interesting to implement, at least for
recordings. Those could be saved on a separate file as .srt or something
similar, and actually that looks like the only way, otherwise one must
encode the audio and video again with subtitles "burned" into the
picture and then save that stream to disk...

Another thing is broadcasts with multiple audio streams, those and
subtitles are videly used here in Finland...

- Jani