Technotrend S2-3200 HDTV-S2

[BGonaSTICK]

This card was launched a few weeks ago, but stock has been short (or maybe totally unavailable?) from what I can make out.

Did anyone manage to snag one yet?

The best value, the right features all in a PCI card. The model TT-budget S2-3200 represents a low-cost reception device for basic applications. It features a complete DVB-S satellite receiver to receive data broadcasts, digital TV as well as radio programs and provides high-speed internet access.

The TT-budget S2-3200, was especially designed to meet the demands of the mass market end consumer for easy of operation and plug & play installation and is a way to access the internet at DVB-S compliant high-speed at the best value available. The incoming DVB-S transport stream is delivered to the PCI bus at a speed of up to 72 Mbps.

An optimized software filter driver manages data processing downstream by filtering. An MPEG2 / MPEG4 software decoder for TV and radio applications is included for reception of digital TV and radio broadcasts. The TV and radio applications include features such as automatic channel parsing and record/playback capabilities.

Pay TV applications can be supported by an optional CI extension. More than one budget card can be installed in one PC to receive various channels simultaneously. An easy-to-use multilingual data management utility is provided to adjust channel and filter settings and to monitor incoming data. For third-party software developers an open API (application programming interface) is available.

Basics

• Low-cost PCI card for Free-TV and data application
• DVB® satellite receiver accordingly to EN 302 307
• Video and Audio decoding via software decoder
• Recording and Play back of TV/Radio programs
• Time shift support
• Teletext decoding by software
• Multicast Management support by NDIS driver
• MPEG2 Transport Stream support: ISO/IEC 13818-1
• DVB-Video/-Audio support: ISO/IEC 13818-2, -3
• DVB-Data support: EN 301 192

RF specification

• Frequency range: 950-2150 MHz
• QPSK demodulation accordingly to EN 302 307
• RF input level: -65 up to –25 dBm
• input connector: IEC F-type female
• LNB control: 14/18V, 22 kHz, Tone Burst, DiSEqC 1.0, max. 400 mA

For DVB-S

• SCPC/MCPC support up to 45 Msymbols/s
• QPSK with supported rates 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/6, 6/7, 7/8
• Viterbi soft decoder rate ½
• outer Reed-Solomon decoder as per DVB-S system
• Up to 60 Mbps channel bit rate

For DVB-S2

• SCPC/MCPC support up to 30 Msymbols/s
• QPSK and 8PSK with supported rates
• 1/4, 1/3, 2/5, 1/2, 3/5, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 8/9
• LDPC and BCH decoder as per DVB-S2 requirements
• Digital Nyquist root filter with 0.20, 0.25, 0.35 roll-off factors
• Up to 90 Mbps channel bit rate

Advanced Functionality

• HDTV support; AC3 5.1 Software decoder
• TV, Radio and data services on notebooks or PC via USB 2.0 interface
• Representation, Record (incl. Timer) and Playback of TV and Radio services
• Operation System support: Windows XP
• Time shift features and record timer
• Extended EPG functionality
• Teletext support
• Automatic Channel Setup using IP multicast group address
• IP-Unicast Transport using dynamic IP address to MAC address mapping
• Support MAC Address Filtering
• Use of up to 255 PID filters
• Download MPEG-2 PES speed up to 90 Mbit/s

Minimum PC requirements

• Pentium III 1GHz
• Supported Operating System: Windows 2000, XP™
• DirectX 9 or higher
• Sound card
• CD-Rom (Driver and Software installation)

For HDTV (1080i / MPEG4 (AVC/H.264) )

3.4 GHz P4 (Single Core with Hyperthreading) or
2.2 GHz AMD 3500+ or
Dual Core P4 D820 / D830 or
Dual Core AMD X2 3800+
with graphics card: ATI X1600/X1800 or NVidia 6600GT/7600GT

Accessoires

• Receiver and CI PCI board (CI is optional) each ca. 120 x 106 x 18 [mm]
• 1 connection flat ribbon cable to link receiver and CI board (optional accessoires)
• Master CD-ROM with driver and application software
• License for MPEG2 and MPEG4 (AVC/H.264) - Software decoder
• Optional Common Interface extension for Pay-TV Standard and Regulation Compliance
• DVB® satellite standard EN 302 307
• MPEG2 Transport Stream support to ISO/IEC 13818-1
• DVB-Video/-Audio support to ISO/IEC 13818-2,-3
• Safety and EMC regulations: EN 60950, EN 55022 and EN 55024

[Analoguesat]

That should work on the TNT (French DTT) DVB-S2 French channels on 5W that are "hidden" to normal domestic receivers.

[Stv]

Ladies and gents,

I have been in discussion with the lads at #linuxtv and it appears that over the last few weeks they have finished a Linux module for their first DVB-S2 card. Although the driver is written for a chipset this is used in the TechnoTrend budget S2-3200.

It sounds pretty exciting but isn't in the vanilla kernel yet (nor for a while I guess), but it sounds like this will be the first card that will be fully supported.

"People who are anxious to buy STB0899 based cards, please do look out for C2L inscribed on the STB0899 chip on their cards. There are different versions of the chip. C1L means it is a version 3.1 of the Silicon Cut, ie Cut 3.1. This version C1L is not very stable in the fact that there are buggy chips with this version and could mean a frontend not locked in many cases, but the issues are different in each case. C2L , ie Cut 3.2 is an updated version which fixes the issues and this chip works without issues. But unfortunately for all the people who tested, we all had C1L based chips only."

Someone at linuxtv had bought from dvbshop.net and it was C2L, so I suspect buying from there would be safe.


http://www.dvbshop.net/product_info....inXP-MCE-.html
http://linuxtv.org/pipermail/linux-d...ry/015585.html

[BGonaSTICK]

Nice post Stv

[Stv]

I found out about some patch files that can be used instead of the snapshot branch today:

http://kromtek.com/dvb/patches/
http://linuxtv.org/pipermail/linux-d...ry/016165.html

The order they are applied is important (ie do 1,2,3 etc) and is done against the v4l-dvb source from mercurial (their source control thing).

Very tempted to buy one but am going to get a cheap set top box for now instead... I know I would ultimately want two tuners which I think might saturate PCI's capabilities - If I wait around a bit maybe a PCI-X card will come out, possibly even with the two tuners on the one card!

[good2talk]

TechnoTrend S2-3600 Review:

http://www.tele-satellite.com/TELE-s...echnotrend.pdf

[merkin51]

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to this so please bear with me, I'm really interested in having a go at getting some HDTV on my PC. I have a dual-core setup with a powerful graphics card and, coupled with a Dell 2005fpw 20" widescreen monitor, hoping I can enjoy some nice FTA HD broadcasts. This USB device looks like it might do the trick, but my main question is are there any FTA HD channels currently on the Sky Digital sattelite that I would be able to pick up with ease (I have Sky+ so still ahve some free connections on my quad-LNB)? Or will I need a need satellite to point at different satellites? Any help appreciated, sorry if this is a daft question

[Gav]

Originally Posted by merkin51

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to this so please bear with me, I'm really interested in having a go at getting some HDTV on my PC. I have a dual-core setup with a powerful graphics card and, coupled with a Dell 2005fpw 20" widescreen monitor, hoping I can enjoy some nice FTA HD broadcasts. This USB device looks like it might do the trick, but my main question is are there any FTA HD channels currently on the Sky Digital sattelite that I would be able to pick up with ease (I have Sky+ so still ahve some free connections on my quad-LNB)? Or will I need a need satellite to point at different satellites? Any help appreciated, sorry if this is a daft question

Hi, Its a PCI card not a USB device & you could pick up BBC HD for free. ITV HD is launching soon so that might be FTA.

If you got a cardsharing solution set up, you could share the card in your Sky + box & view the Pay-To-View channels like Discovery HD. (I think)

[Jimdefruit]

The new HD card is for DVB S2 signals and yes you should be able to pick up quite a few on the Sky satellite. Unfortunately you still need a sky HD decoding card which will not work without a lot of jiggery pokerey.

The BBC HD channel is broadcast in DVB-S and is available on the existing SS2 card but as its a demonstration channel you will get fed up with the programmes which are repeated over and over.

[merkin51]

Originally Posted by Gav

Hi, Its a PCI card not a USB device & you could pick up BBC HD for free. ITV HD is launching soon so that might be FTA.

If you got a cardsharing solution set up, you could share the card in your Sky + box & view the Pay-To-View channels like Discovery HD. (I think)

Sorry, should have made it clear I was referring to the new S2-3600 USB device as linked to in the post before mine... same thinking still applies of course though. So basically, on the Sky satellite, I could pick up the BBC HD trial for free but any anything else needs a Sky HD card? Meaning it'd be a better idea to get hold another dish to align to a satellite with a better selection of FTA HD channels?