Some words about Siemens-DVB card support.         by A'rpi
==========================================

Requirements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Siemens DVB-S card or compatible (Technotrend, Galaxis, Hauppauge, etc)
  See www.linuxtv.org for details and download latest driver there.
- MPlayer-CVS, FFmpeg libavcodec CVS are recommended for speed & postprocessing.
- Fast CPU - at least 1GHz recommended for software transcoding (DivX -> MPEG).


How to enable?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'./configure' should detect it. If it did not, force detection with

    ./configure --enable-dvb

If you have ost headers at a non-standard path, set the path with

   ./configure --with-extraincdir=<your DVB source dir>/ost/include

Then compile and install as usual:

    make
    make install
   

How to use?
~~~~~~~~~~~

Hardware decoding: (play standard MPEG1/2 files)

  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes file.mpg|vob

Software decoding/transcoding anything to MPEG1:

  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vop lavc yourfile.ext
  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vop fame,expand yourfile.ext
  
Note: The DVB card only supports height 288 and 576 for PAL, 240 and 480 for
NTSC. You MUST rescale for other heights by adding 'scale=w:h' to the '-vop'
option, where 'w:h' are the width and height you want. Note that DVB cards accept
various widths, like 720, 704, 640, 512, 480, 352 etc and do hardware scaling in
horizontal direction, so you do not need to scale horizontally in most cases.
For example, for a 512x384 (aspect 4:3) DivX try:

  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vop lavc,scale=512:576

If you have a widescreen movie and you do not want to scale it to full height,
you can use the 'expand=w:h' plugin to add black bands.
For example, to view a 640x384 DivX, try:

  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vop lavc,expand=640:576 file.avi

If your CPU is too slow to view a 720x576 DivX in full size, try to downscale:

  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vop lavc,scale=352:576 file.avi

If it is still slow, try to downscale vertically, too:

  mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vop lavc,scale=352:288 file.avi

Do you want OSD, and subtitles? Use the expand feature of the OSD plugin!
So, instead of 'expand=w:h' or 'expand=w:h:x:y', use 'expand=w:h:x:y:1' (the 5th
parameter ':1' at the end will enable OSD rendering). You may want to move the
image up a bit to get bigger black zone for subtitles. And you may want to move
subtitles up, if they are out of your TV screen, use the '-subpos <0-100>' switch
('-subpos 80' is perfect for me).

In order to play non-25fps movies on a PAL TV or with a slow CPU, add the
'-framedrop' option.


How to keep the aspect ratio for DivX files?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To get the optimal scaling parameters (hardware X scaling, software Y scaling,
while keeping the right aspect ratio), use the new 'dvbscale' plugin:

for  3:4 TV:  -vop lavc,expand=-1:576:-1:-1:1,scale=-1:0,dvbscale
for 16:9 TV:  -vop lavc,expand=-1:576:-1:-1:1,scale=-1:0,dvbscale=1024


Mailing list:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dvb

List language is ENGLISH. Please avoid using German or other languages!
Subscribe, and ask/discuss your problems there.
I will also post feature announcements to this list.


Future plans/TODO:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- display OSD and subtitles using the OSD feature of DVB cards
- better (more fluent) playback of non-25fps movies
- realtime transcoding between mpeg2 <-> mpeg4 (partial decompression)