Digital TV live test channels revealed

RoganDawes said:
Not so. You can view it with pretty much any DVB-T receiver on your PC, so there is nothing particularly special about the transmission. It MAY be that you can't just get a UK FTA receiver and use that, but I suspect that that may be because SA is standardising on H264 encoding, rather than MPEG2 (which is a good thing, IMO).

But any sufficiently standards-compatible TV or receiver should be able to cope with the H264 encoded streams just fine. e.g. if they can play H264 encoded media from a USB storage device, I would expect it to do just fine with H264 over DVB-T, too.
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Guess you're right for now but won't they be encrypting the signal down the line?
 
acidb said:
Guess you're right for now but won't they be encrypting the signal down the line?
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Obviously the Mnet channels are encrypted, using the same Irdeto2 as on the DVB-S transmissions, yes. If you want to get access to those channels, you'll need a decoder (or dive deep into the murky world of softcams).

The SABC channels are not currently encrypted, and I don't really believe that they will be, since the trial has started, with real hardware. Adding encryption to their streams will negate any of the testing that they have already done to that point.
 
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RoganDawes said:
Obviously the Mnet channels are encrypted, using the same Irdeto2 as on the DVB-S transmissions, yes. If you want to get access to those channels, you'll need a decoder (or dive deep into the murky world of softcams).

The SABC channels are not currently encrypted, and I don't really believe that they will be, since the trial has started, with real hardware. Adding encryption to their streams will negate any of the testing that they have already done to that point.
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Makes sense, thanks
 
Just read that they'll be using Nagravision to encrypt the signal, so not really FTA now is it?
 
Ragman said:
Have been watching DVB-T for a while now using an internal tuner.
the tuner was sommer a cheapy I got for like R300.
Works great for recording.
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Can you use a normal antennae? or do you need a new one. I have a Haupauge Tuner that has a Digital in and I could use that in the mean time.
 
Regretfully still nothing amongst that "bouquet" which would make me watch any of it - and yet more reason why I shouldn't be paying the mandatory licence :(
 
Can you pick any of these new channels up with a dstv decoder? Can it be tuned in?
What will I need to watch it using my pc`s tv card?
 
quik1 said:
Can you pick any of these new channels up with a dstv decoder? Can it be tuned in?
What will I need to watch it using my pc`s tv card?
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Your DSTV decoder is a DVB-S decoder (S==Satellite). This article is about DVB-T (T==Terrestrial).

Your PC's TV card is most likely a plain old analogue receiver, which will not be able to receive DVB-T broadcasts. Obviously, check the details of your particular receiver, though, as it MAY support DVB-T as well. Most likely you would not need anything else if your receiver does support DVB-T, although it depends on the antennae that you are plugging your receiver into (bunny ears, vs on the roof, or little vertical antennae).
 
I have a DVB-T TV tuner in my pc. What kind of antenna do i need?

Another thing. There is 2 places where i can plug in an antenna. One looks like the normal ones like on the back of a tv and the other looks the same, but it has threads on like you can screw the antenna in (like on the dstv decoders i suppose) Which socket do i use?
 
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RoganDawes said:
I have a box (part of the Mnet DTT trial), and it works reasonably well. A couple of things get irritating, though:

  1. The picture goes for a ball of poo when it rains. I'm sure all of you DSTV subscribers are used to it, as it is inevitable with dropouts of a digital signal, but as an analogue-only user up till now, it's bloody annoying
  2. Sometimes the picture goes black and white only, regardless of which channel I'm watching. I have to turn the decoder off to get it to come right again.

The other thing is that some of the channels that they mention in the article are tagged as "Not available on your decoder", or similar (only in the SABC/FTA bouquet).
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hOW do you get onto this trial?
 
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