PC-to-DVB-S (satellite)

General description

This PCI-based digital satellite receiver, built around the SAA7146A PCI bridge, keeps system costs to a minimum by using software for transport stream demultiplexing and the host CPU for MPEG decoding.

Blockdiagrams

Key features

• PCI-based architecture
• PCI bridge supports DVB-S satellite reception in PCI-based architecture
• BDA (Broadcast Driver Architecture)-compliant tuner and capture drivers
• Supports MPEG-2 audio/video software data decoding
• Optional support for conditional access using Common Interface (CI) chips
• Supports Microsoft BDA (as included in DirectX8)
• Supports third-party digital broadcast application software
• DVB-S compliant multimedia tuner options
• Alps BSRV2
• Alps BSRU6
• Philips SUI1200
• SAA7146A PCI bridge
• Multiple DMA channels
• Bi-directional audio/video capture and playback
• Dual high-performance video scalers
• Binary radio scaler (BRS)
• PCI 2.1-compatible bus interface
• Camma correction
• Pixel dithering for low-resolution video output

Background information

The design requires only two key components, the DVB-S front-end and the SAA7146A PCI bridge. Satellite channel decoding is provided by a DVB-S compliant multimedia media tuner (Philips SU1200, Alps BSRV2, or Alps BSRU6).

The highly integrated PCI bridge SAA7146A includes multiple DMA channels, bi-directional audio/video capture and playback, and dual high-performance scalers. The industry standard for PCI-based multimedia upgrades, the SAA7146A allows for a multitude of feature enhancements above and beyond the core DVB-S reception capability of the design, allowing maximum reuse of software. Possible options for the SAA7146A include video editing, video conferencing, analog TV in a PC, and analog video capture.

The design works with NXP's BDA-compliant tuner and capture drivers that match perfectly with third-party application software and MPEG decode/demux filters, and Microsoft BDA components to form a complete system solution.