Hi Mark,
Well like you were at one time, I am still new to this hobby, and I am doing much of what you were doing. Trying out all the apps to find the one that fits for me and what I want to do. I paid the money to get the Pro version of DVBViewer just so I could see all that it had to offer.
To get the LAN streaming, I tuned in a channel. I wanted to see how much resourses it would use, so I chose a C-Band HD Movie and tuned it in. I clicked on the pull-down menu for plugins, and went in to configure the multi-cast plugin.
In the first tab is where the network stuff is. I first clicked on the Uni-Cast, and set the IP Address to my network (192.168.100.xxx), clicked on active, and tried it from another computer and nothing.
I went back into the configuration, and clicked on the multi-cast on the right side of the tab. That is the part that I was fearful of. The directions said to not change the multi-cast IP Address or the subnet address. I think the screens in the newer versions don't match the manual. I changed the top line from 0.0.0.0 to my address above (192.168.100.xxx), clicked on ok, and could tell right away that it had started doing something. The video got a little choppy for a bit, and then smoothed back out. You don't have to do anything else as far as configuration.
I went to my other computer, and fired up VLC and told it to open network stream. Then clicked on UDP/RDT multicast and typed in the 224.0.0.0 and port 2345, clicked ok, and boom. It worked!!
As far as I know, it broadcasts the same thing that it receives. The screen came up in a full-screen window at 1024x768. The picture looked great.
The host machine runs about 50% CPU usage on that channel with elecard. When I started the broadcast, the usage went up about 5-10%. It didn't seem to bother my network which is just inexpensive switches, some under $50.00, and CAT5 cabling and 10/100 NICs etc. It is kind of strange, the host machine has a few hesitations when broadcasting, but the client is smooth as silk. I need to up the memory on the main machine from 512 to 1 gig of ram.
DVBViewer is the only app so far that allows me to enter a channel manually with just frequency, SR, and PIDs and it displays the channel. I think TSReader would too, but I don't want to chunk out the money for it right now. I am hoping DVBDream will too when they get the new channel editor finished. I like that program very much too.
I tried out Kaffeine and Mythtv on Linux last week. The latest version of Kaffeine is the only version that supports C-Band, and has to be compiled from source. It is going to be pretty nice, in another 6 or 8 months of developement. I couldn't get Mythtv to initialize my SkyStar2 card. It recognized it, but wouldn't activate it.
I want to thank you and all the others who have paved the way for DVB PCI cards in this section of the forum. I have read most of what you and all the others have written, and found it to be very helpful.
