Mpeg-4

actually, no.
no, there is no SW and there will almost never ever be any SW to play mpg4 directly on the Box and
no, you do not have to throw your box in any lake because of this.

mpg4 is, by the way, no new standard at all and I store my movies since years in DivX or Xvid, but I do not play them on the Box.
Would I want to do so, I would have to let a PC do the conversion.
Dreambox is build to do one single type of movie, just mpg2 and it also can handle a certain kind of mpg1 too. That is done via hardware solution, there is one decoder chip responsible for that. Because the used processor is weak, the ammount of used memory is small, there will be no chance to let any SW decode mpg4 or whatever fast enough to view the results on screen. All decoding is done by the one decoder chip and this is restricted to the build in codecs.
So, there is only one solution: VLC
VLC is a client server model movie player and it can decode and transfer movies to different codecs. You would have to install the VLC (don't worry, it is called C for Client but it runs as server too) on a PC and let this do the conversion from mpg4 into dreambox format, sending the result as stream in your network and thus, being able to watch this either from other PCs or dreamboxes. There is even a plugin available for the dreambox that enables you to control the VLC on the PC over network with your remote control for the box.

Zitat

Originally posted by pit234a
actually, no.
no, there is no SW and there will almost never ever be any SW to play mpg4 directly on the Box and
no, you do not have to throw your box in any lake because of this.

mpg4 is, by the way, no new standard at all and I store my movies since years in DivX or Xvid, but I do not play them on the Box.
Would I want to do so, I would have to let a PC do the conversion.
Dreambox is build to do one single type of movie, just mpg2 and it also can handle a certain kind of mpg1 too. That is done via hardware solution, there is one decoder chip responsible for that. Because the used processor is weak, the ammount of used memory is small, there will be no chance to let any SW decode mpg4 or whatever fast enough to view the results on screen. All decoding is done by the one decoder chip and this is restricted to the build in codecs.
So, there is only one solution: VLC
VLC is a client server model movie player and it can decode and transfer movies to different codecs. You would have to install the VLC (don't worry, it is called C for Client but it runs as server too) on a PC and let this do the conversion from mpg4 into dreambox format, sending the result as stream in your network and thus, being able to watch this either from other PCs or dreamboxes. There is even a plugin available for the dreambox that enables you to control the VLC on the PC over network with your remote control for the box.

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But How is it. Is there any provider sending DVB-S MPEG4. Usually HDTV transmittings are coded by MPEG4 and they are modulated 8-PSK. And Dreamboxes (excluding forcoming DM8000) are equipped by QPSK (DVB-S) demodulators.

If you downstream from dreambox Mpeg 4 Stream to your PC is it possible by VLC to upstream it back to dreambox after MPEG 4 decoding? Bit rate is very high after MPEG4 decoding

I don't know enough about hdtv and streaming and do not use VLC myself to give any competent answer, but, I don't believe that this streaming from and back to the box can be done simultanously. Just network traffic would be to high for DM implantet network cards in my oppinion..
But given a file is stored in mpg4 (I take this the same as what I do with Xvid4) it is no problem (I tested this) to produce a stream with VLC on a PC that could be seen on a Dreambox. However, never in full hdtv format (of course). My Xvids are coded down from mpg2, actually formas Dreambox files and I transformed them because my hard drives was not large enough to host a collection of mpg2 coded movies, not to realize higher quallity with high resolution and bitrates.
In every case, what VLC delivers is a Dreambox-formated stream, so, bitrate and resolution are, what Dreambox want to see and calculation is done on PC-side. There it is: the faster, the better. My test once was done with 2.4GHz Intel P4 and 512MB Ram on a GNU/Linux with one older Version of VLC and that worked fine, now I work on dual P3 750MHz and doubt it could handle the transformation fast enough, but never had tried it. (meanwhile I have one DVD-Player that can play those Xvid movies directly from the external USB-drive they are on, so that is much easier for me then using VLC over the network).
I remember some articles times ago about DM7000 and hdtv and some tricks that could be done, but since it is definitively not released hdtv ready, it should not be considered so.