News & Updates 2012

DekTec is proud to announce the release of the DTA-2138, a compact DVB-C2 / DVB-T2 receiver for VHF and UHF band. The form factor is a short low-profile PCI Express card.

The DTA-2138 supports reception of single and multiple PLP, SISO and MISO signals. Next to DVB-C2 and DVB-T2, the card still supports the first generation DVB-C and DVB-T standards.

The DTA-2138 enables monitoring of RF-parameters including RF-level, MER and bit error rates, as well as monitoring of the L1 parameters. The hardware-based demodulator consumes no CPU load. The DTA-2138 is fully supported by the free SDK (DTAPI) which is available for Windows and Linux.

Altogether its features make the DTA-2138 an excellent choice for deployment in DVB-C2 and DVB-T2 monitoring and receiving applications. DekTec has limited stock of the DTA-2138.

At IBC 2012, DekTec introduces a Transport Stream SDK that enables developers to rapidly integrate Transport Stream analysis into their applications. Known as DTAPI-TS, it can be used to retrieve information about services, PIDs and tables from a Transport Stream. The SDK package consists of a C++ library, documentation and examples.

Certain analysis functions such as bitrate measurement, continuity count errors and scrambling status operate at transport-packet level. Other functions, such as establishing the video resolution, are implemented by partly decoding elementary streams and system-information tables. A full PCR analysis module is included, too. Time- or memory intensive functionality can be turned off in case you don’t need it.

The C++ library is easy to use by calling the ‘NewPacket’ function for every new transport packet that becomes available. After each packet, DTAPI-TS updates the lists of services, PIDs and tables. Callbacks can be registered for events like ‘table has changed’, ‘new PES packet is available’ and more.

DTAPI-TS supports DVB-SI and ATSC PSIP and is available for Windows and Linux. The SDK is optimized for real time operation, but it can be used for offline analysis as well. The DTAPI-TS library can be considered a higher layer on top of the DTAPI library for interacting with any DekTec I/O adapter.

A typical use case of DTAPI-TS is the Transport Stream information window in StreamXpress, DekTec’s acclaimed player application. This window shows general information about services, PIDs and tables, with additional details per PID such as elementary stream type, video standard, table name and more.

At a price of €748 for a developer seat and no run-time royalties required, DTAPI-TS won’t break the bank. Packed with tons of functionality it offers true value for money. Application writers can focus on building their core application, leaving the ‘plumbing’ to DTAPI-TS. A site license is available at about €4k.

Today DekTec releases a significant update for the Xpect ^® 24/7 Transport-Stream monitoring software. The most distinct new feature is a mosaic of decoded video, audio bars and monitoring status. This impressive multi viewer is fully integrated with the Xpect monitoring core and uses graphic-card acceleration for efficient MPEG-2 and AVC decoding.

Audio bars are visualized using loudness indicators compliant to EBU R128. The mosaic screen(s) can be remotely configured and the layout is fully customisable using ‘drag and drop’. An XML template can be used to change size and position of each display element, as well as colours, text font, etc. A standard AMD graphics card is used to output the mosaic using HDMI, DVI or xVGA.

Configuring Xpect 2.0 is much handier than before with the greatly improved Configuration Tool. You can try new configurations on the fly, just by pressing 'Commit'. It's easy to access the configuration of each monitored input  and applying it to multiple inputs at once. The backup functions enable saving and restoring the entire Xpect configuration in one go.

DekTec also has made some improvements “under the hood”, for example adding support for the DTE-3120 and DTE-3137 network adapters and a couple of bug fixes.

If you would like to evaluate Xpect, don’t hesitate to contact your local distributor or drop us an email at info@dektec.com.

Today DekTec is releasing version 4 of its Windows and Linux drivers for the DTA-, DTU- and DTE-series of PCI, PCI Express, USB and IP devices. Along with the new driver comes a new version of the user-space C++ API: DTAPI v5. It must be noted upfront that the new release is not backwards compatible with older versions of driver and DTAPI. Furthermore DTA-110T is not supported.

Superficially this is a minor update with few user-level enhancements. Below the surface, however, the driver and DTAPI have been rebuilt from the ground up based on an entirely new architecture. The Linux and Windows versions now share a common code base, which means we will be able to release drivers for new DekTec devices simultaneously on Windows and Linux. Common source code is beneficial for overall quality too: Bugs found and fixed on one OS will (in most cases) automatically be fixed for the other OS as well.

The driver and DTAPI have grown organically for 10 years into a complex piece of code with hard-to-oversee dependencies. This made the refactoring of the driver and DTAPI code a necessity, in order to keep the code maintainable, to integrate new DekTec devices and to prepare for new features. We are proud of the new ‘clean’ architecture which we are convinced will be a solid base for the next 10 years.

We have taken the opportunity to clean up the public interface of DTAPI, too, but for the largest part the new DTAPI interface is still compatible with the previous version. The number of changes needed for an existing application to support the new DTAPI is minimal for most applications.

The low-level interface between DTAPI and the drivers has however undergone significant changes and as a result DTAPI v5 is not backwards compatible with drivers prior to version 4. Vice versa, driver v4 does not support DTAPI versions prior to v5. The consequence of this is that applications compiled with the old DTAPI will not work with the new driver and therefore we are today also releasing updates for all our applications.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Running ‘old’ applications and ‘new’ applications together on one PC is not possible, because each needs a different driver version. For example, if you install the new StreamXpress, the old DtInfo will not run any more.

Before upgrading, please check our website to ensure that the DekTec applications that you want to use are actually available for download. The following applications are not yet available with the new driver: DtEncode, RFXpert, Xpect and the DirectShow filters. These applications will become available on the website end of May or beginning of June.

The first DVB-C2 plug fest was hosted by Kabel Deutschland in Berlin from 27th to 29th February 2012. The purpose of this plug fest was to test the interoperability between DVB-C2 modulators and demodulators from several manufacturers.

DekTec participated with its DTA-2111 multi-standard VHF/UHF modulator with DVB-C2 signal generator software (DTC-379 C2Xpress). The architecture of the DTA-2111 uses floating point computations and digital upconversion, resulting in excellent signal quality up to 4096-QAM.
C2Xpress supports the generation of multi-PLP and multi data-slice signals, with full control over all C2 parameters. At the plug fest, the combination of DTA-2111 and C2Xpress stood out for the high signal quality and completeness (all DVB-C2 features are supported).

The DVB-T2 Lite plug fest was helt in Conflans Sainte-Honorine, France, from 5th to 7th March 2012. It provided the opportunity to test the interoperability between gateways, modulators and receivers using the new T2-Lite profile. This profile was introduced in DVB-T2 version 1.3.1 to support mobile and portable TV and to reduce implementation costs.

In the T2-Lite plug fest DekTec demonstrated that its set of tools for the generation, reception and analysis of DVB-T2 signals is unique in its class. The DVB-T2 signal generator software (DTC-378 T2Xpress) fully complied with DVB-T2 version 1.3.1 and successfully showed the generation of multi-profile streams where a T2-Lite profile signal is combined with a conventional DVB-T2 signal (T2-Base profile) in a single RF-channel.

The DVB-T2 Receiver and Analyser (DTC-342 T2Xpert) proved to be an excellent tool for the reception and analysis of T2-Base, T2-Lite and multi-profile DVB-T2 signals.

The DTA-2137 satellite receiver card now supports DVB-S2 baseband frames (BBFRAMEs) in three ways:
 -  Read BBFRAMEs in your application using DTAPI;
 -  Loop complete BBFRAMEs packaged in L.3 frames to one of the ASI ports;
 -  Select a specific TS from the BBFRAMEs and loop it to one of the ASI ports.

This new feature adds the capability to receive Generic Streams, next to standard Transport Streams. BBFRAMEs enable you to receive interactive services that use ACM (Adaptive Code Modulation). It even allows you to build VCM (Variable Code Modulation) systems. The diagram below shows how BBFRAMEs can be processed in a custom application.

The BBFRAMEs are packaged in L.3 frames, so that stream type, C/N ratio, frame counter and MODCOD (constellation and code rate) are available in the stream. Reading this information from the stream is more efficient and convenient than polling the demodulator board.

You can read more about receiving BBFRAMEs in application note DT-AN-2137-1.

Support of BBFRAMEs is implemented in DTA-2137 firmware version 5. If your DTA-2137 has an older firmware version, you can freely upgrade to firmware version v5 by downloading the latest version of DtInfo and pressing the update button. The latest version of the DekTec SDK (DTAPI) can be downloaded from here.

DekTec is proud to announce the release of its next-generation HD-SDI product, the DTA-2152, a low-profile PCI Express card with two HD-SDI ports and analogue genlock. Both ports are software programmable as either HD-SDI input or output, so the board can function as dual input, input+output or dual output card. The analogue sync port accepts bi- and tri-level genlock sources. The board supports HD 720p and 1080i as well as SD signals for all common frame rates including 23.98 and 59.94Hz.

The DTA-2152 is built around a radically new hardware architecture. The onboard memory is organized in a matrix of frame buffers, a row per input and a column per instance of time. Each line of each frame is directly and randomly accessible. Synchronization of multiple input streams is straightforward because frames with the same arrival time are stored in the same column. The new architecture is built for speed and ease of use and minimizes the required PCI Express bandwidth and CPU processing power.

The new Matrix API complements the hardware architecture, so that you can conveniently utilize its power. The API provides functions to read or write individual lines, the full frame or scaled video. Other functions let you access all of HANC and VANC with support for embedding and de-embedding up to 16 channels of audio.

All of the classes and functions are integrated tightly into DekTec's highly praised main API, the DTAPI. For current DTAPI users the new Matrix API is an extension of the current API making the migration to HD-SDI and the new API an easy and painless task, while interoperability with other DekTec devices is guaranteed.

The DTA-2152 is the first in a series of HD products to be introduced soon. DekTec’s HD products and the Matrix API are aimed to make working with HD signals significantly easier and more stable than it was in the past. You can concentrate on writing your application logic, while all the plumbing and synchronization is taken care of by the Matrix API.

The DTA-2152 is shipping in quantities now and the Matrix API can be downloaded from our website as part of the Windows SDK