The requirements in this section apply for any type of system that implements a digital broadcast subsystem, whether receiving satellite, cable, or terrestrial broadcasts. Such capabilities are recommended but not required for all PC 98 system types.
Notice that digital broadcast and satellite support under PC 98 includes all the requirements for hardware decoder capabilities and driver support as defined in this chapter, plus support for the DirectX foundation class, as defined in the Windows NT 5.0 DDK.
Important: A digital broadcast receiver must meet the PC 98 requirements for bus mastering. A video port is also highly recommended for all implementations, as defined in the “System Requirements for Video and Broadcast Components” section earlier in this chapter.
29. Digital broadcast card can receive all video, audio, data, and other streams
Required
This can be a receiver for cable or broadcast DTV. The receiver card must be installed on a PCI or IEEE 1394 bus and must provide data tuning, conditional access, de-multiplexing, and other network-specific functions.
The receiver card must be able to receive both normal broadcast network–related information, such as MPEG video, audio, and program guide information, as well as data-stream information.
30. Digital broadcast card can receive full bandwidth from each frequency
Required
The receiver card must be able to receive from and send to the host all information transmitted on any tuner or transponder frequency. For example, if each satellite system transponder has 30 Mb/s of bandwidth, a single-tuner receiver card should be able to transfer all 30 Mb/s of data to the host.
31. Digital broadcast card can receive a minimum of eight simultaneous streams
Required
Recommended: More than eight simultaneous streams.
The receiver card must be able to simultaneously receive and send a minimum of eight streams to the PC on the same carrier frequency. These streams can be of any type, such as eight simultaneous data streams.
These streams, often called service channel IDs (SCIDs) or program IDs (PIDs), are subdivisions of bandwidth on a single tuner frequency.
32. System includes multiple digital broadcast tuner cards
Recommended
The device can also simultaneously receive two or more frequencies. The ability to tune to multiple frequencies results in better concurrent data and video operation. With two tuners, the viewer could watch a video on one frequency and download web pages on the other. This also enables picture-in-picture or multiple data streams on different channels or transponders.
33. Digital broadcast card provides support for legacy conditional access
Required
Cards must support conditional access mechanisms for any subscriptions, pay-per-view events, and other network-specific access-control mechanisms available on the broadcast services for which they are designed.
In many cases, this is a removable smart card that has been paired with code and run on a secure processor on the card.
34. Digital broadcast card provides signal quality and other diagnostic information
Required
The card must be able to self-test and provide diagnostic information such as signal strength, error rate, cable short-circuit events, and the status of any input fuse or circuit breaker. Because these cards are connected to public networks, these capabilities are essential to the carriers who need to diagnose problems in the system.
35. Digital broadcast card supports general-purpose data cryptography
Recommended
The digital broadcast receiver card must be able to provide triple data encryption standard (DES) hardware—or single-DES when restricted by export laws—and RSA public-key secure decryption hardware. Hardware anti-tampering countermeasures must be implemented. This capability is separate from and completely independent of other digital broadcast capabilities.
To allow secure broadcasting of bulk-encrypted data, a secure decryption engine must be implemented in the hardware. This engine must have fast key loading, low data latency, and high data throughput in order to support high-speed data networks.
All DES and RSA private keys must be stored in protected RAM and ROM, respectively, within the device so that it cannot be easily read using physical means. The manufacturer also must sign the RSA public keys, and the RSA signature must be stored within the decryption hardware. Furthermore, this triple-DES decryption hardware must be able to decrypt data at the full rate that a stream can be acquired by broadcast receiver hardware.
36. Digital broadcast card supports substream filtering
Required
The digital broadcast receiver card must be able to filter out unneeded data substreams (sometimes called subSCIDs or subPIDs) in order to reduce bus activity and CPU usage. Substreams allow data broadcasters to dynamically subdivide their broadcast bandwidth among many data streams of differing size.
Substream filtering lets the host specify which substreams it wants to receive and which should be ignored. This avoids unnecessary bus utilization for data streams that will be discarded by the host software.
37. ATSC DTV tuner is fully implemented
Required
If an ATSC DTV tuner is implemented, it must meet the requirements for video and audio compression, packetized data transport structure, and modulation and transmission system as specified in ATSC Digital Television Standard (A/53), available at http://atsc.org/.
The tuner should be the same as the analog television tuner for VHF/UHF reception.
38. Stream splitting is supported using DirectShow filters
Recommended
If a hardware solution is implemented, it must be possible to read all data input. Stream splitting can be done on the host CPU using DirectShow filters in the same manner as support is implemented for DVD-Video input data streams.
For current information about the software support planned for this capability, see the related DTV white papers at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/tv/.
39. MPEG-2 decoder and video port support ATSC DTV standard
Required
In a system that supports DTV reception, both the MPEG-2 decoder and the video port must support the final format specifications for layered ATSC DTV in ATSC Digital Television Standard (A/53). The estimated minimum is 2xML resolutions and bit rates, which are proposed as 704 × 480 with a 15 Mb/s input bit rate and a 20 million pixels per second output rate. For current format specifications, see the related white papers on the web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/tv/.
Formats for this requirement depend on the specific geographical area, and therefore include ATSC 8-Vestigial Side Band (8-VSB), Digital Video Broadcast (DVB), or Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).
This requirement is in addition to the PC 98 requirements for MPEG-2 hardware and playback capabilities defined in the “MPEG-2 Playback Requirements” section earlier in this chapter.
Notice that this requirement is also in addition to the PC 98 requirements for video ports as defined in the “Graphics Adapters” chapter in Part 4 of this guide. As with all PC 98 components, compliance testing will begin when all related components are generally available.