In order to select between these various stream sources, TSReader uses the concept of a "source module". This is a piece of code that takes the stream from either the hardware, network source or even files and passes it onto the processing code inside TSReader.
We support virtually all Alitronika DVB-ASI input devices using either DVStation 3 or 4 drivers/software. We also support tuners in their DVB-C, DVB-S/S2 and DVB-T/T2 product line using DVStation 3.
Dektec DVB-ASI input cards are supported as well as their network cards (using the normal Windows sockets stack). We also support their QAM tuners such as the DTA-2139 12 channel PCIe card.
Microsoft's Broadcast Device Architecture (commonly known as BDA) supports virtually all PCI, PCIe and USB tuner devices used with Windows for 8VSB, DVB-C, DVB-S/S2, DVB-T/T2 and ISDB-T. We have limited support for certain devices for QAM tuning because this is not standardized in BDA.
TBS makes a wide range of DVB-C/C2, DVB-T/T2, DVB-S/S2/S2X, QAM-B, ISDB-T and 8VSB tuner cards along with a multi-port DVB-ASI input card and the designed-for-TSReader TBS 5590 multi-standard probe.
Sencore's DTU series of professional DVB-C, DVB-T/T2 and 8VSB/QAM receivers are supported by TSReader.
Silicon Dust's series of Ethernet connected tuners support DVB-C, DVB-T/T2, 8VSB, QAM-B and ISDB-T. Their Prime tuner also allows operation with CableCard scrambled networks used in North America. We do not recommend using their Quatro products with TSReader. These devices have four tuners with a 100 Mbps Ethernet interface. While fine for normal television watching applications, TSReader needs the entire transport stream and the data from all four tuners running simultaneously will not fit into 100 Mbps.
Blonder Tongue's MTSA tuner supports DVB-ASI, SMPTE-310M, 8VSB and QAM-B inputs.
Hauppauge makes a wide range of 8VSB, DVB-C, DVB-T/T2, DVB-S/S2 and QAM tuner cards and USB interfaces.
DVEO's PCI and PCIe DVB-ASI and SMPTE-310M cards are supported by TSReader. For historic reasons, these are know as Linear System's cards due to the name of the previous manufacturer.
Stream Labs makes a wide range of DVB-ASI cards.
SAT>IP is a specification from the satellite operator SES that allows DVB-S/S2 signals to be routed over Ethernet rather than RF cables. Many different manufacturers make devices based on the standard. TSReader supports DVB-S/S2 and DVB-C interfaces.
Novra makes a line of satellite and ATSC tuner devices that connect via Ethernet and use the UDP protocol to deliver the transport stream.
Recorded MPEG-2 Transport Stream files can be fed into TSReader. TSReader can adjust the rate flow to match the original Transport Stream rate and can loop files to keep playback continuously running. TSReader supports plain MPEG-2 streams as well as ALPTS compressed transport streams.
Network streams containing MPEG-2 Transport Streams. This includes UDP, RTP and Harmonic RTP (HRTP) encapsulation. The RTP protocols also support SMPTE 2022-4 extensions which remove and re-insert NULL packets. HTTP streaming is also supported with the ability to read plain HTTP or HLS/MPEG-DASH. For simple error free streaming, TCP/IP is also supported and in addition to separate source modules for each of these protocols, TSReader includes a multi-protocol IPTV source module which allows an M3U file to list different streams you may encounter. Multicast UDP/RTP over IPv6 is also supported.
The Airwavz ATSC 3.0 tuner also supports ATSC 1.0 and the source module for it can be downloaded here.