HDTV PC Capture Solutions? 291
Akai asks: "With HDTV DVR's costing upwards of a thousand US dollars or more, I was looking for a HiDef capture card that would work with Linux and an external HD receiver.
The pchdtv card looks nice but it's RF input only for HiDef content, and only supports OTA at this point.
Both DirecTV and DishNetwork HD STBs can be hacked with FireWire ports, but it's not cheap, so I was trying to find a capture card with either DVI or Component inputs, or a converter to take either of those to FireWire. The old Dish Network model 5000 receivers had an option to output HDTV RF but they are no longer compatible with Dish's current HDTV broadcasts.
Google has not been helpful in this regard, and all I've found is professional (>$2000US) format conversion gear.
Is there a PC (hopefully Linux) based video capture solution that can capture the output of a cable of DBS STB (RGBA, DVI, or Component out) without a significant loss of image fidelity?"
Chances are... (Score:2, Informative)
Never mind about the chip (Score:2)
One word (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One word (Score:2)
Re:One word (Score:2, Funny)
-- Linus T Farnsworth
Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
I was surprised to discover that, as of 7PM CST, last night's show (which would not be seen here for another hour) had been posted 11 hours earlier, most likely from an HD capture in euroupe. So, I got both shows. While I was at it I also grabbed the last couple Enterprise eps (620x320-ish avi), but I'm sure everyone here already knows about those.
If I had been on a "real" computer instead of my underpowered laptop, I could have watched last night's west wing (hi-def cap, but 480x480 svcd) an hour before it even aired in the US. I thought about getting a tuner, too - but why bother to do it myself when I can get it from someone else even quicker?
Re:One word (Score:2)
Re:One word (Score:2)
Cable (Score:5, Informative)
It's $3 more a month than the normal DVR Time Warner offers.
I know this might not be an option for you, but others might want to know that HD DVRs might just be $36/yr. away from them.
Re:Cable (Score:4, Informative)
Also, when you're renting a box from your cable provider, they expect it to be returned in the same condition when you cancel your service. Hardly a hacker-friendly policy.
If you want some basic (but flaky) recording capabilities without the hassle of a VCR, get the Time Warner-offered box. If you want reliability, flexibility, and the ability to hack it, I think you're SOL for now.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SA8300HD box not buggy (Score:2)
Some of the bugs are minor. For example, shows to be taped are highlighted in red, but when you scroll over them in a downward(?) direction the highlighting falls off until you scroll back th
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cable (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this might not be an option for you, but others might want to know that HD DVRs might just be $36/yr. away from them."
which is fine, if you like a buggy crashy DVR with a lousy interface and being locked out of doing anythign with the recorded programming. =)
e.
Re:Cable (Score:2)
A couple of months ago, a new entry showed up in the play menu of my DVR rented from Cox cable-- "Copy to VCR".
They don't spend a lot of effort documenting it, but I can hit that, and the composite out on the DVR g
Re:Cable (Score:2)
The first thing my wife says after I show her how to use it is, "where is the skip forward button?".
Her next question, "why does it keep showing channels we don't get?".
Her third question, "Why can't we just use the showstopper?".
So I'm trying to explain how now that
In the same boat (Score:3, Interesting)
The way I understand it, DVI is encrypted, so your odds of finding anything in that regard are very low. Composit seems to be your best chance, but as of yet, I havent seen an affordable video capture card.
ATI however, does make a HDTV card, but the problem with it is it only does broadcast free to air type HD, which is basically non existant in my area. If you are in New York, or a similar area, it may be feasible. The ATI card was about 400$ and included an antenna.
Other then that, I think your SOL. Expressvu, rumour has it, is coming out with a 600 HDTV/PVR next year, but Ill believe it when I see it. Also, due to storage requirements, it will only record something in the neighbourhood of 8 hours at HD resolutions.
RE: In the same boat (Score:4, Informative)
Just FYI, you can find a listing of HDTV broadcast stations in your area with: CheckHD [checkhd.com]
Re: In the same boat (Score:2)
As to DVI, your right, my mistake, DVI is not encrypted ( although it is compressed ), its HDMI, which is replacing DVI on newer HDTV's. So far as I know, HDMI = dvi + sound + encryption.
Re: In the same boat (Score:2)
Does HDMI provide a secure interface? While no security system is one hundred percent secure, HDMI, when used in combination with HDCP, provides an audio/video interface that meets the security requirements of content providers and systems operators.
Im not really sure how to read that... is that saying that HDMI is compatible with HDCP, or that HDMI implements HDCP?
Re: In the same boat (Score:2)
I have a feeling this is where the RIAA and MPAA are going to try to fight piracy. It leads into DRM products pretty well, but if you seal out the origional device/transmission from being copied, you are all but screwed of trying to make stand alone copies ( sorta why this whole thread exists, they ma
Scan converters (Score:3, Informative)
Since free-to-air decoders are all we're likely to see for awhile, it's probably best to offload decryption to your set-top receiver.
Therefore, even though pcHDTV has no more stock of the HD-3000 [pchdtv.com], and none are available on eBay, it's worth exploring. HDTV input support may be limited to RF, but one can circumvent this problem with nominal quality loss by us
Re:Scan converters (Score:2)
Once its in your hands, then you can easily say they are out of stock.
Your Only Hope... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a cheap, well-built solution that would suit your needs. Linux users really need to try harder to force ATI to create a small team for creating these drivers.
Re:Your Only Hope... (Score:3, Informative)
Throw in the fact the ATI HDTV doesn't play well with any other cards except ATI, well they can keep it windoze only. =)
ATI Video Cards: Newsflash (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck ATI still doesn't have an acceptable Windows driver for that product.
Newsflash: ATI doesn't have an acceptable Windows driver for *any* product.
How many times have you had ATI software lock up a machine? I've even had it trash partition tables on crash.
Absolute garbage. Even though the hardware is good quality and theoretically does what I need, the cards are useless.
At the very least, they should be open-sourcing drivers for obsolete products.
Don't ask me about the time I installed over 150 ATI
Bandwidth. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not true. DVS [www.dvs.de] sell capture cards for uncompressed HDTV, which work with standard PCI slots and give you the raw video signal (at just over 1 gigabit per second). Not cheap - we paid $16k for ours, although they've gone down since then - but definitely possible.
We use it for uncompressed HDTV video conferencing [isi.edu] on Linux... The capture card isn't the expensive part :-(
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:2)
Understandable, because your standart pci peaks at about 110-120MB/s, so its not even theoretically possible.
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:2)
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:2)
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:2)
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:3, Informative)
The video signal commonly referred to as "component" and having the 3 RCA connectors (Y,Pb,Pr) is analog, not digital. I can't tell you how many people are confused about this. (: Other than bandwidth and timing formats, it's not that much different than S-video, which is also a type of component signal and is sometimes written as (Y,Pb+Pr) or (Y,C).
So if yo
Was on /. before (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Was on /. before (Score:2, Informative)
Samsung SIR-T165 (Score:5, Informative)
I've hooked it up to my Mac, with a piece of sofware called VirtualDVHS and captured HD streams off of the device.
HD Streams gobble disk space like you wouldn't believe.
I think they may even have made a model that does satellite feeds also, with firewire ports, but you'd have to check around, and maybe hit ebay.
Re:Samsung SIR-T165 (Score:2)
(I swear on my future children and a sacred monkey that I'll be working on it again soon! Updates are good...)
Re:Samsung SIR-T165 (Score:2)
You have a link to someone that sells the upgrade kit, or a link to one that has them?
You're on DirecTV right?
Re:Samsung SIR-T165 (Score:2)
I guess try to sell this one on ebay and get a T-165 again, huh?
ATI has a HDTV card !!! (Score:2, Informative)
Not anytime soon (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, HDTV is broadcast as a MPEG2 stream to begin with (with additional error correction). So you can get a tuner card that simply saves the raw data that is broadcast. This works great for over-the-air signals. For satellite and cable, you need to get to the signal after it's been unencrypted, but before it's been decoded. Your two options are to use a decoder with firewire output, or to put your recorder into the decoder box (like TiVo does).
Re:Not anytime soon (Score:2)
Re:Not anytime soon (Score:5, Informative)
Regular analog TV, whether broadcast NTSC/PAL/SECAM, older analog cable (for me, channels under 100), or regular VHS tapes, is a signal that is essentially fed directly to the electron beam in your traditional TV. There is some funky electronics magic going on, but essentially, each dot in each frame corresponds to a specific fraction of a millisecond of the signal. (Some analog cable channels are scrambled, and decoder boxes will correct the mangled signal. There was a project, fscktv, to do this with a video card, but I never saw it actually work.)
To record an analog signal, you have two important steps. First, you need a TV tuner card that digitizes the signal. Second, you need to compress the video into something managable, such as MPEG-2. The PVR-250 cards are popular because they do both steps.
Digital broadcast TV is simpler. You just need to extract the digital information from the broadcast, much like a modem gets the digital information encoded on a voice phone line. With digital broadcasts, the process of compressing the data is done by the broadcaster, so you don't need any extra work to get a MPEG-2 stream.
Satellite and digital cable, whether HDTV or regular resolution, are sent as MPEG-2 streams, but the problem is that they are selling access to the channels, so they usually encrypt the streams. They assume you'll use their decoder boxes that do two things. First, they unencrypt the stream. Then they decode the stream. By "decode," I mean play the MPEG stream. That means you're back to an analog signal, whether you're using composite, s-video, or component outputs. Even if you use DVI or HDMI, which are digital, it's a decoded signal, not the MPEG stream.
So to record digital cable or satellite broadcasts, you have to either re-encode the signal, which simply isn't feasible right now for HDTV, or you have to somehow get the signal before it's decoded. If your PVR is integrated with your cable or satellite box, it can get the original MPEG stream (which is how DirectTiVo works). The only other option is that some digital cable and satellite boxes have a firewire port that you can connect to your computer, where they send the MPEG stream. MythTV doesn't support that yet, but someone was working on it a while ago.
In theory, you can get a smart card from your cable company that plugs into devices with digital tuners, which allows them to unencrypt channels that you are subscribed to. Some of the more expensive HDTVs accept them so you can use them without a cable box. There's nothing really stopping someone from building a card for your computer that uses the same card.
My research (Score:5, Informative)
From my research, specifically, into HDTV, I discovered that all the cards only will decipher over the air (yes, with an antenna) HDTV signals and not HDTV from a cable or satelite provider. Highly disappointing. While I do live in the NYC area, I could have gotten an antenna and received NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox all in HDTV over the air, I could not receive HBO, Discovery HD, etc. Because of this current limitation, I temporarily gave up on the HTPC and am waiting for more reasonable resources.
Oh, and something else I found, the FCC has declared that all cable providers MUST have firewire interfaces on their decoder devices as of May 2004. This would mean you could connect a PC to your cable HD converter in order to record programs, but it does not mean that once the programs are on your PC, you will be able to access them from anything other than your cable box.
Re:My research (Score:3, Informative)
This website, Digital Connection [digitalconnection.com], provides much, much information regarding HDTC and HTPC. In fact, I see they have a which *may* work to decode HDTV signals from cable providers, however at the bottom of the page it says, "QAM decoding is under development due to the variations in Cable service providers. QAM256 generally has been reported to work, although QAM64 still poses problems with the decoding software. FusionHDTV QAM decoding is limited to only the non-encrypted chann [digitalconnection.com]
I have the MDP-100 (Score:2)
The end result - after being in my comp for a few months, the MDP-100 now sits on a shelf and has for over a year.
Re:My research (Score:2)
Yeah, well, that time-machine you're posting through seems a little flaky so we'll hold off on tossing those universally available decoders with Firewire through 'till the wormhole event horizon has stabilized...
In the meantime: Bush, Red Sox, and Google.
sorry... here's what i got (Score:4, Informative)
There's the firewire pull content/control from the hdtv box. The mac folks seem to have the easiest time with this...
There's OTA terrestial DTV cards (like the linux hdtv card mentioned, and ati's HDTV wonder)
There's a QAM capable card out there Fusion III QAM HDTV Tuner Card(no idea on linux drivers), but that's only useful if your cable company does NOT encrypt their QAM signal...
Ideally, IMHO... we need some sort of PCI CableCard docking device, but I doubt our content controlling masters will allow that. Although, the more CableCard ready HDTV sets I see, gives me hope that someone will take the chocolate and peanutbutter and come up with PC HDTV PVR reeces peanut butter cups...
a PCI card that was CableCard ready would allow legitimate digital cable subscribers to watch digital cable on their PC/etc.
You can get HD PBS for free with FTA DBA satellite cards.
e.
Uh, no. Sorry. (Score:5, Informative)
The satellite/cable box then decodes that stream to produce the full HDTV-resolution signal, that gets delivered to your monitor (either via analog component or digital DVI/HDMI).
That full-resolution bandwidth required to re-digitize/re-encode the full bandwidth signal to a recordable transport stream is currently beyond the capabilities of any pc-based solution under that $2000 price-point.
There are only two close-to-usable solutions so far: IEEE-1394 keeps it's delivery from device to device as the compressed transport stream. The problem being that most transport streams from these devices are encrypted. Some aren't. You might get lucky. The other is to find a tuner tuner card that can decode the QAM signals that cable companies use. The problem being again, that most cable companies encrypt those signals (at least those you can't get over-the-air anyhow).
Check back in about five years.
Re:$2000 cable box? (Score:3, Informative)
DRM.
acronymonious much? (Score:5, Funny)
but then again , everybody knows that
STFU (Score:3, Funny)
A total hack? (Score:2, Interesting)
Devise a circuit to take a 720p component signal, and convert it to 4 s-video feeds, one for each quadrant of the raster (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right).
Feed these to 4 standard def mpeg2 capture cards (PVR250, etc.).
Do some mpeg processing magic to combine the 4 captures into one stream, handling frame synchronization and sound from one of the cards.
I have NO idea if such a circuit is pos
Not cheap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not cheap? (Score:2)
But if you buy it now, it is legal and it will still be legal to own and use it after that year.
Re:Not cheap? (Score:2)
Comcast DVR (Score:5, Interesting)
of the HDTV stream through FireWire. It's a little tricky to get it working. I needed to patch libavc1394 to recognize the device correctly. Once that works you just need to send it a signal to start sending the stream (dvcont record) and then you can capture it with ddr1394. The Comcast DVR is $9.99 a month here, so that's a cheap way of capturing HDTV.
Re:Comcast DVR (Score:5, Informative)
Now, if only I had a MPEG transport stream player that doesn't disrupt audio that VLC player does on my PowerMac..
RF...? (Score:3, Informative)
At first sounds like someone recording a symphony for an eventual release on SACD but then using their mom's answering machine to record the concert.
I looked into it a bit more. [pchdtv.com] The RF is actually a coaxial input. Which means it's the same exact input you'd get from, say, Comcast [comcast.com] or your local cable provider. I don't have time to do a lot of research but isn't this what you're looking for? Is there something I'm missing?
Re:RF...? (Score:2)
Well, it is... and coax is just an input plug type. You can put many different signals over a coax line (witness analog cable, digital cable, cable internet, etc)
It is true that for analog video, coax is the least deisirable way t
Re:RF...? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, QAM decoding capabilities. The PCHDTV only decodes raw OTA HD broadcasts, and that's what it assumes is on the coax input. Unfortunately, the raw cable signals sent by cable companies over their coax use QAM encoding, as well as encryption for premium channels. And none of the digital HD cable boxes they give you output an OTA-style signal, they output DVI, component or something similar (which is, I guess, uncompressed HD video).
So in short, your method doesn't wor
Re:RF - yes, exactly! (Score:2)
You see, with NTSC, this is a snap. Rack up your components, buy a frequency-agile modulator (multi-port or several singles, your choice), and some pass-band filters. Now, just take the output streams in baseband from your favorite components and remodulate them to free channels above your analog cable device or local OTA, and reinsert the signals on your CATV wiring in the house. In my house, that would be channel 70 for the DVD
FusionHDTV? (Score:5, Informative)
Pros:
- Supports OTA ATSC, as well as some support for QAM64 and QAM256 (unencrypted only).
- No broadcast flag hoops to jump through.
- Recorded DTV programming is saved directly to disk as non-DRM'd MPEG-2 TP files (with full AC3 audio) that are easily converted to MPEG-2 PS format.
- Recorded NTSC (analog) programming is saved in MPEG-2 PS that could be transcoded easily for DVD.
- Image captures are saved as TIFF at full
resolution.
- Cheap: ~$150
Caveats:
- Output is only via your video card (overlay). Works with DVI, but tweaking video card resolutions to those that "HDTV-ready" televisions like might be a pain.
- Only RF inputs, no component/DVI
- No Linux support that I'm aware of
- Works best with ATi RADEON-based video cards (can offload more CPU work)
- The recording scheduler is buggy--like first year compsci student buggy.
- Slow tech support response
- Haven't tried using it with any of the popular HTPC apps yet
- Needs a decently-strong HD signal (18db+), a Radio Shack amplifier
Re:FusionHDTV? (Score:2)
there is an OS X solution..... (Score:4, Interesting)
i realize you wanted a linux solution, but if there is this OS X solution that require no additional hardware, and some shareware software... maybe there is a Linux version? or could be? sorry i forget where i saw it and the name, i just stumbled across it a few months back. i dont have FW cable box and i am awaiting the PVR cable boxes to upgrade so i'll cope till then.
Re:there is an OS X solution..... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004
It'll work if you have a HDTV box with firewire outputs given MPEG TS stream is unencrypted.. I was able to get it to work with my tuner from Time Warner.
Re:there is an OS X solution..... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:there is an OS X solution..... (Score:2)
Also: shameless plug for my HDTV recording page and VirtualDVHS [mattinen.org].
Acronyms! (Score:2)
Re:Acronyms! (Score:3, Informative)
Most satellite and digital cable systems are considered this.
DVI = Digital Video Interface
It's that new connector with lots of really small pins that connects monitors and HDTVs together digitally.
DVR = Digital Video Recorder
TiVo, ReplayTV, New cable/satellite boxes with built in hard drives, etc.
HD = High Definition
The new TV standard. 4x the resolution. Roughly 16x the color depth.
HDTV = High Definition Television
See above.
OTA = Over The Air
Sucked in with an antenn
Re:Acronyms! (Score:2)
A cable company uses one of these to modulate a signal down your cable line.
A CableCard-based TV card is what you need (Score:4, Interesting)
The solution would be a CableCard based TV card. CavbleCard is the new standard for enabling digital/HD/premium cable tuning capabilities directly in TVs and other devices. Basically you get a smart card from the cable company that fits a slot in the device, providing the authentication and decoding capabilities otherwise provided by a cable box. You still can't do interactive stuff like PPV and some of the stop/start movie functions, but for HBO and digital tier channels you can finally ditch the cable box.
With a CableCard based TV card, you'd be able to do what DirecTivo and cable-provided DVRs do -- take the *pre-compressed* signal off the cable line and write it to disc. No encoding required, no encoding hardware required. Playing these files just means pumping the data through the tuner portion of the card as if you were watching a live stream.
The challenges for most would be (A) will they authorize CableCard for PC-based DVR setups and (B) would there be any easy way to transcode the files to open standards? My guess is "maybe" for (A) and "unlikely" for (B). I'd wager that "they" really, really don't want people getting even well-encrypted/encoded HD video on their hard disks.
Slightly off topic: Why aren't there inexpensive real-time or faster MPEG encode/transcode boards for the PC? There are so many DVD recorders that use hardware encoding setups these days, that it would seem trivial to provide a hardware MPEG trans/encoding setup for PCs for a couple of hundred dollars. I hate spending
Re:A CableCard-based TV card is what you need (Score:2)
No. The OpenCable spec is full of paranoia, like you can never allow an unencrypted version of the stream to exist outside a chip.
Why aren't there inexpensive real-time or faster MPEG encode/transcode boards for the PC?
Supply and demand? The cycle of reincarnation?
Re:A CableCard-based TV card is what you need (Score:2)
That still doesn't mean that the PC HDD couldn't be used for storing the encrypted data stream off the cable.
Cable HDTV - QAM Encoded (Score:5, Informative)
webcam (Score:3, Funny)
(Seriously though, if you had multiple webcams aimed at different parts of the screen, and software to reintegrate the video streams... let's see them DRM that!)
What my current solution is (Score:3, Interesting)
I am able to send the MPEG2 Transport Stream down to my OS X machine via a couple of tools available on OS X (AVCBrowser, etc.), and then open it directly using VLC, and show it on my cinema display. Pretty neat stuff! I watched a recent Patriots game in HDTV with some friends this way.
That stream eats gigs of HD space fast, though!
And it's most definitely not "wife-proof"... yet
You can rent an HDTV PVR box (Score:2)
all digital ... (Score:2)
do like the pros do... use analog between stupidly locked up systems...
AJA Kona-2 (Score:2)
http://www.aja.com/ [aja.com]
Works on a Apple G5
You Need an HD Encoder (Score:2)
But once the video has been decoded, like on a DVI or component connection, you have to re-encode it. That means capturing about 62 MB/s and then encoding HD in real time.
The codec doesn't matter, as long as you have a decoder, but candidates would include MPEG-2, MPEG-4, h.264, WMV9, etc. However, good luck finding a computer fast enough to encode any of these formats in re
Re:how about (Score:2)
One RF TV antenna coaxal reception port
Also, the FAQ (which isn't quite up to date) mentions that it will ONLY work for terrestrial broadcasts, and that it's ONLY antenna.
Re:how about (Score:4, Informative)
There seems to be some good information here [byopvr.com]. Ignore the "DVIco FusionHDTV DVB-T Digital TV Tuner Card"; it's composite and SVHS input only. The MyHD MPD-120 Tuner [byopvr.com] (actual MPD-120 mfg. product link here [mitinc.co.kr]) has a DVI-in daughterboard, which is nice (though it doesn't have QAM decoding, apparently). It also outputs IEEE1394, but under Windows XP only, which sucks. But it does have component video analog output. So that might be useful, but doesn't seem to be the holy grail.
Nothing for under $25,000 (Score:3, Informative)
I have a game company client who needed to be able to do real-time screen caps of game play at HD. What we did was have them do a VGA output at 1280x720 60 fps. We then ran that through a converter box to take the RGB VGA to a component digital HD-SDI signal. That wen
Re:how about (Score:3, Funny)
Re:how about (Score:2)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Interesting)
But I would also like to point out that there is a *huge* market for a "wife proof" AV solution.
Of course, when I say "wife proof", I mean "non techie" proof. The former certainly isn't politically correct. I realize that. However, in my case, it is what I'm seeking.
Basically, the whole concept of multiple sources and multiple remotes has failed miserably. It is too wonderfully complicated. We shouldn't require a flow chart to operate the AV equipment. Here's what we need:
1) A communication method for devices that does not rely on line of sight. My programmable Sony IR remote works great except for those cases when the sun is setting and interrupts a portion of a macro, etc. Then the whole system needs a technician.
2) Discrete on and off codes for this system. See problem #1.
3) No more AV component switching. Just daisy chain all the damn stuff and give each device a priority. If I want to watch a DVD, then I turn on the DVD player which has priority over television content. All devices recognize this priority and do their own switching accordingly. Additionally, a single box that does everything (TV, PVR, DVD and Media) would simplify greatly. I'm open for realistic alternatives.
4) A friggin' industry standard. If everyone wasn't trying to make a buck for themselves, we'd be light years ahead.
What am I missing here?
Re:Sorry... (Score:3)
Have one wire to each device. There's no reason I should have to worry about whether the VCR is before or after the digital cable tuner... or before or after the DVD player... or should be choosing channels with one remote, playing DVDs with another, and controlling volume with a third. Universal remotes are a bad hack... they either don'
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to be a "Me Too" voice, but...
So, for various and assorted reasons, I have had to recently re-purchase the following items:
And I still had my 5.1 receiver.
Between all the weirdness hooking everything up, and then configuring EACH unit, I must have spent a good 4 to 6 hours beating on this system to get it to work (Not to mention that my receiver forgot it had all 6 speakers, and needed to be reconfigured as well!)
The AV Guys (TV/HDTV/DVD/Game Console makers) ALL need to come up with some sort of intelligent daisy chaining scheme. I mean, really, SCSI has worked for years, why can't they get it together for AV equipment. They can put a little push-button on the back of the equipment to select a priority number, and then when I decide to play on the GameCube, it would just automatically override whatever else I was watching, without having to make me select which stupid input I want.
Really, having a printout on the side of my TV to remind me which TV input to use for each device is just silly, and is one of many reasons why grandma and grandpa won't spend money on any of these new gadgets.
Re:Sorry... (Score:2)
the hollywood idiots don't want that to ever happen
See, as the boss of the most important TV channel in
Re:Sorry... (Score:2)
My DVD+RW recorder can do this when used with a Philips telly. Its remote will even control a P
Re:Sorry... (Score:2)
Re:Sorry... (Score:2)
Get someone who knows what they are doing to program it for you, unless you want to spend 4-8 hours doing it yourself. You can download other people's configs off the net, but no one is going to upload a config with the exact set of equipment that you have.
In the end you'll have one remote that can control everything and uses RF so you don't need line of sight. It will also have one-button macros for whatever you want, l
Re:Follow up survey for Slashvertisement? (Score:2)
The pcHDTV card cannot do what this person is asking!! I too am looking for an answer to the question of capturing HDTV signal as component, or DVI.
The reason this question needs asking is that a card capable of doing this represnets an "analog hole" for HDTV (I know its not technically really analog anymore, but it would still be a hole). A card capable of component capture would be able to "intercept" HDTV in between the cable box and the TV. Now with this ty
Re:pchdtv (Score:3, Informative)
the pchdtv card only supports RF input (which only works with over-the-air broadcasts). The guy wants to be able to record Dish & Cable HDTV, which you can't do with the PCHDTV card.
T
I disagree (Score:2)
But realistically, $2000 spent on entertainment equipment you can use for years probably is a better entertainment value than $2000 spent on a trip. It's something that will possibly enhance your day-to-day life more, depending on how much enjoyment you can derive from the content offered.
Personally I don't like much TV, I have an HD receiver myself (on Dish) and while some things are pretty
To TV or not to TV... (Score:2)
I found myself in the HDTV dilemma last month when the picture on our 17 yr old 27" Sony finally became too dim to even watch in a darkened room. AFAI was concerned, enen tho we're not big TV watchers, an HDTV was our only choice.
We found a 27" CRT Samsung model [HDTV receiver built-in, TPX2775H] for $700 - so you don't necessarily need to spend $2000 for HDTV. It fit into the same space as the old Sony. I was blown away by the huge improvement in the OTA HD picture (vice digital cable).
We just o
Re:You should (Score:2)
Yeah, that'll do it. Now, even if I could find one of those cards, I'd need to go drop three grand on a RAID array that could somehow handle the 1.5Gbps raw data rate coming off of that card. Either that or build a honkin' system to compress it in real time.
I'm going to venture a guess that this won't be a viable sub-$1000 solution for several more years.
Not lack of a universal standard (Score:2)
Thanks to the broadcast flag BS from the FCC, there will likely never be a solution for anything other than recording OTA HD, or at least not for a LONG time, because realtime compression of HDTV content into a usable format (MPEG-2 for example) at an economic price is a LONG w
Re:How about this? (Score:2)
It works, once you get it running, but it isn't what I'd call a "fun" weekend(or full-summer-break) project.