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Television Media Data Storage Hardware

HDTV PC Capture Solutions? 291

Posted by Cliff
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?"
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HDTV PC Capture Solutions? More

HDTV PC Capture Solutions?

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  • ... you won't be able to find anything like that anytime soon. Although VIA recently released an HDTV chip, but I'm not sure whether that will help or not.

  • One word (Score:5, Funny)

    by ObjetDart ( 700355 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:13AM (#10853773)
    BitTorrent. The world is my TiVo.
    • Just curious, how much HD content have you found on BitTorrent?

    • Re:One word (Score:2, Funny)

      by Thud457 ( 234763 )
      "Real men don't do backups -- the upload their TV on p2p and let everyone else do the work"
      -- Linus T Farnsworth

    • Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

      by poptones ( 653660 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:34AM (#10854062) Journal
      I had to go to the library to do some research last night. It bugged me that I wanted to watch "West Wing" and couldn't. So while I was there I hit up usenet to grab LAST week's show which I also missed.

      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?

  • Cable (Score:5, Informative)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:14AM (#10853788) Journal
    "With HDTV DVR's costing upwards of a thousand US dollars or more"

    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)

      by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <brad_staton@hotm ... com minus author> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:23AM (#10853922)
      In my area (central NC), Time Warner rents out the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD [sciatl.com] DVR which is pretty crappy compared to a MythTV box, Tivo, and ReplayTV. The SA8300HD box is buggy and routinely misses programs that I've scheduled for recording for no apparent reason other than it just isn't in the mood at the time.

      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)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • As a time-warner customer who has had a DVR since they first came out in my area (Austin, TX) I can certainly attest that the DVR software for the non-HD 2000 and 8300 IS buggy. At the same time, it's slowly getting better. Ever now and again the box upgrades itself and we get some new features and some bugs fixed.

          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:Cable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:24AM (#10853936) Homepage
      "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."

      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.
      • I have a SA DVR from Cox communications; while the interface isn't wonderful, the complete integration with Cox's digital cable is seamless, and since it has two tuners I can watch one show and record another, both off of the digital signal. It has yet to crash once on me (had it for ~ 9 months)

        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
    • The downside is that the DVRs that cable companies offer are gimped out pieces of dogshit. I have an old panasonic showstopper that works great, and my wife loves it. We just got an HDTV and I picked up a SA8000HD DVR from the cable company.
      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)

    by Serapth ( 643581 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:16AM (#10853811)
    I have been asking the exact same question... without much luck

    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)

      by Fireye ( 415617 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:32AM (#10854036)
      DVI is not encrypted. There IS an extension to dvi, known as HDCP, which stands for High Deffinition Copy Protocol. I don't think there are any ways to decrypt HDCP, at least, that I know of.

      Just FYI, you can find a listing of HDTV broadcast stations in your area with: CheckHD [checkhd.com]
      • Thanks for the link... sadly, its US only. Canada was supposed to be HDTV everywhere by 2006, but I think that dates been pushed back by the slow rate of adoption.

        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.

    • Scan converters (Score:3, Informative)

      by base_chakra ( 230686 ) *
      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.

      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

  • Your Only Hope... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by VE3ECM ( 818278 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:16AM (#10853814)
    ...is to wait and see if ATI gets considerable pressure to release a working Linux driver for it's HD-Wonder...

    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.

    • the HDTV wonder isn't any better than the current linux solution that's already out there... both do (currently) OTA DTV only...

      Throw in the fact the ATI HDTV doesn't play well with any other cards except ATI, well they can keep it windoze only. =)

  • Bandwidth. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Joseph Vigneau ( 514 ) * on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:16AM (#10853822)
    One of the reasons this is so expensive is that the amount of data coming in from an uncompressed source (like component cables or DVI) is immense. This is why the pcHDTV card only accepts compressed broadcast streams: it captures the already encoded video stream. A device that can capture raw video would have to compress it before it can be feed to the computer.

    • Re:Bandwidth. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by csp ( 224831 )

      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 :-(

      • I only see 64bit pci cards for hdtv and normal pci cards for normal tv on their site.
        Understandable, because your standart pci peaks at about 110-120MB/s, so its not even theoretically possible.

    • Re:Bandwidth. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ogerman ( 136333 )
      One of the reasons this is so expensive is that the amount of data coming in from an uncompressed source (like component cables or DVI) is immense.

      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)

    by rustamb ( 776637 )
    http://pchdtv.com/hd_3000.html

    • Re:Was on /. before (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did you even read the guy's question? He's not looking for a card to capture OTA ATSC, he wants something that will capture from his DBS STB via DVI, RGB, etc.

  • Samsung SIR-T165 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Reeses ( 5069 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:17AM (#10853833)
    The samsung SIR-T165 can capture OTA HD broadcasts. It has firewire out ports.

    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.
    • On the same note, I have a modified version of VirtualDVHS (sans source, I deleted it all accidentally, oops) that has fast forward and rewind support. Although I captured the commands off a Mitsubishi HDTV (Mits sets with tuners have built-in FireWire - can't beat it), it should work with the 165. You can find it here [mattinen.org].

      (I swear on my future children and a sacred monkey that I'll be working on it again soon! Updates are good...)
    • Hey! I have that model, and here's no firewire out.

      You have a link to someone that sells the upgrade kit, or a link to one that has them?

      You're on DirecTV right?
      • I forgot! Our T165 burned out, and DirecTV charged us $150 to get a replacement, and sent us a TS-360. That's why there's no firewire.

        I guess try to sell this one on ebay and get a T-165 again, huh?
  • http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?p roduct_code=314569&pfp=cat3 It is 150$ after rebate, i do not know if you are going to build a PVR, if yes. this is what you want to be able to record HDTV on your PC and watch it back on the TV using Win MCE 2005, MythTV, FreeVo, and some more PVR software !!!!

  • Not anytime soon (Score:5, Informative)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:20AM (#10853874) Homepage Journal
    The problem with recording HDTV is that you have to generate a MPEG2 stream from the component or DVI signal. Real-time encoding of HDTV signals takes vastly more work than encoding NTSC signals, so you can't buy a consumer-priced card that does it.

    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).
    • Ok this is what really gets me. OTA broadcasts are just mpeg2 and their are a handful of cards that allow you to do it. But for satellite you will need to set the system you need to decrypt the signal and then save it before being decoded. What do you mean by decoded, that is the MPEG-2 stream being played ? Now I don't get the firewire thing, what is the whole firewire buisness, do you just suck some of the hdtv broadcast out of the box using firewire and save that somwhere ?? thanks take care -A

      • Re:Not anytime soon (Score:5, Informative)

        by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @02:32PM (#10856512) Homepage Journal
        Yeah, the whole thing is rather confusing until you understand exactly what all is going on.

        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)

    by isa-kuruption ( 317695 ) <kuruption@kurupti[ ]net ['on.' in gap]> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:20AM (#10853879) Homepage
    Several months ago i spent time researching an HTPC (Home Theater PC) with the intent to have it do everything from HDTV, XM Radio, DVD Player, Music box w/ iTunes, etc.

    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.

  • sorry... here's what i got (Score:4, Informative)

    by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:21AM (#10853892) Homepage
    Unless i've totally missed it... there's not a good way to get HDTV content via cable onto the PC.

    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)

    by fellini8.5 ( 517017 ) <{fellini8.5} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:21AM (#10853893) Homepage
    This comes up on AVSForum all the time. In a nutshell: the HDTV you get over-the-air, that gets beamed to your satellite box, or zapped to your cable box is a compressed transport stream that fits in the same bandwidth as an old-fashioned analog signal.

    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. :)

  • acronymonious much? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:22AM (#10853905)
    The DDA in USA has a UDFF AGBG standard that might UTFF when the FCC allows XYZ in 2005, _IF_, that is, the USDHS doesnt outlaw it due to new NCIC regs that will effect the UDFF and UFDDA of IOPPUOIN, otherwise they will have to create a new agency to monitor such HDDTV bandwidth (similar to the way they currently handle UHF and VHF)

    but then again , everybody knows that

  • A total hack? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CoffeeBreath ( 317384 )
    Here's an idle thought I had. Probably more effort than it's worth, but an interesting exercise...

    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)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:22AM (#10853913) Homepage
    Wait a year, and it'll be cheap. If you can't wait a year, then it's worth it to spend the money now.
    • The laws are chaning. In a year, it will be illegal to sell a device that does not block out certain broadcastss.

      But if you buy it now, it is legal and it will still be legal to own and use it after that year.

  • Comcast DVR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Domino ( 12558 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:23AM (#10853917) Homepage
    The new Comcast DVR (Motorola 6208) allows capturing
    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)

      by mozumder ( 178398 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:18PM (#10854685)
      Recording from Motorola 6208 through firewire works great on MacOSX as well. I would say its the easiest way to record high-def so far, and you get the ability to record premium channels - Matrix trilogy was on in High Def this past weekend on Cinemax. You can use iCal to automatically schedule recordings, and set the firewire interface to capture.

      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)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:25AM (#10853948)
    A HD capture card where the signal is then transmitted through RF?

    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?

    • "I looked into it a bit more. The RF is actually a coaxial input. Which means it's the same exact input you'd get from, say, Comcast 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?"

      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)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) *
      Is there something I'm missing?

      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
    • I'd love a solution which lets me re-distibute HD signal all over my house.

      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)

    by richardtallent ( 309050 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:27AM (#10853969) Homepage
    Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but I have a FusionHDTV3 HD tuner card and I'm pretty happy with it.

    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

  • there is an OS X solution..... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by johnpaul191 ( 240105 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:27AM (#10853974) Homepage
    i don't know if it was based on anything else, but on some Mac site i read about a piece of software that used the firewire output on the back of digital cable boxes. you just connected it to your machine with a normal firewire cable and the software could capture HDTV. supposedly if you have digital cable and your box does not have a FW port you can demand one (some FCC rule because some HDTV ready TVs have firewire inputs?). it seems only the HDTV channels would come through the port though, so on my system that's maybe a dozen channels if you had the full subscription package.

    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.
  • Did you guys have some kind of critical acronym deficit this month? I can barely see any lowercase letters in there...

    • Re:Acronyms! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Reeses ( 5069 )
      DBS = Digital Broadcast System

      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

  • A CableCard-based TV card is what you need (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:38AM (#10854106)
    You can't record uncompressed HDTV signals on your PC without a really muscular hardware-based encoding system. The raw, uncompressed signal is too much bandwidth to put to disc and I'm unaware of any consumer-level MPEG chips capable of real-time encoding of an HD stream.

    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 .5-.75 real time encoding to MPEG. You can do it faster, but the quality sux0rs. And yes, there are pro boards that can do this, but for $$$$ and they're *only* real-time, not multiples of real time.
    • The challenges for most would be (A) will they authorize CableCard for PC-based DVR setups

      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?
      • No. The OpenCable spec is full of paranoia, like you can never allow an unencrypted version of the stream to exist outside a chip.

        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)

    by ludey ( 302445 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:38AM (#10854108) Homepage
    Try this card [dvico.com] from DVICO. As long as your provider doesn't encrypt the QAM signal (probably does for HBO, Showtime, & the like) you can capture HDTV in full quality.

  • webcam (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:07PM (#10854540)
    Point a webcam at your TV and record it that way. Problem solved!

    (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)

    by 5n3ak3rp1mp ( 305814 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:12PM (#10854601) Homepage
    I have a DVR/HDTV cable box from Comcast. It has a firewire out.

    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
  • I'm renting my HDTV PVR box for $25 CAN/month. It has a built in 160GB SATA HD; it does program guides, etc, has HDMI (DVI+digital audio in one), component and firewire outputs (although I think the firmware I have disables firewire). Apparently, the box can be purchased for $500 CAN also.
  • why the fascination with the "all digital" stuff that hollywood doesn't want anyone to have ?
    do like the pros do... use analog between stupidly locked up systems...
  • Kona-2 card, by AJA
    http://www.aja.com/ [aja.com]
    Works on a Apple G5
  • If you can intercept the digital stream, you can save it. The ATSC (OTA) tuner cards you mention, as well as the QAM ones do this.

    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

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