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"Anyone concerned about security doesn't use a wireless keyboard....Durrrr"

Except it's getting to the point that you can't even buy a wired keyboard. Check out circuit city, of the 57 keyboards they offer, 25 are wireless or bluetooth, and most of the wired keyboards are the cheap crappy kind. It also doesn't help when some of them act like "up to 100 ft. range with no line-of-sight limitations" is a good thing, as if anyone needs to type something while the screen's in another room.

They should come with warnings on the label like cigarettes, or stores should put up warnings in front of the wireless keyboards.

I suppose I'm lucky I still have a few of the old Lite-On IR compact keyboards with built-in thumb mouse for HTPCs. Works great from across the room and the keyboard doesn't need to be pointed directly at the receiver for it to work, but at least being IR it still requires line-of-sight. They stopped making them a few years back when RF took off and now they're extremely rare. I bought 20 of them in '03 for less than $20 each and sold most of them in '05 for $60+ each.

I'm actually in the market for a new keyboard so I'm glad this was brought up, I'll definitely focus on wired keyboards.

You know, the streaming performance would be a lot better if they just allowed native decoding through codecs on the 360, instead of us needing these damn hacks to transcode a simple file. For fuck's sake, we're being shoehorned into Microsoft's own little locked in world. Transcoding? What really grinds my gears is that it's so unecessary; there are just these artificial blocks set in our way by Microsoft.

XBMC on the original XBox has ruined any of the flaccid, crippled media functionality that Microsoft has deemed "appropriate" for us. The setup I have operates at a tenth of the hardware and software cost with ten times the functionality when compared to that which Microsoft has cooked up. Microsoft's attempts at wringing every last bit of money out of the consumer, while sorely lacking any sort of courage to support more media types that might offend the "content producers", has completely turned me off to the 360. Even to the point of me thinking less of the video games and the product as a whole, because the crippling is so blatant.

Why would I use Microsoft's lacking product, when I could just get something like this, and stream my media at will? I've put XBMC in three times already in other peoples' houses, and it's kept them from getting a 360.

Bloody hell Microsoft, get with the program.

Already out
http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/DC DA1.ASP

Yes, fortunately. There seem to be problems with the availability of those devices, so this one has only left its traces in google's cache. They also had a DVI+HDCP to VGA converter, both were priced at around 300-500 US$. This device was built in Taiwan or China if I'm not mistaken and has been available under other brand names as well.

I think this 1->2 DVI distribution device is / was rumored to strip off the HDCP protection as well. There are at least two or three more devices that are (not openly) sold as a solution to this problem. I have a video scaler (i.e. a device that accepts SD (and in this case HD) video and outputs VGA and DVI at some fixed resolution) that is HDCP compliant, and turns off the analog output ports if a DVD player with HDCP demands it. However, due to a "bug" in the firmware one can switch them back on via the serial interface.

Or does this not work?
http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/DC DA1.ASP
I was planning on getting one to allow use of the PS3 with my analog CRT projector.

HDMI is basically DVI that also carries audio.

If you use an HDMI->DVI adaptor, the signal will still be in high definition. That is, if your HDTV is HDCP compatible, (most HDTVs with DVI made within the past three or four years or so are). http://www.digitalconnection.com/FAQ/HDTV_12.asp for more information.

Now, using component cabling would be a different story. It's looking like the new generation of HD DVD players will down-res anything over component to 480p. That's what the upscaling DVD players currently do, (with the rare exception of some pre-firmware update players and smaller companies' offerings).

Just get one of these: http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/kd vtca3.asp

Converts any vga signal to component

The lack of commercials is only a small part of their issue. It's lack of control. Do you think they honestly don't have some idea about distribution on the net??? The issue is that they aren't making money off the distribution, and like all large organizations they move at a snail's pace.

Fortunately, I guess, the upside to this nonsense is more people will give up trying to find their favorite shows on the net and buy up the various hd capture cards out there, and we'll finally, and hopefully, see the rebirth of local broadcasting as people move to Antenna based tv viewing again.

I did just that 3 months ago and within about 5 minutes I can take the transport stream and pluck out the obnoxious commercials and then view it on my HTPC in raw transport-stream (I say raw, it's really mpeg2) which is actually better picture than most of the torrents even though it's usually 4-8GB an hour.

I went with an
http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/md p130.asp

however, I'm preparing to build out a mythtv box with 3 pchdtv cards:

http://www.pchdtv.com/

Needless to say, I'm not going to subscribe to cable, and I let my DirecTV subscription end and now that Voom is gone, I have no pay-to-play tv.

http://www.atechfabrication.com/

http://www.ahanix.com/

http://www.silverstonetek.com/

Kanam has some nice cases, but I can't seem to be able to find their website any longer. However, you can buy Kanam cases from a number of places, like:

http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Cases/ht 400.asp

The Hush case can't be bought by itself. Same goes for a similar case from another German manufacturer - Mappit. I had a Hoojum Cubit 3. Very pretty, but limited, due to poor ventilation and of course, small size.

In fact many "pc based" cablecards with linux drivers already exist! They're just not available to consumers as such. I base this on the fact that many high-end hdtv's (like the RCA Scenium) offer internet access and cablecard slots. All of these sets run embedded linux! If you dig deep enough on the web, you will find SDK's and HDK's (Under NDA's!) with all these components. Then at least there is hope that some day in some place w/o IP encumbrances, these devices will be reverse engineered.

Some more information....

This website, Digital Connection, 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 channels available (generally the OTA local stations)."

Personally, I like the MyHD MDP-120 since all the decoding is done in hardware, but it only does ATSC (over the air HDTV broadcasts).

Some more information....

This website, Digital Connection, 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 channels available (generally the OTA local stations)."

Personally, I like the MyHD MDP-120 since all the decoding is done in hardware, but it only does ATSC (over the air HDTV broadcasts).

Some more information....

This website, Digital Connection, 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 channels available (generally the OTA local stations)."

Personally, I like the MyHD MDP-120 since all the decoding is done in hardware, but it only does ATSC (over the air HDTV broadcasts).

Yes. I have one. The drivers are lacking for analog recording on low end machines. It hangs my 1ghz VIA C3, but the HDTV (viewing and recording) is flawless. This is only for terrestrial HDTV, however, not things like DirecTV

Yes. Get 'em while you can.

I've got two such cards, one is Linux only and the other is Windows only. But since they both save the raw bitstream coming from over the air, files can be played back from both cards without modification.

They're in separate systems and have access via NFS and SMB to a RAID array to save/playback all programming.

What about a solution such as this? This will let you get rid of the cable box entirely. :)

apple cinematic 23" $1,999
Sony 23" LCD $2,429

BTW: the resolution (1920x1200) is enough for HDTV.

I'm using the Apple 23" to type this. The real estate is great, but I miss the viewing angle of a CRT - viewing angle begins to matter when the display is that wide.

I've been using a MyHD HDTV PCI card for several months now. I'm a good 25 miles away from the transmission towers, have tall mature trees blocking my line of sight, and live on a lake where high winds are common, yet I've got DVDs full of bit perfect recordings of my TV shows. All it took was a nice UHF antenna sitting on top of my garage. I have no idea how it picks up signals through all those trees, but it's rare that I have any continuity errors. And after watching a show in 1920x1080i, the only thing you'll call marginal is the reduced quality of the DVD version.

And for those of us that enjoy clicking...

Link here. I don't think you would actually want to buy it from there though, apparently they farked with its hardware themselves, and I am not sure exactly why. Finding a place to actually buy it from is left as an exercise to the reader.

I used to use one of these a few years ago. It is infrared, but that doesn't really matter that much, it would go about 30 feet, and had a wide angle. The "mouse" is some weird joystick thing that looks more like a plastic nipple than anything, and takes some getting used to. It is layed out just as a laptop keyboard though, and I don't like the smaller layout, so I eventually went back to my ever-reliable IBM Model M keyboard, which is almost 20 years old now, and still capable of killing a man with a single blow.

Why is this card better than something like Hauppauge's WinTV-HD? At least the Hauppauge has component outputs standard. I'm guessing it's the price as the Hauppauge isn't cheap. BTW, there's a few more HDTV cards available at places like The Digital Connection.

Your setup is very similar to mine. I use a MyHD card to output to the set as well.

But I wanted the desktop, too. So I bought a couple of VGA->Component RCA breakout cables and set things up like this:

Radeon HD Component Dongle -> Component RCA to VGA breakout cable -> MyHD VGA input

and

MyHD VGA output -> VGA to Component RCA breakout cable #2 (just like your current setup.

All this does is allow you to use the handy source switching built in to your MyHD card to toggle between 1080i desktop from the Radeon, and 1080i video from your MyHD card. Works like a charm.

Cables available here:

Short cable for connecting your Radeon to your MyHD

Long cable for connecting your MyHD to your HDTV's component input

With a few cables, you can do what the above poster did AND still have your desktop. Pressing the "HD" button on your MyHD remote will toggle between desktop and video.

Finally, I settled on buying a computer to do all of this. I had quite a few of the parts I needed; the only thing I was missing was an OTA tuner card, the DVD software, and the sound card. I already had decided on Windows XP (which I will explain below), so I was set.

The DVD software I went with was called TheaterTek and the benefits it had over a standard player are numerous:

• Ability to resize any move to any resolution including 1080i
• Ability to expand the movie to get rid of the black bars around the edge (i.e. anamorphic widescreen)
• Ability to save these changes for each individual movie
• Using Windows to further enhance the output using various filters (i.e. fdshow filters)

The other problem was getting the actual HD content from the main networks. Locally in Omaha, NE ABC, CBS, and NBC have been broadcasting in HD for a while, so an OTA tuner was the way to go. A stand alone box was going for $600 locally, and I had found a card that does it for $200, the MyHD OTA Tuner Card. The picture quality is incredible and the performance was great on my 850 Duron. It gave me everything the set top box would have done and also Tivo like functionality out of the box, something that still isn't available for HD yet.

As I mentioned before, I went with Windows XP as everything mentioned above is only available for that platform. Also, due to the mature video drivers on Win32 vs. Linux for the ATI card I went with, I was able to tweak more aspects of the output to the HD monitor through a program called Powerstrip. I tried DVD playback on Linux (mplayer), but it had no where near the functionality of the Theatertek software. Also, I did look into the pcHDTV card available, but it isn't nearly has mature as it should be for a commercial HD tuner card (the only user fiendly app I have found, MythTV, has very limited integration with the pcHDTV card. That is changing quickly, though).

All in all, I highly recommend making a HTPC if you have the time. Plus, you don't need that Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition crap to make it work, just plain old XP will do you fine.

If you have the money, and I'm saving my quarters! Here is a cool monitor and some neat tuner cards, not to mention a computer case that will work in a stereo rack. If they will send me those for free cause I plugged tham, that would be cool! Too bad it doesn't work that way, though.

That's why you should buy a HDTV pci card now. I have an MIT MyHD MDP-120 which displays and records beautiful full rez HDTV. The drivers are a little sketchy (no linux support :( ) but it has none of these silly broadcast flag limitations.

Good luck!

You can see this demonstrated on the page you linked to which says that the Dish PVR's 250-GB hard drive can store 25 hours of HDTV while the MyHD FAQ (a popular HDTV tuner card) lists the card as storing HDTV signals at a rate of 9.4 GB/hour.

As to why current HD recorders (both PC-based and stand-alone D-VHS) can't take satellite signals, it's because DirecTV and DishNetwork use a different signal from the OTA standard (FCC-mandated) 8VSB modulation. So, somewhat like NTSC VCRs and DVRs, you can't store the raw (compressed) satellite signal unless the unit is integrated or a method is provided by which the compressed signal can be transmitted (after the actual demodulation of the original satellite transmission) to the outside recording unit.

This is where the IEEE-1394 (Firewire) interface on the new Dish DVR 921 will eventually (when the software is enabled) comes in. It will have at least the ability to connect to a D-VHS VCR so that HDTV programs can be permanently archived (compressed, of course). It *may* (given the right software on the PC) be able to connect to a computer so that the compressed stream can be dumped to a PC hard drive/server. Of course, such a PC would need either decoding software (and a pretty decent amount of power) or a decoder card like the MyHD to decode the stream.

As I read back over this, it may be even more confusing, so I'll sum up:

1. As it currently stands, no high-definition recording solution decodes and then re-encodes before saving to hard drive. This is done a) to reduce the hardware overhead and b) because there are no current consumer-level hardware HDTV encoding solutions.
2. The DishNetwork PVR you mentioned (again, the 921) WILL have the capability, through Firewire, to connect to outside HDTV recording solutions - at least D-VHS and very likely PCs.

Hope that helps! :)

A broadcast flag is meaningless given that there are a number of solutions that already ignore it. I happen to have three such systems:

1. Samsung SIR-T150 ATSC receiver, not known to recognize broadcast flag or de-rez component analog outputs.

2. MyHD MDP-100 ATSC receiver card, not known to recognize broadcast flag or de-rez component analog outputs.

3. HD-2000 Linux Only ATSC receiver card, with source code, which does not recognize broadcast flag, and can be reprogrammed to ignore it.

And of course there's GNU Radio, a software only system to receiving, processing, and decoding digital television (and other kinds of) broadcasts, which can ignore the broadcast flag.

The only way a broadcast flag will be useful is if the FCC, the MPAA, and our in-the-pocket politicians take the next logical step: make ignoring it illegal.

I tell you, it's darn difficult watching things in standard definition once you've gotten used to Jennifer Gartner on Alias in her glorious 1920 by 1080 pixels with a full color gamut.

Timeshifting her is the hard part. For that, I've resorted to the MyHD card with its Windows drivers sitting on a system with an IDE-based RAID array. Yes, it works. But it's Windows. Need I say more to a Slashdot crowd? ;-)

Lovely! Those links are referred right back to Slashdot. That's one way to avoid a slashdotting.

Other good home theater sites:

• AVS Forum
• Home Theater Spot (some useful reviews and links, but more importantly a great set of forums)
• Digital Connection, the place to find high-end PC/home theater equipment.
• Magnolia Hi-Fi. Okay, I only threw this one in here because it's my preferred place to buy A/V equipment.

It's nice to see a consumer product support timeshifting of HDTV material. Along with a plethora of HDTV programming, this might be a nice step towards making widespread availability a reality.

Myself, I ended up building my own, centered around the MyHD card and a RAID array with about a terabyte of available storage. Music, movies, and HDTV. Technology's wonderful!

$120 VGA to component out adapter

You lose.

Call me spoiled. I watch Alias, The Practice, and even Fraser in HDTV every week. HDNet's sports are outstanding. And the recent Olympic games awe-inspiring. Guests to my home are blown away when I fire up PBS's continually-playing demo loop.

Despite the many many nay-sayers, HDTV is here, now.

Yet I keep seeing product announcements (Lindows Media, Mystro, Dish's 721 etc.) boasting competition to the Tivo, yet not a one is capable of handling HTDV. Tivo can't yet either.

I'm having to build my own digital recorder on an PC running (shudder) Windows XP with a MyHD card. The data rate of HDTV is high, but not unmanageable. MyHD records and displays a live program using less than 10% of the processor (1.8GHz P4, I'll grant).

I'm frankly tired of viewing programs with non-square pixels, incomplete color gamuts, and a mere 480 lines of (interlaced) resolution. Wake me when one of these companies does HDTV.

Actually, what you need is an HDTV tuner card. There are several on the market, for the price of a top graphics card (that is to say, under $300) The computer I'm on now has a MyHD MDP-100 $260 from the Digital Connection, who also happen to offer the primary US tech support for the card, on bug report/support threads on the AVS forum (read the entire forum - there have been separate followup threads for each driver revision and they contain other support tips too. Especially check out the v1.55.2 driver thread. That driver allowed DVDs to be displayed in 1080i - something the DVD consortium has since declared to be forbidden. All other cards and DVD players display DVD in 480p)

The MyHD comes with VGA output with a passthrough cable for dual monitor or simultaneous computer/HDTV use, and a breakout cable that gives Component Video and s-video. it also offers your choice of stereo or Dolby outputs. I don't usually to use it in that mode however. I find that it's usually simpler and equally high quality to simply rout the video through my (decent but nothing special) graphics card.

I also own a Telemann tuner, but I can't look at the model number and outputs right now. It's in the basement, cabled through the floor to a Toshiba DLP-650 LCD projector (though it's a used 1999 model, I usually can't even imagine what better quality would look like. Maybe a tad blacker blacks -it's only 300:1 contrast ratio, unlike the newer models at 450-3000:1- but that's it!) There is at least a third major manufacturer, whose name eludes me at the moment, but all the model numbers and details are listed in the support thread I linked above, with more info in other threads

In short, the card you want is out there. I've run the LCD projector off the MyHD a junkbox celeron 466 and ATI Rage-something card, running Win98 and projecting onto a bare wall (that was my test rig) and the results were outstanding: a crystal clear 120"+ image for a total equipment cost much less than a hinky 60" rear projection screen on sale at Best Buy. I did later upgrade to a better machine (Athlon 1700XP, but it worked with a P-III 800, too), so I could do HDTV recording. HTDV VCRs, like D-VHS, cost several thousand by themselves, but with a card, all you need is a moderately powerful CPu and a decent sized HDD to sotre them on (I saw a 200GB for $160 after rebate on Fatwallet Hot Deals forum this week) You can compress/record the transport stream to DVD-R for archival storage, and still get DVD quality or better. (I compress to DVD the next day. I haven't tried doing it in real-time yet, but it should be possible)

As much as I hate to say it, if you're building your own Home Theater PC, I'd recommend an Intel processor over a AMD. Maybe the newer or better Athlon boards are rock stable for HTPC use, and set and forget for at least a week at a stretch, but this wasn't the case for myself or others on the AVS forum a year ago (As a workaround, I have it reboot at 5 am every day. ) In general, I readfewer Atlon complaints for HTPC, I almost never heard Intel problems - and the drop in Atlon issues may be due to a shift to Intel, which is the general advice of that board.

At the VERY least, this box gives you the ability to connect your Xbox or Gamecube to your monitor and get the true 480p signals (for most Xbox games and many Gamecube games), and I'm sure there are gamers out there who would like to get that capability for $400 instead of spending $700 or more on an HDTV.

Now, all that being said, if you just want to use your computer monitor to watch HDTV, I recommend checking out the myHD card which you can put right into your current box (assuming it's over 400MHz) and start watching HDTV right off the bat. That card is running at $300 (as low as $250). Note that the following isn't an ad for this particular retailer (you can google and see if there are more - it's the cheapest I've found), but you can find this card at Digital Connection. It even has S-video and composite inputs with scaling to several resolutions allowing you to connect other sources. Frankly, it's a much better deal than the Viewsonic.

There is talk on the web that the Audigy 2 has a hole in its bass response. Sorry I'm too lazy to hunt down a link.

Interested parties, especially home-theater people, should look at stuff based on the VIA EnvyHT chip which does 7.1 and typically has better SNR and lower THD than the Audigy 2, and in some benchmarks has shown to be less cpu intensive for gaming (i.e. higher frame rates with the EnvyHT cards) than the Audigy 2, although it ostensibly does not have as much hardware acceleration for 3D positional audio.

One such card, with *EXCELLENT* bass management is the M-Audio Revolution. See the card at one reseller.

With any of several HDTV tuner cards (HiPix, AccessDTV, and MyHD, to name three) you can do timeshifting and in some cases editing of HD material. For example, I record "Alias" in HD every week and archive it to DVD-R. It's a much more versatile option than a simple HDTV set-top tuner box. All of those cards will output either composite or RGB to feed into an HDTV set. If you subscribe to DISH Network and you have the right kind of satellite receiver, you can feed HD HBO into one of those tuner cards for timeshifting as well.

Whoops, there should have been a link to AccessDTV HDTV decoder, which does have PVR capabilities. What was it someone was saying about no HTPC coming close to TiVo?

So you don't think a PC can handle MP3 files? Ever hear of Winamp (just to name one of dozens of MP3 players available for PCs.). As for HD, yes a PC can handle HD. Maybe not the Win XP MCE, but how about this? (I don't know if PVR capabilities for HD are ready yet with that product, but PVR capabilities are available with this one.

There's nothing preventing you from attaching a PC to a television. In fact, many of today's video cards have s-video outputs. Plus, many projectors have VGA or DVI inputs and there are also devices that convert VGA to component inputs (such as this one.) In fact, the entire premise of the HTPC (Home theater PC) is that the PC is actually better than a standalone DVD player, because of the availability of scalers and custom resolutions. Not to mention the fact that it can also serve as an MP3 jukebox. Check out the HTPC FAQ. (Not to mention the fact that it is generally easier to get a region-free DVD-ROM drive than a region-free standalone DVD.)

Of course, Windows XP MCE is not necessary to play DVDs or to record tv shows, despite what MS would want you to think.

Off topic: Despite recent jokes about fancy computer cases, HTPC is a growing niche market and people want fancy computer cases (such as this Coolermaster case) because they want to put their PC with their receiver and other HT equipment.

There's nothing preventing you from attaching a PC to a television. In fact, many of today's video cards have s-video outputs. Plus, many projectors have VGA or DVI inputs and there are also devices that convert VGA to component inputs (such as this one.) In fact, the entire premise of the HTPC (Home theater PC) is that the PC is actually better than a standalone DVD player, because of the availability of scalers and custom resolutions. Not to mention the fact that it can also serve as an MP3 jukebox. Check out the HTPC FAQ. (Not to mention the fact that it is generally easier to get a region-free DVD-ROM drive than a region-free standalone DVD.)

Of course, Windows XP MCE is not necessary to play DVDs or to record tv shows, despite what MS would want you to think.

Off topic: Despite recent jokes about fancy computer cases, HTPC is a growing niche market and people want fancy computer cases (such as this Coolermaster case) because they want to put their PC with their receiver and other HT equipment.

I use the MyHD card and haven't looked back. Except at the TV, that is.

My MyHD is in a 1.8GHz P4 HTPC in an equipment closet connected with about 25 feet of Y/Pb/Pr cable to a Toshiba 34HF81 HDTV (1080i). One antenna input is from over-the-air broadcasts (Dallas area), the other from analog cable TV.

Record and playback is with an IDE-baed RAID array with a SCSI interface, currently less than 1TB of storage, but more planned.

DVDs that I've legally purchased get DeCSS'd and go onto the RAID array under a subdirectory named FairUse. Then the originals go into a box for safekeeping and I play just the personal, legal backup copies. (Take that, Jack V.).

MyHD plays back the DVDs, cable TV, and over-the-air HDTV (mainly PBS specials and Jennifer Garner in Alias :-) in stunning 1080i.

True, the driver's aren't entirely stable, but it works well enough for HDTV and SDTV timeshifting as well as DVD playback.

And I learned about all this stuff from AVS Forum. Ask there, and learn.

I have pretty much finished building my HTPC (Home Theater PC). I would suggest visiting some forums. Specifically avs forum. Some things that you might want to check out is a MyHD card. It will upscale existing resolution to 1080i. It will also take an existing hd transmition and allow you to output it to an HDTV. The MyHD card comes with tuner software and a remote. Secondly you should look into getting some software called PowerStrip. This allows for dynamic resolution settings. Different applications will require different resolutions. It also allows you to tweak refresh and color. A good etailer/retailer is digital connection. You can get the MyHD card there. Also they sell low profile cases that look like stereo components. Another thing that you should get is a VGA to component switch. This will take a vga output and convert it to a digital component output for your hdtv. Some of the experts suggest specific motherboards. The one that I got upon someone's suggestion is the Asus P4B533 P4 Socket 478 DDR Motherboard. Apparently, there are certain chipsets that are very good for multimedia. I think that the chipset that is in the Asus is the Intel 845 but I can't remember if that is correct. Also that board comes with a digital coax and dolby 5.1 on the board. You can save a couple of bucks this way. You could also buy an expensive sound card and get a little better quality but not much better. Do the M$ XP as well. They have better multimedia support and can support a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which you might want. The blue tooth has better range than other RF and you don't have to worry about obstructions. There are other HD cards out there such as Holo3DGraph, but they can be very expensive. MyHD gives you good bang for you buck. BTW, you will still need a regular Video card. They suggest a ATI Radeon. That is the standard for HTPCs. For watching DVD, you will want TheaterTech and for enabling remote operation, you will want to look into the software package Girder (spelling). Before you buy anything, go to the avsforum website and check with some people who have been doing this a long time. They even have a Linux HTPC forum. Sorry, but the drivers for the MyHD card on Linux are not available....yet.

There are other choices, definitely stay away from the Hauppauge, their founder died and it seems that with his passing so has any passion for HDTV.

The MyHD card is an excellent choice though. It has active software development and currently has support for recording both ATSC (HDTV) and NTSC - most similar cards only do ATSC because it is easy - it is already in MPEG form off the air.

All cards, except the AccessTV are one-way only. You can either record/watch incoming HDTV or play recorded HDTV but not both at the same time. The Access card essentially has two cards in one and comes the closest to tivo-like functionality, but they are known for flakey software and taking up two slots and being hot.

All of the cards (except the WinTV-D, the predecessor to the WinTV-HD) are based on the Janus ATSC decoder chipset. Janus, recently purchased (by Oak Technologies?) has never been, and still isn't, interested in supporting linux driver development. Programming specs are only available under tight NDA...

Check out the HDTV forums and the Linux HTPC forum at avsforum for lots of talk about this kind of thing. Beware, avsforum has been growing by leaps and bounds and their server is in need of an upgrade (seems like they upgrade at least every 6 months), so it is probably a little slow and might come to a halt under the mighty gaze of slashdot...

The Home Theater Computer forum at AVSForum has a ton of info. I use the MyHD card for HD tuning & recording. Another poular one (w/ psuedo-open source code) use the HiPix

The Home Theater Computer forum at AVSForum has a ton of info. I use the MyHD card for HD tuning & recording. Another poular one (w/ psuedo-open source code) use the HiPix

Absolutely. What you need is a transcoder. They usually run around $100.

I have a PC in my component rack doing VGA out -> transcoder -> component video -> my 16x9 TV. Using PowerStrip, I'm running a resolution of 960x540 (in 540p mode). It's the perfect environment for watching DivX movies. Many high quality DivX rips look near-DVD quality on it. S-video doesn't even come close.

Keep in mind that a TV will loose about 30% of the resolution on a TV. While NTSC is 640x480, the optical effect of interlacing (your computer monitor is non-interlaced, more commonly referred to as as progressive) the TV screen appears to be about 448x336.

And that's why you buy a TV with HD inputs, and a VGA to Component transcoder. That way, you can get progressive scan resolutions (480p, 720p if you buy a TV that supports it), or higher resolutions (1080i, while interlaced, is still pretty good -- 540p, which is based off of 1080i and really is still interlaced, is also pretty nice). And the most important part -- you don't need a separate video-out card to do composite or s-vid to your TV. This works with any standard VGA port, and requires no software support at all (well, aside from being able to manipulate your resolutions, but PowerStrip does that, and while it's Windows-only software, it can spit out X modelines, so you can use it in a roundabout way to do Linux.

Actually the Radeon 9700 Pro comes with a standard set of component cables (feed off the TV-out) that can work at 480i/480p/720p/1040i on a TV capable of receiving HD resolutions.

Ah, yes, ATI's component convertor. Sure, it was only $30, but most people who have one have reported flakiness and problems (check out places like the Home Theater Spot or AVS Forum).

The overscan issue seems to have been from the cable conversion the AIW Radeon 8500's had & the fact your using a non-Ati device to do the same on a AIW Radeon 7500.

No, the overscan is an issue of how TVs work -- all TVs have some amount of overscan, and TV broadcasts are designed to compensate for this. Even after having my RPTV professionally calibrated, I still have the recommended ~5% overscan on all sides (anything less and you start getting into geometry and convergence issues). nVidia graphics cards support any custom resolution you can define (within their hardware capabilities, of course, but 1080i doesn't even make nVidia cards break a sweat) , and thus you can define a custom resolution that compensates for overscan (you'll need something like EnTech's PowerStrip for this, of course). ATI cards are much less flexible in terms of custom resolutions (or, at least, the 7500 was, and I believe the 8500 was as well). Thus, my wishlist is that ATI would at least come up to the level of nVidia and properly handle custom resolutions.

Unfortunately thier is still no component in though... I could make use of that as well...

Immersive's Holo3DGraph video processor card does have component inputs, but those only accept SD interlaced inputs (480i, basically), not HD or progressive scan inputs (480p, which isn't HD, or 740p or 1080i). I've heard mention of DirecTV units that can be captured from via coax input (something about the box will output whatever channel it happens to be on through channel 3 or 4 of the coax, so you'll need an HD tuner card in your PC to pick up the signal from the STB), but I haven't researched this very much, and I have no idea if AT&T will do something similar (they're bringing HDTV to digital cable in my area sometime in the next few months). If that doesn't work, then I'm SOL with my HTPC once HDTV gets here (and I'll definitely at least try the HDTV feed, because I've been pining for it for over a year).