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PCI Card Lets You Watch HDTV (And Save To Disk)
computer_chacham writes: "Telemann has
introduced the first available PCI card for $400 that shows full HDTV
resolution on your computer. It also is able to directly take the MPEG-2 HDTV
signal, and store it directly on your hard drive. (About 7.7 Gigs/hour, but
still ...) It is also able to output to a TV.
They have a press release,
and a product page.
And e-town has a description
too." Ready-or-not, if you watch the boob tube, you'll soon be watching HDTV -- compared to buying a new TV set, a card like this seems like a smart idea, especially at the cost of storage today and tomorrow. What are the odds it'll ship with support for any Free OSes?
Then the MPAA will file a lawsuit about it. It will then get mirrored until they issue SPAM subpoenas.
Then Jack Valenti will make a copy of a movie off cable to shwo piracy is going on.
I'm having Deja Vue all over again.
Fight Spammers!
I'm not that same person... but I have the same size screen. The screens which people were having troubles with were mostly 32" and larger.
I did such a search and noted the problems and still bought my Wega set anyways. Personally I believe that the complaints were overblown at best.
For the minor problems I've found on my set, I hacked into service mode of the TV and corrected them (a hacker's favorite TV? - there are hundreds of adjustment parameters). No TV comes from the factor properly set in any manner anyways.
I think that the present crop are also of a second generation of units where the problems are mostly ironed out.
I would much rather keep the Wega than buy anything else of equal or lower cost. I don't like non-flat screens. A compromise for me would be to get a regular Trinitron, but I simply don't like the boobish shape of most CRTs. I didn't look hard but the Wegas were the only systems that I found to support the 16:9 format in rescanning, without making the DVD player rescale & loose 25% of the detail.
My only real complaint is that they are a tad expensive and they are _heavy_. 110lb for a 27" TV... a real hernia maker if you don't get help!
I thought these cards have been out for a while. I remember seeing one on a web page somewhere. Anyway, wasn't HDTV (and SDTV) designed to work with a PC anyway? Didn't they do alot of the different HD resolutions so they could be displayed on the superior computer monitor? I am sorry but this just doesn't excite me. The fact that THERE ARE NO FULL HDTV's out there now. Every TV that they say are HDTV or Digital TV Ready require a convertor box! At least at Best Buy anyway. I want to get a HDTV for about the same price as a regular TV. I want to replace my TV's when they die with HDTV's for about 800 bucks. Why can't they do this??
Gorkman
I dunno that I was that unjustified in assuming that edge enhancement was a convoultion with a sharpening mask.
Doyou know the mask that was used to enhance the edges? Ifso, does it have an inverse? (img proc was too long ago to recall if all masks had inverses; I suspect not)
HDTV ready or HDTV built in? I want it built in! I have enough CRAP attached to my TV.
Gorkman
That interpretation of the DMCA is scary. Heck, if I were to pirate DVDs, I'd need a power cord to power the computer. Since the power cord is capable of being used in the process of copying the DVDs it should be illegal. So now we can outlaw power cords. ;) Let's just be proactive, and outlaw everything. ;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
But isn't it interesting that one of the first things to come out of everyone's mouth here is a comment indicating how easy this device will make DVD/HDTV/video piracy, plus discussions of how much of someone else's copyrighted material will fit on certain media?
Is it any wonder that the RIAA or MPAA suffer from paranoid psychosis? /.'ers go to awfully great lengths to oppose the RIAA's position, dogmatically insisting that piracy is a minimal drain in their overall business. But, when the RIAA comes and reads this article on Slashdot (which I'm sure they now track religiously), what do they see?
Furthermore, how many /.'ers complain that these groups shouldn't be afraid of piracy while they swap copyrighted materials themselves? How many of them would have a problem burning a DVD-RAM of an HDTV broadcast for their buddies? Do their buddies then go and do it for another friend, ad infinitum?
I'm not saying that this is either right or wrong--make up your own mind--but, how many of the RIAA & MPAA critics actually think critically about their own actions? Maybe piracy is a bigger problem than /.'ers and others on the "good" side like to admit, simply because they think that any piracy they engage in doesn't matter.
The only certainty is entropy.
Just a few thoughts.... how many people have giant 42"+ tvs, completely incapable of receiving the HDTV signal...
PCI Card: $400.00
80GB Firewire Drive: $380
(http://www.transintl.com)
CPU: $400.00
$1280 conversion kit for any TV....
BTW, to view the HDTV signal I dont think it'd be necessary to record it... so there wouldnt be any additional expense over the card.
Further note on the cheap drives... as soon as I save up $5000, I'm buying a firewire terabyte and attaching it to my iBook. Just cuz.
Oh, and I'd need Linux drivers. Damned if I'm going to install 'doze to use any piece of hardware.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
According to the sites referenced here, this card, although quite nifty, takes up two PCI slots, not to mentino the external plug for remote and soforth.
:)
Doesn't this seem like a little much for a card that will function as at most, an addon? You don't expect something that isn't a system-critical function to take up this much.... and many people don't have two PCI slots free(including myself).
So why not just release a single card with say an external expansion like a breakout box, or something similar? In any case, this looks like a good card to have...now we know what ATI will be using for its next All-In-Wonder system
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Ahem. KV-32XBR400 and KV-36XBR400. These are 1080i, which means they're HDTV-ready.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Wait until someone combines it with something like FSCKTV. Presto: perfect digital recordings of descrambled channels. Soon, even the cable companies won't be getting their cut.
-- Anne Marie
It hardly seems worth using that much storage to my somewhat low fi tastes. Current NTSC resolution is wholly adequate for me. It is the message of the story that really counts, after all. Don't get me wrong, if it was affordable and terabyte scale storage was affordable to the average person, I would be much happier then without it...
But I would be much happier today if I could find a means to permanently archive my wealth of recorded [fair use, wink wink, although it was, afterall broadcast on cable services I subscribed to] media. I have several hundred VHS cassetes of programming [including every simpsons episode, every Pinky and the Brain episode, the State [long since cancelled sketch commedy show], etc. Perhaps not so much with the simpsons. I preserve things that you cannot buy in stores, anywhere, for I do not want them to slip away.
Probably for the same reason I tend to mirror sites I like. The recent flap with the death of Mathworld is a perfect example of the value of archiving. Web sites fit just fine on $0.44 CDR's, and so does music. But video is another beast, and I would be extremely happy if I could ever find an affordable option to digitally archive [even at less then broadcast quality] my videos, which are otherwise quietly degrading into noise.
My point is, that it's not so much ultra quality that matters, but longevity. If only MPG4 would come out, and someone would sell a hardware encoder. Sigh. [You still can't even buy MPG2 encoders for less then several thousand dollars, and MPG2 actually takes up -more- space the MPG1, [although the quality is actually at broadcast level, unlike MPG which isn't even at VHS-EP level.
--
man sig
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Well, many people think that everything about the DMCA is scary. But cheer up: at least it's uneforceable!
__________________
Personally I don't care about HDTV right now. I'd much rather have an affordable wide-screen TV like you can get in Europe. One step at a time, eh?
Besides, why would you want to watch television - even if it is HDTV - on you computer? How many people have big huge 27in computer monitors, or have their monitor somewhere where they can sit and watch it in comfort?
A great tool for pirates. Come on I could save a DVD on to a disk and then I all I have to do is burn to another DVD.
Telemann's Sky Media 2000 card has had official linux support for a while now. Since their intended audience surely coincides well with linux users, it'll be an aberration if they don't provide linux support here.
-- Anne Marie
Umm, if you have the money to burn, nothing beats watching HDTV brodcasts of friends while hacking code ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
HDTV is higher res than SVGA, but who uses SVGA anymore? The maximum horizontal resolution for HDTV is something like 1200-something, while on a monitor it is 1840 (for highest quality monitors.) A 1280x1024 capable monitor should be easily able to display HDTV.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hardware stuff is only part of it. If you look at the general quality of driver, you'll notice too kinds. Crappy ones, and solid ones. Those with the solid/featureful drivers are (rightfully) reluctant to give an advantage to those with crappy drivers.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
They're both lossy. MPEG2 I frames are stored at a compression similar to JPEG, and in the process of getting the motion data, some information is discarded.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hell, DivX sucks up 70% of my 300MHz processor running BeOS no less.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I just bought a 27" Sony Wega (ruler-flat) tube TV and a I love it.
Dude... Do a search on the Wega's, and look at all the problems they've had. If I were you, I'd take the Wega back and get a higher-end Panasonic, you'll save money, and get a better set. But that's just my opinion (although, I do own an A/V store...)
-This sig intentionally left blank
Look at it this way. I'm still waiting for updated software/drivers for my STB card for Win98, and I know 3dfx ain't gonna give 'em to me. My friend's off-brand TV card won't work in Win 2000, and I doubt he'll get new drivers for that.
What are the odds it'll ship with support for any Free OSes? honestly? i would say zero; every TV card i've ever seen is marketed to the lowest common denominator (which, obviously, isn't linux users).
note: following comments from Scotland
What's this "TV" thing??? Will it replace my wire-less which myself and the family sit round, playing cards and 'knitting' ??!
Remote storage on a site like Streamload.com is a much better preservation mechanism (let them do it) than maintaining media yourself.
I agree entirely with your sentiments, but when you got a minimal percentage of the desktop market few companies will be willing to spend the cash developing drivers for you. They're far more concerned with getting the thing to market in a timely manner.
Besides, they probably have a busload of cheap PC developers to use, as opposed to trying to find decent UNIX people.
Yes, but the rest of us who don't live at home, and actually have their own places tend to have a lounge with a TV in it.
... the last thing I need is more whirring fans.
My lounge is my chill-out area where I can get away from computers
This is a neat product, but it's not really worth much hype. One you add a box to power and control it, you get a competativly priced HDTV tuner (once you ignore the fact that the others can often tune sattelite TV as well.) The VCR functionality sounds pretty cool as well. What this is not, is the card that will let you play HDTV in a window on your monitor. To do that you either need to stick the tuner and decoder on the system video board or be willing to saturate most of the 64-bit/66Mhz PCI bus your PC probably doesn't have.
-- Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
Wireless connectivity is fast outpacing your projected needs. With devices like DVDanwhere, you can (today) broadcast a video signal from your computer to any tv in the house. Store video on the computer and broadcast it to your tvset in the bedroom, or whatever. It becomes a PITA as far as the remote-control issue goes, but x10 will gladly sell you something to help with that too. (Just never, NEVER, give them a valid email address unless you want daily spam.)
-- Anne Marie
I just bought a 27" Sony Wega (ruler-flat) tube TV and a I love it. Sony has finally created a set that doesn't look like a tube at all. The set uses a FD Trinitron tube and the front glass essentially acts as a lens, so the screen is both vertically and horizontally flat. I'm using component video inputs (Monster Cable Component Video 3) to my DVD player, and the TV has an anamorphic 16:9 squeeze feature - very cool. It basically squeezes the TV's 4:3 viewing area into that of a 16:9 TV, roughly 1.85:1. I have my DVD player thinking that it's connected to a 16:9 HDTV set, so it sends an anamorphic signal and the TV does the squeezing itself. Anamorphic signal = highest picture quality.
So, until there are many stations that broadcast in HDTV (don't all have to by 2006?), I'll be happy with my Wega. The picture is fantastic.
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Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
The GeForce 2 would be AGP - which is a separate bus from the Northbridge... That frees up one (though most boards top out at 5 slots, some have 6)...
;-)
The easiest thing to do is get a board with two PCI busses...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Not that I have any doubts that they are looking for a way to attack, but I wonder: how? RIAA wasn't able to touch mp3.com until they foolishly started my.mp3.com.
As far as I know, this card doesn't break any laws. So as long as Telemann doesn't have any contractual limitations (the way that the MPEG decoder card manufacturers apparently do), MPAA may not have any grounds to sue them. Their only resort might be to go back to congress and buy some more legislation in order to retroactively cause this stuff to become outlawed.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not sure about telemann, because their servers have been soundly /.ed so I haven't seen their product, but hauppage hasn't been hit too hard yet, so I've checked it out.
The Hauppage solution downsizes any signal it gets to 480i before displaying it. If the telemann solution will display, for example, 720p at native resolutions, it'll kick the hauppage card's ass.
I personally think 720p is the superior format over what was listed as the 'highest': 1050i. Sure, the resolution is slightly less, but 720 pixels ought to be big enough for pretty much anyone (at least, on a TV or monitor), and the progressive scanning eliminates messiness with pausing, motion jagginess (every other line being one frame out of sync becomes very noticeable when high-contrast objects are moving at high speed, but is visible whenever objects are in motion), and conversion to the progressive-scanning that CRTs use. In short, the image is slightly smaller, but higher-quality.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
There's a really great guide to anamorphic DVDs and their relationship to HDTV sets available online. It goes quite a bit into the emerging HDTV sets, as well as detailing why you should buy DVDs only if they are anamorphic (e.g. enhanced for 16:9 TVs), especially if you ever plan on watching them on a HDTV set (which do have a 16:9 aspect ratio).
The Digital Bits Ultimate Guide to Anamorphic Widescreen DVD (for Dummies!)
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Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
Video Display
As I understand it, it can either display on a dedicated monitor or (in standard def) using overlay.
i watch a circa 1979 12 inch black and white tv.
Now that is retro!
HD is great - the problem is content - no one wants to create content for sets that aren't out there, and no one wants to buy sets without content. Add to this that MPAA(&*(holes don't want to release content w/out copy proctection. Now throw in the jerks at (brain fade - can't remember) who are trying to delay hd deployment because of the cost involved, and it makes a mess.
/.d but if you look at this card make certain that it actually does output 720p or 1080i, and is not some pos converter to 480i, ie a regular tv tuner.
I can't look at the site
Pinnacle was working on such a card, but have pulled the plug on it for now - too bad, they make good equipment.
You should be able to find local content if you are in a major market, and if you are in silicon valley, you have a lot of choices - almost everyone is at least transmitting digital simulcast, and some true hd content.
To quickly address the comment about 1080i vs 1080p, the reason for 1080i at the time the standard was created - in the mid 80's, was acquisition problems - 1080p wasn't possible, and even now the cost is very high.
What would be a great thing to do is create a HD recorder of some type and GPL/open source it so that it can exist w/out implementing any form of copy protection - it would be nice to edit out the commercials for example, before MPAA and co prevent it.
sorry if my comment is disjointed, im a techie, not a writer...
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
compared to buying a new TV set, a card like this seems like a smart idea
At close to 8 gigs an hour you might just spend as much on new drives as a new TV. Especially if you subscribe to the *dirty* channels...
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
This is way cheaper than even the cheapest real HDTV that I know of. Notice how there aren't any "normal" HDTVs? No 20 inchers. They're all at least 40 inches, and many are even bigger. There is a Sony Wega which is relatively small, but it's absurdly expensive, of course, because it's a Wega. $400, though, that's a different story. Combined with hard disk recording, this is pretty nifty. It's still not cheap by any means, but much more so than a real TV (which, admittedly, is bigger).
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
The MPAA is going to love this...
How long do you think it will be before they sue these guys or force them to add copy protection of some sort?
There are cable/sat channels (HBO for example) that broadcast feature length movies in HDTV, and with this card you can make perfect digital recordings.
Sure you need 15 gigs a movie when you first record them but can can always compress them using DivX or some other codec.
I smell law suit.
The other guy is wrong. You can encode DivX in realtime. I do it all the time on my system, and my system sucks compared to most. K6-2 500, 128M RAM.
Anyway, I'm able to encode it quite easily as I watch TV on my card. Granted, DivX mangles the picture at times, but at TV resolutions it's acceptable. And because the recorded video is a fraction of the normal size, your hard drive speed isn't as much of a concern.
_______________
you may quote me
You could easily then use DivX to compress them to something much more reasonable in size--900 Kbps (smaller case b!) still looks about as good as old school broadcast tv and much better than VCR. Makes things about 400 megs/hr. Plus, when you give a copy to your friend, it doesn't look worse for the wear. I'd be interested to know the legality of doing this off of somewhere like HBO--the quality would be as good as a DVD, right? But you are definitly allowed to tape movies off of HBO and watch them later (unless thats been taken away too.) (ducks as all the film heads come out to decry the end of western civilization as precipitated by digital compressed video)
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
I bought a TV card for it and, much to my surprise, found myself watching TV so much on the PC that I got rid of the television set in the room. An HDTV card (and a rather affordable one, at that) would be great, if it'll eventually work in Linux.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
So you can buy a DigitalTV that doesn't do HD, or you can buy a HDTV that does it all. For now.
Usually you're buying a monitor that is spec'd for its capable resolutions, and you'll buy the tuner seperately, and if you're not using an HD set, somewhere in there scan lines will be discarded. The monitor, I suppose.
Here is Best Buy's attempt at an explanation.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Someone said, "Besides, why would you want to watch television - even if it is HDTV - on you computer? How many people have big huge 27in computer monitors, or have their monitor somewhere where they can sit and watch it in comfort?" Believe it or not, there are thousands of people who use their PC as the signal processing center of a home theater system. You can check out the bulletin board of a large user community at http://www.avsforum.com I myself use a PC and its DVD-ROM drive to watch DVD's with stunning results from my Compaq MP1600 projector on a 120 inch diagonal screen. Yes, that's 10 feet. My desire for HDTV on a PC should be obvious. By the way, you can get an excellent XGA projector for home theater for around $3,000. Front projection isn't ideal for everybody, for example you need to watch it in a darkened room for optimal results. But a 10 foot HDTV image for $3k (projector) + $400 PC-Card sure beats the pants off of most other HDTV solutions.
Interesting ...
I'm surprised I haven't seen any mention of access control/ Intellectual Property protection mechanisms incorporated into this device.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
1) VGA Passthrough (I'm allergic to these)
2) Occupies 2 PCI slots
3) No encoding... but in way this is a benefit, too, 'cuz it damn well gaurantees that you are recording the virgin signal.
Tastes Like Chicken
DirecTV has been broadcasting HBO in HDTV for more than a year now. You've gotta see it to believe it....
Here's DTV's original press release anouncing the service.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Sure, I understand, who wants to watch television on their computer, right? But still, there seems to be a market for TV tuner cards, so... That, and it would not surprise me to see a future in which either your TV has storage built in, or your TV and computer can share a storage volume (your PC saves to disk, you enjoy what you recorded in front of the TV in the family room).
hussar
Bureaucracy loves company.
Really only one, since one could be at the end, where an ISA slot, or unused case slot might be - Usually the PCI slots don't usually reach to the last slot opening on the case, so one extra won't be a big issue...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I current have At&T's digital cable. I don't have a clue what is going on behind the scenes, but from the macroblock artifacts on the screen it looks like it uses MPEG2 to transmit channels. Could I use this card to watch channels on a PC? If so, how does the cable company control what channels you can/cannot watch? i.e. We have to pay extra for all the movie channels. Are they broadcast in an encrypted form, or is there clear-text message in each channel telling each box what it can view? Can someone shed some light on this, or point to a FAQ?
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-- Virtual Windows Project
why to hell use ... an old codec like mpg2
Scientific American for Nov 2000 article "Creating Convergence" page 37 explains very well. MPEG2, unlike many multimedia formats/protocols, has been agreed on worldwide and is used worldwide. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- A.P.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think you could argue that this is a tool for breaching copyright, in violation of the DMCA. I stress the word argue -- some lawyer somewhere is undoubtedly preparing a brief as we speak.
Hey, maybe that's good news. This might be the issue that gets the DMCA declared unconstitutional.
__________________
i don't know where they get off saying they are the 'first', because Hauppage has had a similar card out for a while.
Mandatory Links
http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/h tml /wintv-d.pdf
http://www.hauppage.com/html/products. htm
most major networks are now broadcasting in HDTV for most of the popular shows. HBO and a few other pay channels are also currently broadcasting. I'm not sure what the format is, i believe its a cable converter box, but it might be satelite too. there's a guy where i work that has HDTV at home and picked up a digital VCR that's capable of recording those shows (i think he had to mod it somehow). that same guy also has a nice projector for the viewing pleasure.
to learn how to use mpeg 4 to save it to a CD with virtually NO loss in picture quality.
It's pretty frickin' cool, if you've got the horse power under the hood.
KFG
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!