HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive

Jack Kolesar writes: "So, you want to watch HDTV but you don't want to shell out thousands of dollars for a new television. Well, AMDPower.com has a review of the AccessDTV HDTV tuner card. Not only does it let you watch HDTV, but you can also record it on your harddrive. Yes, the full 19.4Mbps stream of 8VSB is stored in raw format. Now, if somebody out there could just make some linux drivers for it ..."

Comments

Re:They encrypt, folks; you don't get raw format

[spudnic]

This is exactly what Total Recorder does (in Windows) for audio. It adds itself as the primary audio driver for the system. All audio directs to it, then it forwards it to the driver for your sound card.

The upshot to this is that you can get Total Recorder to record this stream in just about any format at whatever rate you want.

I use this for the audio books I get from Audible. The books come down in some encrypted format that requires a special plugin for Windows media player or RealPlayer, or you can push them to an Audible enabled device (like the Rio).

Before going to bed, I start the book playing in media player with total recorder saving it out as an mp3 as it goes. The next morning I convert the mp3 to wav and burn it to a standard audio cd.

This type of circumvention is very easy as long as the stream has to be decrypted somewhere on the motherboard. Having the stream sent encoded to the card and having it decrypt it is another matter. I'm sure that someone will come up with a way to decrypt it.

Re:what exactly gives hdtv ?

[cmowire]

HDTV is 1920x1080 at a few different frame rates.

It was going to be 1050 with slightly non-square pixels (i.e. 1920x1050) but they wised up.

And the frame rate is 24,25,29.97, or 30 progressive frames per second, depending on the source material, and twice those numbers for interlaced frames per second. Which means it will actually be able to do movies at the right frame rate so that it will look better.

You aren't going to see anything really taking advantage of the quality of HDTV for another few years. But when they start to show movies at the form factor the producer intended, it'll be great. ;)

DMCA would not be applicable here

[Sloppy]

Most interesting would be trying to wield the DMCA against people on this.

DMCA would not apply to this, and is completely impotent against this.

The capture card itself is what does the encryption. The HDTV signal is sent in the clear, and accessible to anyone who knows how to build the hardware to receive it. Thus, there is no "technological measure that effectively limits access" to the copyrighted content, so 1201 doesn't come into play if you chose to undo (or prevent) the card's encryption.

Get a clue, people

[Kasreyn]

Half the articles on /. are "Damn the man, fight the RIAA, down with Microsoft!".

The other half are "here's how you, too, can buy into consumerism and give your money to entertainment megacorps, who will use it to buy fascist laws!"

Maybe a bit of consistency would remove this bad taste in my mouth, eh?

-Kasreyn

Re:HDTV Protections?

[Happy Monkey]

Please forgive a possibly dumb question, but why would the Motion Picture Association give a rat's ass about what TV show you are decrypting?

A question that has plagued us for decades.

And dear lord please tell me people have better things to do than spend $$$$ on a HDTV just to watch "Weakest Link"!!!

Another question that has plagued us for decades, but substituting the latest technology and crappy-but-popular show.