Making the HDTV Vision Quest?

DumbSwede asks: "I have embarked on a do-it-yourself HDTV project with a NEC 135LC quad-XGA projector purchased on eBay. But I have only found 2 HDTV tuner cards, AccessDTV and WinTV-HD, both far short of quad-XGA resolution (if I am reading the specs right, they max out at SXGA for VGA output). ATI claims to support all DTV resolutions and has quad-XGA resolution with its All-In-Wonder 9700, but has only a standard analog tuner built in. A search of ATI or NVIDA web-sites, give no recommendations on DTV turners to use in conjunction with their products (perhaps either accessdtv or wintv-hd will work). Any details and insights would be appreciated, as two or three days of web searching seems not to have provided me with total solution answers."

"Granted an 8' foot wide front projection system is probably over kill for my bedroom, but the heart wants what the heart wants. For now I have had to be content with XGA and SXGA DVD playback from my 300 Mhz Dell Laptop. So far, the results appear better, than the best HDTV setup I have seen playing progressive scan DVD, so I am anxious to get to the next level, now that HDTV is supposedly finally rolling out in my area.

As an aside, I have noticed that broadcasters are transmitting in a range of resolutions from 480p to 1080i, but all the HDTVs I have seen for sale are 720p or lower (although 720p on 720p looks pretty sweet).

NVIDA mentions the need for a digital TV tuner with compressed transport stream and software decoder. ATI I think needs MST (MPEG Stream Transport)

With the booming market in Graphics boards, one would think they'd be falling over themselves to provide HDTV solution information, but a site search of ATI, only gives HDTV details by way of a press release, and comes up short on how to best get the job done.

The plan is to buy a 2ghz+ system with DVD RW-/+ from Dell with Window XP (I have no desire to be a Linux pioneer on this project), and drop everything in and have it working within a few minutes. Easily converting my back video collection is a high priority with this project (though a AIW9700 would be overkill for this, and perhaps overkill for HDTV as well) and having a decent digital video recorder to time shift both HD and Analog TV shows. I would also like to have multiple monitor outputs so I can web-surf and watch HDTV on my big screen at full res at the same time (without annoying hiccups). I am not a really a gamer (anymore), so again, perhaps the AIW9700 is overkill (as well as being pricey), though it seems to have all the other essential features I crave (though earlier model AIWs should have them as well). With this kind of size and resolution, I may wish to get back into flight simulators again and getting back into gaming is not out of the question."

Comments

Check AVSForum

[Anonymous Coward]

Try www.avsforum.com for shitloads of info. In particular, the HTPC forums. There are several other HDTV cards out there (I don't follow it since OTA HDTV isn't in my area yet) and lots of advice on what type of hardware/software to consider.

Good luck.

Stay Away from the Hauppauge WinTV-HD

[pyite69]

I have one of these and the hardware is nice,
but the software is more or less useless. The
last update on their site is from April 2002,
so it looks like they have just given up on it.

BTW, what is Quad XGA? Why would you want 4
times the headache-inducing interlaced 1024
line mode?

You are going to be a pioneer on this one.
Time shifting of HDTV requires moving a LOT
of data. If you have an infinite amount of
money and can hack well, the WinTV-HD would
actually be a good start - just buy the
driver source code and make it work properly.
If anyone is interested in trying this, let
me know.

Re:Stay Away from the Hauppauge WinTV-HD

[TheMatt]

Quad XGA is 2048x1536. In fact, NEC developed/is developing a 21" LCD with this resolution. I'd like that.

Visit AVSForum.com for exactly the info you want

[sdo1]

There are two extremely important steps necessary for a successful DIY HDTV experience...

1) Go to the AVS Forum's HTPC section

2) Start reading.

The people there have already come across every issue you will encounter. They're extremely helpful. It's an absolutely invaluable resource.

Once you get your HDTV setup working, be sure to visit their HDTV section, especially the HDTV Programming section.

-S

This Link

[awarlaw]

will keep you busy for Days. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ There is a whole section devoted to HTPCs That has the answers and then some!!

Amen

[zvogt]

I went on this same quest several months ago, and I too was completely disheartened by what WinTV had to offer, and the other option you mentioned was pushing a monthly fee (what kind of BS is that?)
One you didn't mention was:
http://www.cinefx.com/mdp100.htm
which I was THIS CLOSE to breaking down and buying, but after spending many many hours researching the currently available products, my logic centers were able to win out over my instant-gratification centers. As much as I don't want to wait, I honestly believe the best advice to those who are close to making the HD leap would be: wait the 6 or 8 months until the big name TV manufactures have competing lines of all-in-one televisions sets that have fully integrated high-def tuners.

Good, inexpensive option

[DeafDumbBlind]

http://www.prolink.com.tw/new_web/products/multime dia/PlayTV%20HD_new.htm

I've already done this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an NEC XG 1352LC driven by a HTPC with a HiPix HDTV card in it. I have it driving the projector at 1920 x 1080i and it is fantastic. While the projector will accept resolutions higher than this, there is really no reason to do so as the tube faces won't really resolve much past that. I have a 10' screen and people's jaws drop when I fire up my local (San Francisco) public station (KQED) which uses one of it's feeds to broadcast amazing 1080i footage 24 hours a day (most of it is eye candy made by other public stations around the US showing off their State or city). The Hipix card also has an excellent Svideo capture interface which is much better than my old Happphauge one running Dscaler (which I still use in other situations... like when I want to show 4:3 footage in 16:9 format).

The folks over at Avsforum should be able to answer any other questions you have. There's a group of people there who write open source software for the Hipix so no DRM on the HDTV shows you record!

Dude,

[sheddd]

Wait.

Don't spend the big bucks now; stick with the resolution you have. The industry is in chaos and your solution might not work so well with mandated encryption for broadcast TV. According to this article, it'll be illegal to decrypt broadcast video (unless at STV resolution, or output thru DVI using HDCP encryption) anywhere but inside the display device:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_9_1/feature- article-digital-home-video-2-2002.html

MyHD & HiPix

[moby11]

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

Umm... nearly all HDTV's support 1080i

[trcooper]

As an aside, I have noticed that broadcasters are transmitting in a range of resolutions from 480p to 1080i, but all the HDTVs I have seen for sale are 720p or lower (although 720p on 720p looks pretty sweet).


Every HDTV I have seen has suport for 1080i. Very few have support for 720p. 720p is primarily used for sporting events, most programming will be in 1080i. I believe Toshiba's support 720p in addition to 1080i, but for the most part, they support 1080i (720p is converted to 1080i or 480p) in the HDTV realm and 480i/p in the DTV realm.

I have the Panasonic 53WX42, and can garuntee it supports 1080i. It's absolutely goregeous.

HTPC

[LEPP]

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.

some tips

[dfay]

Everyone else here has suggested avsforum.com, which is the best place to find the info you want and more. I'd also suggest you look at www.hometheaterforum.com. It's a nice site with tons of info too.

I have a Sony similar to your projector but older (1272) and would suggest you do what they call an "anamorphic squeeze" (search on avsforum) and use 1280x720 as your native resolution. That should be very resolvable by your 8" guns. I guess having 1920x1080 interlaced might look better for source material at that res, but your projector will not resolve it, so you'll have overscan. (That's where each line is drawn slightly overlapping the previous line, so they all blend together. It is caused by your electronics being able to handle higher resolutions than your optics.) You really need 9" guns to resolve 1080i.

I currently haven't taken the HDTV plunge, since TV really isn't that important to me. You might consider how important TV programming is to you, regardless of the specs. After all, if all you can get is the latest Friends and Jay Leno in HD, what's the point? I mainly watch DVDs (using WinDVD or PowerDVD) scaled up to 720p. That's the source material I care about more.

BTW, if you don't mind running Windows, which will almost be a necessity, it is a lot of fun to play games on. I got a Radeon (nVidia cards are ok too) and used Powerstrip to insert a custom timing for 1280x720. After that, I installed the latest DirectX and now many games (mostly the 3D ones) will recognize and allow the 1280x720 res. It's a lot of fun to play Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed or games like that on a 100+" diagonal screen. :) The widescreen aspect ratio almost makes it better, especially for racing/flying types of games.

Anyway, enjoy the new hobby. You'll never be able to give it up once you start. :)

HDTV PCI Cards

[-tji]

Here is the situation on with HDTV PCI cards..

All of the current field of cards is based on the Janus reference design, by Teralogic. So, they are all very similar.

They all take a standard antenna as input (cheap UHF antennas, like the Radio Shack double bowtie work great). They have onboard ATSC Digital TV tuners, which decode the 19.3Mbps data channel containing MPEG2 video Digital audio (some channels support Dolby Digital 5.1 audio). They have onboard MPEG2 hardware decoders which output the HDTV programs in their high resolution formats (1080i: 1920x1080 interlaced or 720p: 1280x720 progressive). They output through a VGA/RGB port, though some support transcoding to component video out. They can also output on the PC desktop in a small scaled down video window.

The Players:

- Telemann HiPix DTV-200 - http://www.telemann.com/products/dtv200.html - Probably the most popular, has been around for a long time, but seems to be abandoned by Telemann. There is some driver source code availability (not open source, but available to the community under restricted terms) and people at avsforum.com have made large contributions. Availability of the card is pretty spotty, and ongoing support is very questionable.

- AccessDTV - http://www.accessdtv.com/accessdtv/index.htm - Card has some additional hardware, which enables some Tivo-like features, such as pausing live tv with the view buffer. Initially this card was unpopular because they felt the need to encrypt their data files, eliminating the possibility of sharing between PC's or even editing files. Recent versions of their software have relented on this encryption stance, so this could be a good card.

- MIT MDP-100 ( the "MyHD" card ) - http://www.mitinc.co.kr/e_pccard.htm - $300 - Has two antenna inputs, handy for positioning seperate antennas to get all stations. Also includes the ability to play back DVD's at 480P or non-CCS VOB files at HDTV resolutions, which is a great feature for a home theater.. DVD's look great scaled to 720P. Drivers are still immature and can be unstable, but not bad for normal usage.

- Digital STREAM HiDTV Pro HDTV - http://www.pc-dtv.com/ - $370 - Relatively new card, very similar to others, software looks more polished than some others.

- Happauge WinTV-HD - http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm - Poor drivers, no recording capability. Product appears to be abandoned, no driver updates. Stay away from this card.

- Happauge WinTV-D - http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm - Similar to the above card, except it only displays at 480i on the desktop (it scales all hi-res HDTV down to standard TV resolutions). This card may be okay if you ONLY want to watch digital TV on your PC desktop in a little window. If you want to watch on an HDTV, stay away from this card.

WinTV-HD can record

[Wag]

I have a WinTV-HD and can save the transport stream to my harddrive just fine.

But you're right about the drivers, they suck. Stay far away.