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Turn Your Monitor Into an HDTV
orangerobot writes "ViewSonic has released an interesting new box that turns any VGA monitor into an HDTV video display with support for standards up to 1080i. At $399 it's a little on the pricey side, but according to the review from EnvyNews, the unit performs pretty well." Like the review, I can't figure out what the target market for this is, but it's still a cool device.
I would imagine that simply buying a HDTV would, in the end, be cheaper. HDTVs are just really big monitors IIRC. That's not to say this isn't cool, I just imagine it would be more economical to buy an HDTV and use it as your monitor :D
I am a filthy pirate.
Could you potentially use this device with a projector? Might make a great (much cheaper) alternative to a giant HDTV.
...
I was under the impression that HDTV was much higher than 1280x1024. Closer actually to ~1920x1280 (or something along those lines) And how exactly will this work with ANY monitor? I have a VGA monitor in my basement that I'd be very surprised to see display 1280x1024 with the aid of this device
I think I'm the only one on the whole planet that is not too excited over combing TV and computers. I think they are different and serve different purposes, and should stay different! I'm not a big TV person though and if I miss a show, OH WELL! Does anyone think the same way?
Yeah that's exactly what I want...a 19" HDTV. If I'm spending $400 on a TV (not including tuner) then it damn well isn't going to be 19". Take that $400, and the cost of the tuner, and you're well on your way to a real HDTV that would actually provide some quality entertainment. That said, it is cool of course that this can be done. Synopsis - cool, yes; worthwile, hell no!
The cheapest 19" monitor is about $150. Add the $399 to do this, and you're looking at $549 for a 19" TV. Add to that the fact that at that size, you wouldn't even notice a benefit from HDTV, and you start asking, WHY?!?!?!?!?!
Actually, many HDTV recievers output VGA D-sub anyway. My $315 Samsung SIR-T150 has a VGA output that I've watched on a PC LCD monitor. And if you are interested in recording HD, check out the MDP-100 card. http://www.cellarcinemas.com/cgi-bin/store/HTDV-MY HD.html
It only works with over-the-air, but you can record data streams right to your HDD with it.
bob
"Reverse 3/2 pulldown" - yuck. Movies originated as 24FPS film, when encoded as HDTV, should be in 24FPS 1080p.
Once you pass a 1080/30i signal through reverse 3:2 pulldown, it is a 1080/24p signal. Once you remove the extra frames that 3:2 adds, and resuffle the fields back into their original order, you end up with precisely what the camera recorded.
I write in my journal
This has got to be the worst review I've ever seen in my life. Let's run it down.
1. They're reviewing an HDTV converter. You might want to mention to folks that 1080i is a lot wider (19xx) than 1280 across.
2. The product got a decent review. What's wrong with this? Check out 3 'n 4.
3. It has a blue tint over the picture. No matter how subtle it is, tints over the picture is generally a pretty crappy problem on a $400 converter.
4. In the quality section, they not ONCE spoke about component quality. They went into S-Video and Composite ONLY (maybe RF too, I forget). Now who in the HELL would spend $400 on a converter and give a rat's patoot about component and s-video quality? Ati sells crap that converts those just fine for around $100.
That is all.
Your computer monitor is larger than your TV. I imagine there are quite a few people here who have a 21 inch monitor and only a little 13 inch tv. Probably even a 5.1 sound system there too.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
TV/Video input compatibility
480i, 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i
RGB output capability
640x480, 800x600, 852x480, 1024x768, 1280x720, 1280s768, 1280x1024
Clearly, This takes up to a 1080i HD input and displays up to 1280x1024.
The target audience would seem to be people who have Xbox or Gamecube consoles and want to play games in progressive scan format, which is rather superior to plain ole TV, but don't have an expensive HDTV. Of course, it is still expensive - but not quite as much so as a huge TV.
After investing in a reciever, antenna and subscriptions for HD content, I've decided to give up on HD for now and sell it all. 1080i on a 32" 4x3 TV was just underwhelming.
I can't even imagine why I'd want to use my 15" or 21" VGA monitors.
-Chris
They are called up-converters and they have existed for years now. Here is a listing of them:
http://www.dvdirect.com/Prods/TVO/default.htm
Mad Hatter
Dorm rooms can be tiny. It's not unreasonable at all to consider using your computer monitor as your television in this situation.
For kids too.
But no, now that I'm out of school, I much prefer them separate.
Why does microsoft stubbornly refuse to release a VGA converter for xbox? Dreamcast had one, and the games looked great at 640x480.
Yeah, we get it Bill, it's not a PC. I understand. Now let me hook it up to a nice cheap 200$ monitor already.
Actually, 1080p/24fps is the resolution that new digital masters of both new and older movies are using. For DVD, that master is then being downconverted into 480p MPEG2 video (for a while, and maybe even now but I don't look as close now, you could find the words "from high-definition digital master" on some DVDs). Take a look at this D-VHS site to see some movies that have been released at 1080i on D-VHS tapes - these movies are produced from 1080p masters, mainly because going directly from film to an interlaced format is unwise.
How about instead of getting a traditional large screen TV, I buy one of those ever-less-expensive LCD computer projectors (which has full A/V in/out ports)? Are any of you using a setup like this at home instead of a normal large screen TV? Whaddayathinkofit?
We use one (a Viewsonic LCD projector) at our church to watch movies with our youth group, and the picture quality is pretty amazing. We can make that thing 12 feet diagonal and it's like being in the theater. Combine one of those with this gadget, and HDTV is still way overpriced, but now it's overpriced and HUGE!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
That's not entirely true. Using something like Powerstrip you can run your PC at HDTV resolutions. At that point, you're HDTV is really just a BIG, high resolution PC monitor.
Detailed information can be found on the AVS HTPC Forum
These will be great when they cost $50 or so. Until then, it is more of a novelty, I can't really see anyone wanting to cough up the money for one of these. Use with a projector seems like a decent idea, but even then, most projectors don't support the same aspect ratios. You can by a hdtv that is bigger than your monitor (unless you have a huge monitor) for less than you can by this converter.
The problem with the Dreamcast VGA box was that it only worked for a select few games.
Even if the game did claim to support VGA output, some of the games looked horrible at the higher resolution, such as Capcom vs. SNK and Grandia 2.
The Gamecube can output to a monitor, check out this box from Lik-Sang. I haven't tried it myself, but I have heard that the VGA output on the Gamecube is better than on the Dreamcast.
I had the same thought - I really want to get a projector that works well with computers and A/V input like HDTV.
First of all, I was thinking that since it had a tuner built in it could process over the air HDTV signals. Nope! The article claimed it was silly to think so, but the that would have been a great feature.
But that's not even that bad, you can still buy a tuner... no, thing thing that did it for me was darkening of scenes, and much much worse a "slight blue think on all output that could not be removed". If the colors are off, what's the point of putting this in a home theater?
Also, it seemed to have problems using higher HDTV resolutions when running Dragon's Lair 3-D on the XBox.
To be fair, the unit was not meant for home theater - it was meant to provide a very simple solution for letting you see TV and video signals on you desktop computer. It does that OK (though even then the blue tint would annoy me).
Better to waitfor HDTV projectors to come down in price... sigh.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But, since this doesnt include a tuner, it might be cheaper just to have a pc and a tuner. I don't know.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
When filmed content is broadcast in HD, does the MPEG stream actually take advantage of the "repeat field" flags to encode only 24 frames per second, like DVDs do? Or are the extra fields simply "burned in" to a regular 60 field per second MPEG stream?
One complication with these "inverse telecine" systems is that the field ordering might not be consistent between cuts. It will be consistent for a movie that is edited at 24fps and then telecine'd all at once, but lots of things are now shot on film, telecine'd shot-by-shot (with 3:2 pulldown), and THEN edited in a 60 field environment. So any cut is liable to break the 3:2 field ordering. (the video editors I have spoken to about this problem seem not to care, if they even understand the issue at all...)
I want to do the same. You could get a big, high resolution display from a small box. I find there are two drawbacks to this scheme:
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.
IIRC 1080p is at either 24fps or 30fps, while 1080i is at 60 *fields* per second, which are 1/2 the vertical resolution of a frame. So 1080p at 30fps requires the same bandwith as 1080i. 1080p at 24fps would require 1/6th less bandwith. IMHO all film material should be broadcast at 24fps progressive. That's how it was captured in the first place, that's how it should be shown.
-matt
The thing is that you can't judge these things based on the specs alone.
A few differences are that the phosphors on a TV (HD or otherwise) are different than those on a computer monitor. They will display the colors of a video image properly (if it's a decent monitor), plus the decay rate is slower so that a TV monitor at 60 Hz is watchable, whereas a computer monitor at 60 Hz will give you a headache fast.
And yes, you do pay for size as well.
It's funny, but I deal with production-grade (as in film/video production) monitors a lot, and I'm so used to the prices that I find it hard to believe that people find a $300 box expensive. We've got little 6in. LCD HD monitors for $4,000, and a big CRT (like in the 30" range) is easily $30,000.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
There is also a section in the FAQ called "Can I use any vga card as a display device?" which answers the other half of the question.
I do this in my computer room and it works quite nicely...
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
The website for the device mentions watching TV and DVD on your monitor with this device. That seems illogical for 2 reasons. First, DVD only has 480 lines of resolution, not 1080 so you are really not getting anything more out of your DVD with this device. Second, you still need a HDTV decoder for the HDTV signal. These boxes run about $1000 right now. I don't think anyone is willing to pay that much money just to watch HDTV on their monitor. Chances are, if they are going to spend that kind of money on TV, they must be serious about things and will most likely go for a HDTV ready projection screen and the HDTV decoder box.
SIGFAULT
I've got an InFocus LP330 XGA DLP projector that does VGA up to 1024x768 and S-Video, composite (NTSC and PAL).
I've been looking for something that will support higher resolutions in the future. But for now, the image quality from a panasonic DVD audio/video player is good enough for me. I live in a 2bd apartment, and project my image onto a bare wall. At night, with dolby digital surround, it's just like being in a theater. With a good pair of headphones on, it's a private screening room.
It's rated at only 650 ANSI lumens (newer projectors have up to 2000!!) so at night it's perfect but during the day it's not terribly bright. Getting a projection screen will help immensely, I don't have one because of my living situation right now.
Getting a high-res converter box (with HDTV, progressive, whatever) to transfer converted XGA signals to this projector would be awesome.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
If you really want what this article implies, but doesn't deliver, get a Samsung SIR-T165.
It'll receive both traditional and HD over-the-air broadcasts, has S-video, component,
DB15 VGA, DVI, and FireWire out. You can find 'em on eBay for a little over $500.
It's got some quirks, but at least it can turn your computer monitor into a real HDTV.
Actually, 720p > 1080i.
By what metric? Resolution? No, a 1080i picture has more spatial resolution than a 720p picture. A 720p signal has more temporal resolution, in terms of more complete frames per second, but less spatial resolution.
Bandwidth? No, a 1080i signal requires more bandwidth than a 720p signal. A 1080i signal includes one 1920x1080 frame (or two 1920x540 fields) thirty times per second. That's 62,208,000 pixels per second. A 720p signal includes one 1280x720 frame sixty times per second. That's 55,296,000 pixels per second.
Now, 720p does require the picture tube to do more work per unit time, but that has to do with the speed at which the gun has to scan to draw sixty progressive frames per second. It's more expensive to build a tube that can scan at 60 progressive frames per second than one that can scan 60 interlaced fields per second, so most consumer sets upconvert 720p to 1080i for display.
And for that matter they generally show 1080i at 540p anyway, unless you are ready to spend extra.
I certainly am not familiar with every set, but I've never seen one that downconverts 1080i to 540p. Maybe the very low-end ones do.
I write in my journal
I thought the whole point of interlaced is that it updates half the lines at one time. So why would the signal send more data then the TV needs?
I'm confused. Here's how the signal looks: the TV gets 540 lines in 1/60th of a second, then 540 more lines in the other 60th of a second. Each of those lines contains 1920 pixels. The TV draws the first set of lines on the odd lines of the picture tube, and the second set of lines on the even lines of the tube. After 2/60ths (or 1/30th) of a second, the screen is displaying a 1920x1080 frame, with a total of 2,073,600 pixels. In total, after one second, 62.2 million pixels have been drawn in 30 frames.
A 720p signal works slightly differently. The TV gets 720 lines in 1/60th of a second; each of those lines contains 1280 pixels. The TV draws all 720 lines, from top to bottom. After 1/60th of a second, the TV gets another set of 720 lines and it draws those. After 1/30th of a second, the TV has drawn two complete 720p frames, or a total of 1,843,200 pixels. After one second, 55.3 million pixels have been drawn in 60 frames.
There's the difference: 1080i displays 30 high-resolution frames per second with the motion artifacts inherent in interlaced scanning, and 720p displays 60 lower-resolution frames per second with no motion artifacts.
Some people prefer 720p, some prefer 1080i, but 1080i is definitely a higher-spatial-resolution format.
IF thats true then there really are few benefits with this interlaced technology except the tv/monitor making cheapness.
More importantly, it's a matter of bandwidth. Not in terms of bits per second, but in terms of megahertz. You can squeeze a 1080i signal into a 6 MHz frequency band. You can't get a 1080/24p signal into the same band.
I write in my journal
This old review at Dan's Data talks about a similar tuner/decoder that outputs VGA signals, but you'll need a monitor that can handle the output. None of this namby-pamby downscaling, but full-fat 1080i HDTV. When someone's transmitting something worth watching, that is. And right about now, it's not looking very interesting.
Anyway, the review's fun, with plenty of acronyms, pics of back-panel ports, and serial port update instructions. Enjoy.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
With the advent of HDTV, with truly decent resolution, everything that needs a screen will go to one box.
Think about it. The Dreamcast had the ability, with a simple box, to output VGA. TV tuners make cable/antenna TV on your PC viable. On the other hand, WebTV and Tivo have interfaces that would benefit from HDTV resolution.
What we really need is a ETHERNET-STYLE Video bus. Choose a device (no matter what room), choose a screen, and go.
First you want a VGA output. Then you'll want a mouse and keyboard! And we all know where that leads! The dead rising from the grave! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes-- Riots in the streets, dogs and cats living together, people installing Linux on their Xboxes, mass hysteria!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Most multi-sync monitors will already sync to HDTV. My 5 year old, 15", $99 KDS monitor will sync to 720p just fine. It takes a bit of fiddling to get the aspect ratio correct (vertical size against the lower stop), but I get a 16:9 picture and it looks pretty darned good. It just requires a cable to feed the component signal to the rgb lines of the HD15 input connector.
The advantage to this box is that it will transcode component to RGBHV, as well as tune NTSC and allow source switching via remote. Not something I'd pay $400 for. Of course, I did turn my "free" 15" Dell LCD into a TV with their less expensive NTSC unit (~$80) so I could have a TV in my bookcase.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
- The specs for the Viewsonic box mention:
Uh, the "i" stands for interlaced. Getting that wrong betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of how "real" video (not PC video) works; hopefully this is a tech writer goof and not exposing basic video incompetence on the part of the designers.
- Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your computer monitor (ostensibly higher resolution) can display video better than your TV. There are color gamut issues, as well as screen phosphor differences.
- Just to give you a healthy respect for the sheer magnitude of information bandwidth carried in a high-quality (SD, not HD) video signal, the uncompressed digital video standard (601) is 270 Mbps, and that's only using 10 bit quantization (digital audio uses 16-24 bit).
"Real" video guys cringe at computer video. Gamut, color accuracy and aberrations, frame interlacing, human optical models, it's all a whole lot more complicated than pixel grids and color bit depth.Here's a [tortured] analogy:
computer video is to "TV" video
as
a 64 kbps MP3 is to vinyl played on a high-end analog audio system.
One simple rule for its versus it's
I accidently bought the prior version (NV5) because I thought it would was an HD tuner. This is not the case, it only tunes NTSC signals which means it is simply upconverting the low res standard definition signal to whatever the output resolution is. I really can't think of any reason to buy this thing.