ATi HDTV Tuner For The PC Arrives

Chi-Energy writes "ATi has released their new HDTV Tuner card for the PC today, which allows High Def broadcasts and cable content to be displayed on any PC monitor. It should be is especially impressive on some of the new fast response time flat panels that are on the market today. HotHardware has a full review and showcase of the product here. The good news is, with the supplied antenna, you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!"

Comments

Extreme Tech has a review up too

[enrico_suave]

FWIW...

Extreme Tech HDTV review (7 out of 10)

*shrug*

e.

Drivers

[jargoone]

Let's hope they have done sufficient testing on the drivers. A couple years ago, I purchased an All-In-Wonder Radeon. I nearly slit my throat trying to get it to work with my fancy new-at-the-time Soyo motherboard.

Re:Drivers

[BobPaul]

Probably won't be as much of an issue since this is just a TV-Wonder product, and not an All-In-Wonder product; there's no integrated graphics controller.

Re:Drivers

[Jim_Maryland]

I have at ATI Radeon 9000 Pro on a Soyo KT400 Dragon and haven't had any problems when working with MS Win32 operating systems. I have run into some problems when working with Solaris x86 but eventually worked them out. Can't speak for running Linux, but it's on my ToDo list for an extra hard disk I picked up.

Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[Anonymous Coward]

you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!

No shit. That's the way it is supposed to be. We are still getting double-fucked. We paid tax dollars to create legislation to mandate the technology be created, we have to pay for the tuners to use it, and we have no choice but to get it in newer TVs.

Joy.

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[G0dzzilla]

No need for new TV if you have this card installed on your computer. You can watch HDTV on your Monitor !

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[DaHat]

Horrible I know! And to think, for years we've had to own an NTSC tuner to be able to watch analog tv broadcasts. Same goes for AM and FM radio, free broadcasts provided you can listen.

Are you new here or have you forgotten how technology works? Something new comes out and if sufficiently successful we move to it, even if there is a cost.

Want to replace your VHS tapes? Better be ready to spend money on a DVD player and disks!

Want to replace your LP's? Better invest in a cassette player!!

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[stuph]

Let's see... where to watch TV...

Sitting in my somewhat comfortable chair, staring at a 19" screen a foot or so away from my face, or sitting on my extremely comfortable couch, putting my feet up on the coffee table and watching it on the 42" widescreen HDTV.. tough choice, but, well.. going to have to go for the far lazier couch :P

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[Hatta]

Why don't you hook your tv to your computer? I happen to be sitting on my couch with my feet up as I type this.

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[stuph]

Actually, I have the main computer, for things like work and games, the Fedora Core file server/router, and the PVR/media playing computer hooked up to the TV. And I have parts for another computer, but just no ideas for what to do with it.. sigh :P

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[Gr8Apes]

And to think, a mere 5 or so years ago, people could barely afford 1 PC that would even pretend to capture video at an acceptable rate!

The progress amazes me. (I too own multiple boxes, of which currently 4 are off and closeted.)

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[zakezuke]

Horrible I know! And to think, for years we've had to own an NTSC tuner to be able to watch analog tv broadcasts. Same goes for AM and FM radio, free broadcasts provided you can listen.

Well, you buy your spiffy $3500 60inch LCD HD projection TV with DVI ports because of this fancy HDTV you've been hearing about, and as it turns out you also need a HDTV tuner to actually watch HDTV. You have the HD, just no tuner.

This isn't the 20th century, when you could buy a turntable, cassette player, VCR, and TV and they will just do their job. It's the 21century where the only way you can convience the public to buy new electric goods is to slowly offer trivial new features progressivly over a period of years.

Re:Wow, HDTV over the air?!

[stuph]

It helps that the file server/router box is one that is approximately 5 years old :P The PVR/media is about nearly 3 years old, at this point, but having a dedicated MPEG2 encoding card (PVR-250, mmm) sure does take a lot of the processor load away...

Local HDTV?

[mfh]

"The good news is, with the supplied antenna, you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!"

That would be wonderful if we got something other than public access around here.
What's that bear?
Bear: Sits there, does nothing.
Oh you want to play on the computer! (grabs fake cardboard computer)
Bear: Looks puzzled
What's that bear? What's Slash Dot?
Bear: Looks angry, smacks host in the head

even *BETTER* captures

[Ubergrendle]

1990 - Screen shots
1995 - VHS capture
1998 - Digital cable/digital satellite capture
2000 - DVD capture
2004 - HDTV capture coming soon to a bittorrent stream near you!!!

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[Anonymous Coward]

2004 - HDTV capture coming soon to a bittorrent stream near you!!!

It's called "DSRip" and it's been here for a while.

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[Anonymous Coward]

Already Here. Download a 1080i matrix hdtv torrent the other day (10+ gigs), but my comp apparently wasnt powerful enough to play it back (2ghz p4, could be due to the crappy audio), kept losing video and audio sync. Just wondering what sort of hardware is generally required / recommended for stuff like this?

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[rf0]

2005 - DMAC coming to after you

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[Elamaton]

2004 - HDTV capture coming soon to a bittorrent stream near you!!!

You mean like the ones that various TV-rip groups have been releasing at least for about a year and a half now?

A quick search at NFOrce Entertainment returns this as the first "officially" released HDTV rip (unless my search was horribly flawed, which is quite possible), but it seems that onwards from December 2002 the HDTV rips gradually became commonplace.

Anyway, old news :-).

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[Microlith]

And now you wonder why they want a broadcast flag.

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "DCMA."

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[klevin]

Unfortunately, the broadcast flag makes no distinction between this and my taping a show so as to view it later or loan it to a friend. Both of which are legal. For that matter, I know putting TV shows up for others to download gets the studios all worked up, but I don't see much difference with taping a show and letting someone else borrow it. Sure, sure, there are additional copies made, but the end result (download a TV show, watch it once or twice and then delete it) is the same.

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[Bob Bitchen]

2012 - A driver that works under linux that doesn't require you to spend two days building from source and updating and upgrading your system only to not work because you didn't get one of the dependencies from the latest CVS.

Re:even *BETTER* captures

[trezor]

Ok. What resolution is these marvelous HDTV-captures again?

Last I checked it wasn't even full DVD-resolution. Even though I haven't RTFA, I assume the news is that these cards will rip full HDTV resolution.

And I'll claim that will make a difference.

THey just don't get it...

[dnadig]

It drives me nuts that people keep spending R&D money on Over-the-air tuner cards for HDTV. THere are plenty of these out there, and they all stink.

What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels. With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

GRrrrr.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[timeOday]

We all know what we want. Now how do we convince the content providers to allow it?

Re:THey just don't get it...

[TheFlyingGoat]

With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

http://www.sciatl.com/customers/Source/4004400.pdf

Time Warner Cable in Milwaukee is now offering this HD DVR, and I believe they offer it elsewhere too. It may not be as nice as a Tivo, but it sure gets the job done.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[sugam]

Exactly what I was just thinking. OTA broadcasts work well in regions that have good radio broadcast reception. Unfortunately, these broadcasts are limited to the largest (and most dense) cities. Am I really going to be able to pick up HDTV signals in my 30 story apartment building behind a 4 foot thick wall of concrete, I doubt it, I can hardly get AM radio working. Having a way to get the digital output from my cable box to my computer would save the day!

Re:THey just don't get it...

[swordboy]

What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE

1) Buy this card.
2) Buy IR mouse.
3) Watch HDTV from satellite or cable
4) Profit

We'll need some good software, first. It should only be a matter of time before Myth or one of the others gets good support for this.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Wesley Felter]

Satellite is totally locked down; don't even think about recording it. Cable is a little better since the FCC forced cable companies to put Firewire ports on cable boxes.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[JTMON]

Take the little line out on the back of the cable company supplied hdtv converter..put it into the video in on video card. Record. Enjoy. Stop whining.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes."

Unfortunately the closed minded cable industry will never let that happen. In fact they are moving toward the other end, with some content featuring DRM (DVI-HDCP).

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Jahf]

Dozens of HDTV channels over satellite? Not if you are on one of the big 2 satellite providers (DirecTV or DishNet). You'll get at most -1- dozen today (actually, with DirecTV I think it's more like a 1/2 dozen right now with plans to double that this year).

The only way to get -dozens- of HDTV channels over satellite is via VOOM and from all reviews I've seen their channels are almost worthless except for the few that are also on DirecTV. Voom has such a small subscriber base today that I don't have much faith in them making it (plus their satellites are so far down in the southern sky that often people can point their dishes at them).

I don't have direct experience with Dish other than to know that I dislike their STB hardware so I avoid it. I don't have experience with HDTV over cable because I can't get digital cable where I live (and the analog signal goes over a couple of hundred of miles of repeaters and ghosts worse than OTA NTSC).

I completely agree with you that we need satellite and cable HDTV cards but there are 2 things that are going to stop you:

1) The satellite providers have to cooperate with you and they are NOT interested in this. Yes, I know all the arguments we would make to them to allow this but they don't buy them. Hell, go read the TiVo community forums for DirecTV users and pay attention to the Organize an HMO request thread for an example of DirecTV not paying attention to customer demand for PC convergence ... and HMO is now -free- on standalone TiVo's.

2) The Cable companies do not have a unified standard (yet), hence the reason why the HDTiVo only supports satellite or OTA (for now). Until they have a standard not only agreed on but implemented it is way too fractionalized for an HDTV PC option to make sense to companies like ATI.

That 2nd point is being addressed and once you see the cable manufacturers adopt (I believe it is FCC mandated) an interoperable and compatible standard you probably will see PC options as well as an HDTiVo that handles them.

You will probably also see a large number of DirecTV/Dish subcribers moving and then see the satellite providers start dumping crap channels for HDTV channels. However I doubt you'll see a general purpose PC option for satellite HDTV viewing. MAYBE an OEMed one that includes the card reader and such but I don't think that the satellite providers are savvy enough to figure out how to make that work in a way that PC adopters would buy in to (it would probably be so crippled and expensive that we'd simply forget about it).

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Chris Carollo]

What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

It's a bit hacked at the moment, but you can actually get HD signals from your cable box via firewire to your PC. The FCC has mandated that all cable companies that provide HD also provide a cable box that has working firewire outs.I'm able to record the HD transport stream to my laptop and actually watch the HD stream on my laptop screen as well.

AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels. With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR

Here you're just wrong -- OTA signals are often BETTER than via cable because cable companies can compress their QAM signal as much as they'd like. OTA requires the diginal feed to use the full 19.2mb/s stream, so as long as they're not multicasting you're often getting a better-quality feed.

Also, most cable boxes use a component (YPrPb) connection whereas computer-based HD OTA tuners use RGB, and RGB is a noticably better signal. So if you're able to actually receive the HD signals (not too hard in my experience), OTA can often look better than cable.

That said, I do agree that it's nice to finally have a QAM-capable card so that it's easier to actually record content using cable.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[modecx]

4 foot thick concrete?

Holy shit, where do you live? A missile silo?

Re:THey just don't get it...

[bersrker44]

With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

Maybe you need to check out this. It's got 4 total inputs, plus it has the geek factor of being a TiVo.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[bwalling]

What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

What we need is for the cable companies to get off their asses and start carrying more HD channels. All I get from Bright House (Time Warner) is that they are "in negotiations". It would also be nice if networks didn't screw around with the HD viewers like NBC is doing by delaying the HD coverage of the Olympics by 24 hours.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[caddisfly]

You said: --->Here you're just wrong -- OTA signals are often BETTER than via cable because cable companies can compress their QAM signal as much as they'd like. OTA requires the diginal feed to use the full 19.2mb/s stream, so as long as they're not multicasting you're often getting a better-quality feed.---- Am I missing something -- doesn't this assume you can get some quality OTA reception of any kind let alone HD? I wonder what % of the U.S. got cable/sat because their reception sucks otherwise....

Re:THey just don't get it...

[xsecrets]

are we supposed to just guess what card you are talking about? obviously not the one from the review.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Tackhead]

> It drives me nuts that people keep spending R&D money on Over-the-air tuner cards for HDTV. THere are plenty of these out there, and they all stink.

Hell, I'll settle for ATI giving me something that can pull NTSC OTA. I tried the following experiment a while back.

Rabbit ears + TV = good picture on most OTA channels.
Rabbit ears + ATI AIW = nothing.
Rabbit ears + signal amplifier + ATI AIW = shittier OTA reception than I get with rabbit ears on the TV set.

And ATI expects me to believe they can pull HDTV OTA? Yeah, right.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Phreakiture]

What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

One of the satellite providers (I think it was DirecTV) had an HDTV receiver that spat out an 8VSB signal on channel 3 or 4 for use with OTA HDTV receivers. For some reason, that give me this odd sense of deja vu... but it would work with this card.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[sumdumass]

while that is nice in a way, it still doesn't allow us to view it on the computer independant of the cable companies converter box. I think that is one of the bigest draw backs.

Some people wan't to build a pvr becasue they can. Others want to try and save a dime, while still others might want to include stuff like arcade games with some emulator and have an actuall entertainment box instead of several boxes conected to the television, Others might just want the ability to watch television on thier computer for a distraction and maybe recording when they are working or online monitoring somethign liek a chat or whatever.

IT would be nice to have some program that could compare the signal form before the converter did it's job to after the converter did it, plug in the channel number and have it work out the decompression/descrambling techniques. Then all you would need it 2 cards, one sampling the signal from behind the box and one sampling after the box and it shoudl be able to match the chanels and display the same way the tv box does. maybe they could publish the differences and then we could get a good quality picture from them.. or maybe better yet, maybe the cable/satalite companies could create a chip that would alow them to enable the programing and control it like the set top box and all that needs to be done it install a sister card or have the hdtv cards incorperate the chips.. would be nice either way. (but probably only work on windows..lol

Re:THey just don't get it...

[sugam]

ha ha ha.... No, but buildings built in 1900 have pretty thick walls (before the advent of steel frame buildings). Between my living room and dining room is a 3.5 foot thick wall, I added 6 inches assuming the outside wall was thicker.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[DHR]

Your regular analog reception could suck, and still have perfect HDTV. With digital, it's pretty much perfect or nothing. (there are artifacts when you're right on the edge though)

Re:THey just don't get it...

[tji]

Have you ever actually used or even seen local HDTV?

First, there are only a few ATSC HDTV tuner cards currently being produced. Some are pretty good, like the MyHD card, and others have some pretty weak software, like the Fusion cards. The MyHD cards use a hardware MPEG decoder, so they are limited to very basic display functions. They can't provide true PVR time shifting functionality. The hope for the ATI card is that it can provide good reliable software, which enable the PVR functions.

As for the cable/satellite vs. OTA, I guess I have a different take on that, since I cancelled my DirecTV subscription in favor of OTA HDTV. DirecTV offers a handful of HDTV stations (HBO, ESPN, Discovery, HDNet, Showtime). All the locals (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, UPN, WB, etc.) are done off-the-air - even if you have a DirecTV receiver, you still need to hook an antenna to the box to get your locals. Since all the big sporting events, and the handful of TV shows I watch are all OTA, I stopped my $70/month DirecTV and just use my $0/month antenna.

As for the quality, assuming the local broadcaster doesn't try to stuff a few sub-channels in the broadcast, local OTA HDTV is better quality than satellite HDTV. The Satellite providers have a limited amount of bandwidth to stuff a large amount of stations into. To accomplish this they compress all the broadcasts down as much as the customers will tolerate. The HDTV channels are currently compressed a lot less than the SD channels, but as more are added you can expect DirecTV to continue to compress the quality down. Whereas the local stations put all their effort into their one broadcast, so it is in their best interest to provide it in as high quality as possible.

So, I guess my experience is a lot better than your "AT BEST".. I get 22 local digital broadcasts, all in excellent quality, and I pay $0/month to get them.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[tji]

Umm.. I don't think you're seeing the whole problem here.

Step 1: Irrelevant. The card can receive ATSC broadcasts via an antenna, not magically receive HDTV from cable. An MPEG encoder capable of recording HDTV (1920x1080) is *VERY* expensive. No consumer grade card has this capability today.
Step 2: Why? That would allow you to get IR to a location that the normal remote control can't reach, or allow one device to control another. What do you propose plugging it into, and what problem are you solving?
Step 3: Yes, you can do this, without any interaction with your PC. Of course you have no capability to record or time-shift any content. All you have is a standalone HDTV set-top box.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[MCZapf]

How far away are the rabbit ears from your computer? I think you'd almost want them in a different room, to avoid all the interference.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[C3ntaur]

No, what we really need is more support for over-the-airwaves broadcast television. Time was, you "paid" for the programming by watching (they hoped) the advertisements. Cable came along, then encrypted satellite, and now almost everyone's been duped into paying twice for most programming.

The only time I ever subscribed to a TV service was when I lived in a place where over-the-air reception was impossible. Now that most of my favorite shows are becoming available on DVD, I don't think I would subscribe even if I found myself in that situation again.

I applaud ATI for their efforts.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[no_such_user]

Most broadcasters are not using the full 19mbps for HD content. They're likely getting a ~45mbps HD MPEG-2 stream from the network and recompressing it down to 12-15mbps, and then adding other content as subchannels. Some put a loop of the local news, others a weather radar image, etc.

Most CATV systems are NOT recompressing the primary HD stream, as provided by the OTA broadcasters. On the other hand, I can tell you that here in NYC, TWC is not providing all of the OTA substreams. In other words, if your local broadcaster is dividing up the bandwidth such that the primary stream is 12mbps, and there are two 3mbps streams along with it, there's a good chance you'll only see the primary stream.

But then again, I think that's because of the cost of the equipment required to do this. It's probably enough of a pain in the neck to remap the ATSC OTA digital channels onto the CATV system, never mind having to do it for multiple "channels" per local broadcaster! Anyway, my point is that CATV systems have plenty of bandwidth to let the full 19mbps flow. In fact, a single analog NTSC channel is able to hold a nice fat 38mbps 256QAM digital stream. 19mbps x 2 = 38mbps. So, for each analog channel your CATV company replaces with a digital channel, they can put TWO full bandwitdh ATSC channels. Then again, it could also hold ~9 SD channels @ 4mbps. I digress...

Re:THey just don't get it...

[cK-Gunslinger]

Satellite is totally locked down; don't even think about recording it.

What do you mean by this? My Dish Network satellite receiver has both coax and RCA outputs. I run the RCA to my DVD/Receiver and on to the TV. I run the coax into my PCI TV Tuner card on my PC. I set my Tuner to Channel 3. Voila! There's my satellite signal on my PC. I can use any dozens of software packages to record, playback or time-shift any program I want. If I didn't want to change channels manually, I could get an IR blaster to automatically do it for me.

It's a complete home-built PVR system for use with digital satellite. What seems to be the problem?

Re:THey just don't get it...

[jillako]

Well, all you need is a Mac running OS X and the Firewire SDK from Apple's Developer site. HDTV boxes do come with Firewire connections. Read more here

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Tackhead]

> How far away are the rabbit ears from your computer? I think you'd almost want them in a different room, to avoid all the interference.

Computer (SFF box) was adjacent to the TV; moving the antenna affected reception on both computer and TV, but computer reception was consistently (and significantly) worse. I'm still inclined to suspect the ATI tuner, unless the RF shielding on the card was borked at the factory or just plain insufficient for the environment of a PC the case.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

but you can actually get HD signals from your cable box via firewire to your PC

Thanks dude! I've start the ball rolling to get my HDTV box swapped out for a nice new one with 1394!

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, audio/video sync... I've yet to find an app which can keep the two in sync - despite having UDMA133 disks, cables and controllers, and nothing else, but an idle NIC on the PCI bus (ie: headless system).

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Wesley Felter]

This whole thread is about HDTV; analog recording won't work for satellite HDTV.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Chris Carollo]

This is a great thread on how to get it working.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Chris Siegler]

AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels. With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

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.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[charyou-tree]

AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels.

Bah. Have you ever actually watched OTA HDTV?

The quality is consistently better than cable or satellite HDTV, since the signal is uncompressed. Furthermore, the majority of original new content is through the big three networks, all of which are available in most areas, free, OTA. Even Fox is jumping on the HDTV bandwagon.

We used to subscribe to DirecTV's HDTV package - Discovery HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies, ESPNHD (worthless - it's 95% 4:3 -> 16:9 distorted upconverts of their SD broadcast). We cancelled the $11/month package because the content was so obscenely repetitive that we rarely watched it.

In contrast, we'd tune in to fantastic picture quality and original programming daily from OTA network broadcasts.

Re:THey just don't get it...

[tigga]

(plus their satellites are so far down in the southern sky that often people can point their dishes at them)

Maybe it's a typo - the Voom's satellite is too far down in Eastern sky. All those satellites are above equator..

Re:THey just don't get it...

[Jahf]

Thanks, you're right ... typing faster than I was thinking (common malady). I believe the Voom birds are around 62 degrees and because of mountains/hills I can't focus below 70.

Finally...

[BobPaul]

a TV-Wonder Product that supports TV On Demand (TIVO-style) functionality. Now I can use whatever graphics card I want, rather than having to use the one integrated in whatever All-In-Wonder product I buy and then upgrade the entire thing every time I need a new graphics card...

Re:Finally...

[enrico_suave]

uh actually, unless I misread the review... currently you have to use an ati product adjacent to the hdtv tv wonder...

they'll be adding generic gul in later driver software revisions... supposedly...

e.

For HDTV n00bs...

[darth_MALL]

Here's all the dirt on HDTV. Read and enjoy :)

Re:For HDTV n00bs...

[cbovasso]

From the look of the card it seems to only have an S-Video and a Coax connection. As far as I know HDTV can not be trasmitted through such interfaces.... am I missing something, maybe I should RTFA? hmmm...

Re:For HDTV n00bs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Coax works for HDTV. It's just a place to plug in an antenna, and an antenna doesn't need any fancy 50-pin connectors, since it's basically just a single big wire.

What, did you expect cable companies to lay out a whole new network of Cat-5 or something just for HDTV? Or that the FCC would force everyone to pay for said cable upgrade and service once non-HDTV is phased out? They're not that stupid.

Re:For HDTV n00bs...

[cbovasso]

No I meant for the HDTV signal to be outputted to a TV. It has an S-Video and a Coax output but I thought that straight out of the tuner (STB, ATi, whatever) it can not be SVideo or Coax. Which is why we all needed to purchase fancy new TV's with fancy new inputs. Am I wrong?

Yay!

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

I can finally grab the one network in the area with HDTV on my 22 inch monitor, while my 64 inch HDTV sits idle because of the cost prohibitive equipment necessary.

Put this one under the "Wait till it is damned near free" file.

HDTV is great, but when are the networks gonna start restructuring and grab ahold, instead of a few premium cable channels and the occasional "First to bring you HDTV - watch the news at 6!" Super bowl is awesome in HDTV, but I watch Speed Vision more than NFL.

Just like gaming consoles, HDTV lands in territory where the hardware is nifty, but until there's better software, youre screwed. Here's hoping there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Re:Yay!

[TheFlyingGoat]

Are you serious? I have basic cable (TWC) for $12/month, plus an extra $7/month for a HD cable box. All of the stations I get with the basic package, I get the HDTV version (if it exists). So, for $19/month total I get NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, Fox (soon), and WB (soon) all in HD. Granted, only the prime time stuff is in HDTV, but every new show is HiDef now (reality crap excluded). In addition, all my sports programming is in HD now (Packer games, Bucks games, Final Four, NBA Finals, NFL playoffs, some Brewer games). So, ina given night I watch around 1 hour of SD programming (local news + a rerun or two) and the rest is HD. Either you need to look into this more, or move to a better city. :)

Re:Yay!

[mattkime]

mmm....i'm a wisconsin native living in new york, how i wish i could get HD packer games here!

Re:Yay!

[Chris Pimlott]

Decent city, heh... Where I am, Adelphia's basic alone cable is $25/mo (that's analog basic, not digital basic). No idea what HDTV costs but I'm willing to bet it's more than $7/mo...

I think you should consider yourself pretty lucky.

Re:Yay!

[RowdyReptile]

Decent city, heh... Where I am, Adelphia's basic alone cable is $25/mo (that's analog basic, not digital basic). No idea what HDTV costs but I'm willing to bet it's more than $7/mo...

I've got Adelphia in South Florida. I called them this weekend and HDTV is *finally* available in my specific area. It's only $8/mo extra (for I think three channels so far: ABC, NBC, CBS) so I'm going to order it next week.
Adelphia HDTV details

Re:Yay!

[ehovland]

So, for $19/month total I get NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, Fox (soon), and WB (soon) all in HD. Granted, only the prime time stuff is in HDTV, but every new show is HiDef now (reality crap excluded).

This is what I think is the problem w/ the 'networks'. At the moment they are doing the minimum to provide you w/ HDTV content. They broadcast the signal, they produce some hidef content (some primetime shows and some sporting events). But largely most of the content was captured w/ analog grade equipment and the provided resolution is really no better then the analog signal. For example, CBS seems to have only one hidef capture set because only one football game in a given day will be hidef quality.

If the networks haven't bought in yet, it isn't time for me to make a large investments in HDTV.

Size of HDTV?

[spartan_789]

Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious... With the increase in resolution must come MUCH larger file sizes...

1/2 hour show per DVD?

Re:Size of HDTV?

[NanoGator]

"Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious.."

I read 19 megabits/s somewhere...

Re:Size of HDTV?

[TheFlyingGoat]

It's right around 8GB per hour, which is about 4x the space that SD requires.

Re:Size of HDTV?

[ObjetDart]

Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious... With the increase in resolution must come MUCH larger file sizes...

Several TV shows in HDTV have been available on BitTorrent for a while now...er, or so I've heard anyway. Encoded with Divx, they take about 350 megs per 1 hour show minus the commercials, and are pretty good quality.

Re:Size of HDTV?

[Universal Indicator]

There are a few different modes of HDTV, the two most comming being 720x480 progressive (30 full frames per second), and 1920x1080 interlaced (60 half frames per second)

Re:Size of HDTV?

[xsecrets]

I'm sorry, those shows may have been recorded from HDTV input, but there is positively no way that full resolution HDTV content with 5.1 sound can be compressed down to 350 Mb/hour no matter what codec you use.

Re:Size of HDTV?

[babyrat]

sure ya can - it won't look good, and probably won't sound good, but ya can!

Re:Size of HDTV?

[cadfael]

Common rates are 19.4 mbps for HD (although I believe some vod vendors for MSO's trim that to 14 and change mbps). 19.4 * 60 * minutes of program will give you the info. This is assuming that the program is an MPEG2 transport stream. It improves once MPEG4 is used (better compression, although the transport stream is just a modified MPEG2 TS)

Re:Size of HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um you're quite wrong. It's mp3 audio, not 5.1, but other then that it is full HDTV resolution.

The reason is that when compressing video, doubling the resolution does not double the file size, in fact it only increases it marginally. (For good codecs anyway. mpeg2 aka svcd, and mpeg1 aka vcd, are not. mpeg4 AKA xvid AKA divx are.)

And since the source signal is very clean and free of hard-to-compress artifacts, and because it's very clean and the next frame is very similar to the previous frame so very little has to be encoded just the difference, you get stellar compression.

You end up with a picture that is far far better then anything you can get using analog - even cable. And it's 350MB for 42 minutes of video.

I much prefer to download all my tv shows since they look so much better then cable, but my upload is limited and since with bittorrent you have to upload everything you download, I don't have the bandwidth (yet) to download everything. But I download whenever I miss a show for example, or if two shows are on at the same time. And half hour comedies since they are pretty small.

To get you started here are two links:
#tvtorrents - web site
#BT - web site

It'll probably never happen..but I'd like

[Frennzy]

..a PCMCIA version of this. It would be great to have this capability while travelling for work.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me expound of the possibility of a PC-card version? (I know for cable it would require a dongle...but could you get OTA signals with a builtin antenna?)

Re:It'll probably never happen..but I'd like

[konfoo]

Already been done (3 years ago). Unfortunately it never made it to market.

Re:It'll probably never happen..but I'd like

[fupeg]

That would be awesome. HDTV is especially nice on my laptop's 1280x800 widescreen display. As it is, I'm stuck with Windows Media HD.

Re:It'll probably never happen..but I'd like

[tji]

I have never heard of a PCMCIA version (the tuners are physically too large to fit in a PCMCIA form, you would still need some external dongle + antenna).

But, there is a USB 2.0 version, The Sasem OnAir USB HDTV device: http://www.usbhdtv.com/

I have heard mixed reviews of the software, but I have no direct experience with it. Of course, it's Windows only, so it is a no-go for my PowerBook anyway.

Amazing

[L. VeGas]

The good news is, with the supplied antenna, you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!

Getting TV with an antenna? For free? Well, that sure would be nice, but I can't imagine it happening in my lifetime.

Re:Amazing

[CaseyB]

"No cable box necessary--uses ``RF'' technology to capture signals right out of the air!
You pay NO cable fees because you're NOT getting cable!!!
You pay NO satellite fees because you DON'T use satellite signals!!!"

Only $5!!!

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't laugh. In some countries you have to pay a license to own a TV (if it has a tuner).

For instance in Finland, the most backward information society country with this regard, you have to pay for your TV even if you don't watch that YLE (public broadcasting joint, kind of like the BBC) stuff AT ALL. It's enforced by inspectors of Ficora who have no real power over anything. They can't enter your apartment, but if you deny access they'll get suspicious.

This TV-Gestapo gathers the protection money of 186 euros per year to "provide publicly funded channels for everyone". Not to mention paying for politically-motivated titles for YLE bosses.

So if people could get away with high-quality TV reception without using the wall antenna jack (=no visible wires to your computer), it would be great! You could let the inspectors in and there would be nothing for them to see!

And why is this 186 euros per year not included in the price of a TV set? Don't ask me. Why don't they take names when you buy the TV set? Don't ask me. Maybe they make more money by burning the people who get caught with the ILLEGAL possession of a TV TUNER (sounds like China?).

This should go as +5 Funny, +5 Sad, +5 Ripley's.

..out of the air for free!..

[burgburgburg]

you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!

Unfortunately, due to the new PPFB(Perpetual Profits for Broadcasters) Act of 2004, you can't actually watch any of the programming without paying a weekly license fee and providing a DNA sample to ease future prosecutions.

Re:..out of the air for free!..

[L3on]

Interesting!? More like hillarious... I'm amazed the FCC hasn't proposed such an Act yet.

Re:..out of the air for free!..

[BRSQUIRRL]

Don't forget about the Corporate Revenue Assurance Program (CRAP), where you can be prosecuted for such unthinkable, terroristic acts as NOT SUBSCRIBING to cable/satellite TV at all!! Oh, the humanity!!!

what resolution?

[Lord Ender]

What resolution would my monitor or projector have to be so that I could watch HDTV at its full resolution without having to downsample? This is more of a HDTV in general question than an ATI-specific one.

Re:what resolution?

[bofkentucky]

1080i is 1920 px wide x 1080 px wide
720p is 1280 px wide x 720 px high

Re:what resolution?

[Zardus]

Offtopic relating to the story itself, but about your comment: isn't the 9in1 card a standard USB Mass Storage device? A quick google reveals that people have it working in Linux.

Re:what resolution?

[KrackHouse]

There are two versions of HDTV. 1080i which is 1920x1080 interlaced and 720p - 1280x720. I have my computer plugged into my HDTV and your best bet is to run it at 1280x720. If you have an Xbox there are a few games in HD but most of those run at 720p. Keep in mind that most "HDTVs" don't get anywhere near 1920x1080 especially the plasmas. Watch out for EDTVs, they're not high res displays.

Re:what resolution?

[The Wicked Priest]

EDTVs are not considered "high definition", but they're certainly "high res", compared to NTSC sets. And at normal viewing distances, most people are hard-pressed to tell the difference.

Print Article Link and some thoughts

[aardwolf204]

Print Article Link

ATI's goal is to offer a complete HDTV solution for an MSRP of $199. The package will include the HDTV Wonder, a Remote Wonder and a yet to be determined antenna. Throw in a potent Multimedia Center 9 and you have the makings for a sweet HDTV experience. To get the full experience of the card, users will need to use it in conjunction with an ATI graphics card to take advantage of such features as ThruView and Video Desktop, but the card will work with other DirectX 9 compatible OEM products otherwise.

Too bad MythPC's track record for supporting ATI hardware hasn't been the greatest. If your on the windows side of the fence I suggest looking at Media Portal. Its fairly new to the HTPC scene but looks promising and works with just about any card.

Being a Radeon 7500 All in Wonder user I'm very happy to see the HDTV Wonder as a PCI card. I was sure when I bought my AGP 7500 AIW it was going to be the last card I would need in a very long time.

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[JTMON]

Both MythTV and Media Portal have EPGs that suck bigtime. Guideplus has no equal currently imo, you can check more listings etc and it's not done in bright kid like playschool colors or blocks. I hate ATI's easylook as well. Someday we won't all try to be like Microsofts media center edition software...why the HELL would people imitate THEM?!

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[dameron]

Too bad MythPC's track record for supporting ATI hardware hasn't been the greatest.

Oh, yeah, and that's MythPC's fault...

-dameron

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[spronk]

How exactly does Myths EPG suck? It has the shows, their times, their catagories (color coded even). It also contains title, subtitle, descriptions, start/end/run time. It can show you a video preview of what's on, allow you to chanegs channels or schedule a program to be recorded. All only with the arrow keys, select and menu.

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[spronk]

Support of ATIs hardware has nothing to do with Myth and everything to do with drivers. The All in Wonder line of cards is universally accepted as the crappiest line of caputre devices ever made even on Linux.

As long as they have proper Linux drivers, which since it's ATI it will not, it'll work fine.

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Someday we won't all try to be like Microsofts media center edition software...why the HELL would people imitate THEM?!

because Microsoft owns 97% of the media PC market...
or simply because people prefer an informal, easy-on-the-eyes, easy-to-use, GUI for media play, and not a cubicle gray Linux desktop?

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[JTMON]

It sux IMO because of the size of the blocks, the candy ass colors all done up like MS media edition..and I can see MORE of the guide using guideplus...

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[JTMON]

Umm ya, they own 97% of the desktop OS market...try to get your facts straight...most of those desktops ARE NOT media center pcs. Why not go with the market leader in the area you are referring too?! That's like following a car companies paint manufacturer cause you like the car. Whose sold more and has the EPG market?! ATI and guide+ have....follow the correct leader..

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[ian mills]

you realize that the size of the blocks is configurable right? as are the colors. Mythtv->setup->tv settings->program guide

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[ian mills]

Are you referring to MythTV? Because Mythtv has very little todo with what cards are supported in linux. In any case the Ati TV wonder VE is supported, so don't claim ATi cards aren't supported, because the stand alone ones are, just not the all-in-wonder cards.

Re:Print Article Link and some thoughts

[OneDeeTenTee]

For most people the distinction makes no differance. They only know (or care) about the fact that they can't do what they want with MythTV.

Re:Bittorrent is just going to love this!

[mfh]

Guybrush Threepwood would love this Bittorrent comment you made!

Interesting......

[acoustix]

Did anyone else catch this part?:

"you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!"

Just like we've been able to do with HDTV for years now!

-Nick

Re:Interesting......

[JTMON]

Ya, the point is u can do it with your pc, been doing that for years??! Maybe with your tin foil hat?

And as usual...

[Pivot]

- it is crapped by some stupid user interface some marketing guy or even a nerd at ATI though was really cool, but makes the viewer application look like a boombox on steroids.

Re:And as usual...

[LokiSteve]

You forgot, backed by an application that will most likely break when ever it feels like it. I have an Ati TV Wonder, oldest app version available requires task manager to close it 2/3s of the time, second oldest bitches about me not having Radeon drivers installed (no shit, I have a GF4!), and the newest version won't even get past the MSI screen. As far back as I can remember, Ati has never been able to build its software to the level where its hardware is.

and no linux drivers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I'm still waiting for Linux drivers for the tv input portion of my Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO (the "7200" now).

What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[Anonymous Coward]

If only you could get a card that could act like your cable box. I can't get my digital channels on my computer, sux0r.

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[JTMON]

RTFA it has a connection to accept digital signals as well now...

-The 20 second rule and 1 minute post limiting stifle conversation....get them the fuck outta here!!!

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[dunc78]

RTFAMT (more thoroughly) it has a digital over the air tuner for up to 75 over the air channels and it has another connector for *analog cable/antenna* not digital cable. Hence, to receive ones analog cable channels, not digital channels.

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[JTMON]

It decodes digital TV signals like your cable box. It doesn't tune enough channels though. Older TVs don't go above channel 100 but they still could decode the signals there if the tuner supported that many channels...not all signals are digital..the AIW will work for the non digital..the digital on this picks up the digital channels..and the hdtv handles the hdtv ones...get it now?

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[dunc78]

The fact that older TV's don't go above channel 100 is irrelevant to this discussion because cable boxes decode the digital content and remodulate it to channel 3 or the baseband data is available at a video input. This device has a 70 channel digital decoder. This is useless with most digital cable because the digital cable content is at channels > 100 (all digital channels in my case). So we are back to the problem again, "what about a card that decodes like a cable box" which this card clearly does not do.

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[JTMON]

u just argued my point exactly. The number of channels the tuner can do is the issue, because if it did into the hundreds of channels, it would be able to decode your cable...or..if your digital channels were in the 1-70 range...it would work just fine...

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[dunc78]

then this is an argument of semantics. I know the demodulation technique is the same. But until I can get the same channels available through my cable box, it does not decode like my cable box (to use the original posters words, yes even though it uses the same decoding technique for a subset of channels) With that said, the original poster probably did RTFA (which was my point to begin with) and realized that this card will receive 0 percent of the digital content that currently is only available to receive with his digital cable box. In other words, his complaint though not strictly correctly worded is a valid complaint.

Re:What about a card that decodes like a cable box

[Anonymous Coward]

There's gotta be some way to hack it to tune to other frequencies I would think. Maybe just shift the range down the channel list. There is either SOME use for it or it will be changed. We are working off assumptions that everyones digital signals come in above 70 just because yours and mine do...be that as it may...I can't see ATI releasing a totally useless feature like that.

Linux and Antenna

[GameGod0]

Any word on Linux support? (GATOS gonna pick this one up as a project maybe? Probably too early to tell....)

Anyways, I read somewhere that HDTV antennas are just regular TV antennas (so don't need a "special" HDTV antenna), just thought I'd throw that out at everyone.

Re:Linux and Antenna

[sexylicious]

They are.
You'll just need what basically amounts to a digital receiver. In other words, the signal still comes in as analog, but your digital receiver picks out the minute voltage changes in the analog signal that correspond to the digital signal.

There is no such thing as a digital antenna. ;)

Re:Linux and Antenna

[kent_eh]

HDTV antennas are just regular TV antennas

Oh sure, next you'll be telling me that I don't need "digital ready" headphones for my CD Walkman?

Re:Linux and Antenna

[awkScooby]

For Linux I just picked up a pchdtv card. It wasn't too bad to set up, and is capturing HDTV off the air ("for free") fine. I need a better antenna, but I knew that when I bought the card.

Re:Linux and Antenna

[Anonymous Coward]

Any word on Linux support? (GATOS gonna pick this one up as a project maybe? Probably too early to tell....)

Let's see whether there'll ever be a Linux distro that will detect an ATI AIW card and install all the pertinent GATOS project code first, OK?

Signed,
Anonymous "About to take a sledge hammer to my AIW Radeon and switch to a separate gfx and TV card" Coward

You Just Don't Get It

[BRock97]

What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we in the real world actually USE (cable and sattelite)<snip>

That is what you get. The ATI comes with a tuner that not only supports OTA but also QAM so you can plug your local cable company's line into the card and get a signal. Now, that doesn't get you the encrypted stuff (ESPNHD, HBO), you will need a box for that, but will get you locals. That is the case for Cox Cable here in Omaha, NE.

AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels.

What are you talking about? If you compare the same content delivered over the air to that delievered via cable, it is all the same digital signal, not marginal quality. End of story. Now, reception of that signal might not be great, but if you do get a lock of about 60% or greater, it is the same. Again, this is my experience here in Omaha.

Re:You Just Don't Get It

[Mad Quacker]

That is what you get. The ATI comes with a tuner that not only supports OTA but also QAM so you can plug your local cable company's line into the card and get a signal.

Not according to ATI, yes the NXT2004 chip does support QAM, but the card does not. The ExtremeTech review explains this.

Re:You Just Don't Get It

[andykuan]

I still haven't seen anything indicating that the HDTV Wonder will do QAM. AFAIK, the only card out there that does both ATSC and QAM is the DViCO Fusion HDTV III-QAM -- and apparently its software is still crap. Is there some spec out there that explicitly states that the ATI card supports QAM? I've been holding back on purchasing the Fusion card until they get their software straightened out, but I'll sooner drop money on an ATI since I'm certain I can return the card if it stinks (unlike the Fusion).

Re:You Just Don't Get It

[Mick Ohrberg]

...it is all the same digital signal, not marginal quality.

Amen. It's just like the discussion that took place some years ago about what digital audio connection was better - coax or TOSlink. I cry bovine droppings.

Re:You Just Don't Get It

[Zathrus]

If you compare the same content delivered over the air to that delievered via cable, it is all the same digital signal, not marginal quality

Er... well... actually...

The OTA signal may be a better signal than whatever the cable company sends out. Cable companies (and the sat companies) are reknowned for bit filtering to reduce the bitrate of both SD and HD signals. That way they can fit more onto the feed. Depending on how they do it, it may also mean that the source feed from the network was converted to analog and back to digital, further reducing the quality.

The only way your cable HDTV feed would look better than an OTA feed is if you have marginal signal quality in the first place or have an older settop box that didn't do a great job with signal acquisition. Or you're doing something really stupid like not using component/DVI/HDMI/firewire to connect the box to your set.

Re:You Just Don't Get It

[thayner]

Just wait a little longer and you'll be able to get an HDTV card that supports CableCard. Support for this is mandated by July 1st. Then you'll no longer need the cable box, just rent the card for a few bucks a month and you'll be able to watch all cable channels encrypted or not.

The days of having to use inferior boxes from the cable companies are almost over.

Re:You Just Don't Get It

[mollyhackit]

In Lincoln, NE with Time Warner you also get all of your neighbors Video On Demand orders for free. This is how my friends mitsu tuner works. He just has basic cable, no digital box.

Re:Extreme Tech has a review up too

[rsrsharma]

So does Anandtech.
Anandtech review

Re:Bittorrent is just going to love this!

[iocat]

He can't mod and post in the same thread. Sorry.

1920x1080

[Wesley Felter]

The highest digital TV resolution is 1920x1080, although it's questionable whether most current content has that much detail.

Re:1920x1080

[TheSync]

Yeah, not at 19.39 Mbps over-the-air. Maybe on DVCAM or the other production quality MPEG-2 formats that are 200 Mbps and up.

HDTV Out of the Air

[L3on]

Those of you living in major cities can easily do this, check http://www.hdtvpub.com/ for listing on what stations you can recieve. It's recommended to buy an antenna which will only run you about $25 from Radio Shack and you can recieve most of the basic programming in HDTV format for free!

Re:HDTV Out of the Air

[andykuan]

AntennaWeb does a great job giving you HDTV reception information. Antennas Direct has a great selection of antennae (antennas?) to choose from and some useful information on which frequency ranges each antenna is useful for.

Re:HDTV Out of the Air

[antdude]

Without the HDTV tuner, then this antenna is useless. Am I correct? Also, is this a small indoor antenna type (e.g., rabbit ears)?

I see a lot of TV channels in my city. Awesome. I need to save up for a new video card with integrated HDTV tuner. No, I don't have a big screen TV.

Obiligaotry

[geomon]

The highest digital TV resolution is 1920x1080, although it's questionable whether most current content has that much detail.

You can be sure that porn will the the first!

Re:Obiligaotry

[nelsonal]

Actually this might be a technlogy that could be bypassed by the pr0n industry. A recent Slate article explained why, it was here a while back, too.

Re:Obiligaotry

[grondu]

You can be sure that porn will the the first!

Butt pimples in high definition will soon be a reality.

HDTV Under Linux

[b1ng0]

What I'd like to see is an HDTV PCI card that just works under Linux. I know there is pcHDTV, which ATI's model is competing with, but there are no Linux HDTV cards that can do over the air, cable and satellite HDTV. When that comes out I will buy it in a second.

Re:HDTV Under Linux

[Radical Rad]

I was excited about ATI's card for a few minutes too until I saw the screenshots and realized that since it is from ATI it will require Microsoft's Windows to do anything with it. I was hoping it was more like a hardware device with maybe a webserver interface to control it and the picture digitally overlayed on an SVGA signal. Thanks for the mention of pcHDTV since I hadn't heard of it before. But you said ther are no Linux HDTV cards that can do air, cable and satellite HDTV. I am clueless about HDTV. Can you tell me why the coaxial input on the pchdtv won't work for all these? And do I understand right that this card will work with normal TV signals just as easily as with HDTV? What exactly is it missing?

Re:HDTV Under Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I was excited about ATI's card for a few minutes too until I saw the screenshots and realized that since it is from ATI it will require Microsoft's Windows to do anything with it. I was hoping it was more like a hardware device with maybe a webserver interface to control it and the picture digitally overlayed on an SVGA signal. Thanks for the mention of pcHDTV since I hadn't heard of it before. But you said ther are no Linux HDTV cards that can do air, cable and satellite HDTV. I am clueless about HDTV. Can you tell me why the coaxial input on the pchdtv won't work for all these? And do I understand right that this card will work with normal TV signals just as easily as with HDTV? What exactly is it missing?

The pcHDTV handles both high-definition and standard-definition TV. The pcHDTV's coax input is only for standard-definition cable, not HDTV over cable.

Holy marketing department batman!

[Mad Quacker]

The story and review reads like this is the first HDTV tuner card for the PC - ever. There are already quite a few, and in fact for $199 this is substandard to the Dvico Fusion III Gold QAM, which was released not to long ago.

This card allows you to intercept QAM modulated HDTV (in addition to 8VSB), which is what you get over cable TV. Regardless of what people say, if you can't literally see the transmitter from your location you are going to need some sort of antenna hardware above and beyond bunny ears, amplified indoor antenna's help - but not that much. Several stations actually protested the 8VSB standard because they understood that very few people were just going to be able to recieve a good signal with just indoor antennas.

With this card I simply plug into my cable, and most of my local HDTV channels are there at 100% signal. Also for the few stations that come in reliably OTA and I can easily switch inputs via software.

Also some representatives of this company have said that they are willing to aid in producing linux drivers, although I have been trying to get some specs and have not heard anything back recently :(

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[Chris Carollo]

Regardless of what people say, if you can't literally see the transmitter from your location you are going to need some sort of antenna hardware above and beyond bunny ears...

Regardless of disregarding what people say, I'm not line-of-sight to any of the four towers broadcasting in the Austin area (I'm probably 10-15 miles from the tower farm) and I can get each of them with between 70-90 signal strength. None of the stations ever break up or have any other reception problems.

The best advice is to just check up on what the tower setup is in your area and visit the AVS forum's Local HDTV Info and Reception section to get info specific to your location.

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[gorbachev]

You wouldn't have a link to a review of Dvico Fusion III Gold QAM, would you?

Product info on manufacturer's website is pretty helpful, but I would love to see some independent reviews as well.

Thanks for the tip, btw.

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[andykuan]

I've been reading up on the user-experience with the F3-QAM on AVS Forum and so far it looks like the software supplied with the cards is terrible. How has it been for you? It seems it's also sensitive to the cable provider to which the card is connected. Until I start reading lots of postings from happy Fusion customers, I'm not about to drop 200 bucks on one of their cards.

I did, however, send a request to newegg to stock the card because I figured I'd might be willing to try the card out through them since they're reasonable about RMAs.

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[mikejz84]

Not only is it NOT a new product to market, it is a flat out RIP OFF!!! Fusion HDTV can do what it does for less. I have a MyHD card that also cost $200, In addition to acting as a simple capture card, mine features both RGBHV and Component HDTV output for both HDTV AND DVD Playback at a ton of different resolutions.

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[no_such_user]

There's some talk about a Fusion driver for the Austrailian DVB-T version of the card (VERY similar to the US ATSC model) over here. I'm not holding my breath though. I've posted to AVSForum, the MythTV list, and the Video4Linux list, looking for anyone who might be interested in building a driver for the card. Since it's cx23881 based, and there's already *some* support (for NTSC capture) for that chipset under linux, I was hoping that someone would be enthusiastic... but so far, no bites on these lists.

Check out the DTB-T list I linked to above. Apparently, those folks have the contacts at Dvico . Good luck!

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[no_such_user]

Oops... check out this link too: MythTV Users List discussion on HDTV support

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[Mad Quacker]

I've been reading up on the user-experience with the F3-QAM on AVS Forum and so far it looks like the software supplied with the cards is terrible. How has it been for you? It seems it's also sensitive to the cable provider to which the card is connected. Until I start reading lots of postings from happy Fusion customers, I'm not about to drop 200 bucks on one of their cards.

It's gotten better with the newer releases. The problem most encountered is that if you try to tune to an encrypted channel it will crash the program, but you can work around this easily. The solution is in that thread. Otherwise it seems stable enough for casual viewing and recording. It even allows you to record all subchannels simultaneously (I'm not sure how other cards handle this) so you can literally record two or more shows with one tuner, depending on where they are located. I've used ATI's products before and I'd say it's on par with the 8.x MMC as far as stability goes. The decoder acceleration seems to work well, an athlon 1300 with a Geforce FX 5200 runs abut 40-50% cpu on a 1080i stream.

I can't comment on other cable providers but it seems to work fine with Comcast.

Of course I hope people just pressure them into speeding up linux driver development, so we don't need their app anymore - just directly record into MythTV :)

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[Mad Quacker]

Nothing offical, but if you search the forums like below you'll find some discussion.

http://www.avsforum.com/

Re:Holy marketing department batman!

[evangellydonut]

The MyHDTV MDP-100 and the newer MDP-120 from MIT are some of the best solutions on the market thus far. It's only useful to review the new ATI tuner against MDP-120. Once AIW-HDTV X800xt or whatever comes out, I might be interested...

Anandtech Review

[Billobob]

Anandtech's Review of the HDTV wonder; Anandtech has been around a while, and is still one of my hardware-review sites of choice.

Re:I got one delivered to me on sunday...

[Anonymous Coward]

I signed for mine as 'Regular Stormie"

Wow

[firstadopter.com]

Wow this is one sweet device, so cheap compared to HDTV Tivo too.

I want dual Satellite decoders on the card

[microbob]

I would really, really like two (hell, I'd settle for one) DirectTV satellite decoder(s) on the card.

Just having over the air HD signals ain't gonna cut it.

-mb

Mac users can do it with a cheap firewire cable...

[Rascasse]

...no other expensive software required. Another reason why I love my Mac.

Right on the money

[jared_hanson]

You are right on the money with your observation. Very little HDTV comes from the cable company in an unencrypted format, so these things are almost strictly OTA solutions.

What is really needed is a card you can stick in your computer that has a CableCARD slot, so it can be authorized to decrypt the digital cable channels. Anyone heard if something like this is in the works?

Re:Right on the money

[dnadig]

My point is that if someone would come out with a COMPONANT encoder that worked, we'd be set. Yes, you would lose a D/A conversion, but MOST people get at least one D/A conversoin between their cable/satellite box and their display anyway (even if they don't know it). Also, I can tell you from extensive testing that I at least can not tell ANY difference between a "direct" digital connection from the STB and a componant transcoded signal...

And QAM doesnt solve the encryption problem. Hence the need for a componant encoder.

Re:Right on the money

[jared_hanson]

Well, component inputs would be nice. I prefer a more integrated solution. With an onboard CableCARD, tuning and channel changing can be done without any external components.

The biggest problem I have with IR and serial controlled set-tops is the lack of any standard between them. IR is iffy at best, you might miss a number in the channel sequence. Serial is supported on only a minority of set-tops.

If you wanted a video input into a PC based HD card, I'd go with Firewire over component in. That way you get HD video and a control channel in one cable.

Re:Right on the money

[Wesley Felter]

What is really needed is a card you can stick in your computer that has a CableCARD slot, so it can be authorized to decrypt the digital cable channels. Anyone heard if something like this is in the works?

It is not in the works because such a card would probably be illegal (see Exhibit B).

Cable Card ready?

[FU_Fish]

Is it cable card ready? I'm not buying an hdtv tuner for my computer until I can use it w/ cable cards and dump the cable box.

Re:Cable Card ready?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. ExtremeTech's article states this.

Re:Bittorrent is just going to love this!

[nelsonal]

I'm curios why a pre cap user cares about mod points at this point, don't you have something in the thousands of mod points. Noticing your post number will the 10 millionth post get a free subscription to /. (Dollars to doughnuts its a GNAA troll or something)?

Re:Mac users can do it with a cheap firewire cable

[kalidasa]

Holy hell. I've been grousing about not being able to find a card like this for my G5, and now here you come and show me I don't need one?

Re:Bittorrent is just going to love this!

[mfh]

Yeah but I was only kidding. ;-)

Linux

[BillyBlaze]

As expected, there are no Linux drivers, and it will probably be a while before they can be made. In the meantime, pcHDTV makes a similar card with open source Linux drivers. Unfortunately, that card has no Windows drivers and can only receive broadcast signals.

Re:Linux

[shocking]

I have one of the Linux pcHDTV cards, and am fairly happy with it. Using the latest version of the software, it works OK on the three stations I can pick up (being in a bad reception area). They're KHOU (CBS), TBN (Urrk!) and UPN. CBS does its movies and some programs (such as CSI) in HiDef, whereas TBN is just plain DTV and UPN has funny blue borders around its 16:9 signal, making the actual program area 4:3.

Xine (pcHDTV's custom version 0.7) is a little flaky, occasionally wedging or segfaulting, but I think that's Xine's fault. I'm running this under RH9 with ALSA drivers so I can reliably use the SPDIF on my nForce MB. I'm using an FX5200 for thr graphics, with the output going to a InFocus X1 projector, with a virtual resolution of 1024x768 scaled by the projector to 800x600. It looks stunning on a projection screen (84" diagonal).

The sound is picked up as Dolby Digital by my home theatre amp, but isn't the full 5.1. I think that's dependent on the station, although I haven't checked the DTV code. Xine is set up to do the AC3 passthrough.

Re:Linux

[OneDeeTenTee]

The pcHDTV card doesn't AFAIK receive analog broadcasts. So if you want both in your PC you need another card.

The Antenna you Need

[TheSync]

If you are serious about receiving over-the-air DTV transmissions and don't have an external antenna, you will want this: The Silver Sensor directional antenna. It is the standard in use by broadcaster labs for in-building reception. You should get a long length of coax so you can point the thing out your window, sometimes you need to get a reflection off of a neighboring building if you are not line-of-sight from the transmitter. Keep poking it around until you get a usable signal.

Broadcast flag?

[code shady]

Does anyone know how, or if, this card will handle the FCC Broadcast flag?

Re:Broadcast flag?

[u-235-sentinel]

I looked at the product and googled around. I didn't see anything suggesting a broadcast flag was supported. Can they sell a product without it ???

Hopefully they won't allow that mockery of fair use to propegate.

If I understand this, the flag doesn't allow you to make a copy of a show. Is this the case? I've heard several people with different opinions on what the flag really does.

Re:Broadcast flag?

[Anonymous Coward]

The flag rule doesn't take effect until July 1 2005. When it does, devices that receive digital TV signals must look for and "give effect" to the flag. "Give effect" means to only output over approved connectors and only allow copies to approved recording methods. The FCC is currently in the process of approving these methods but have stated that copies will be allowed. Copies encrypted and bound to one device (a la TiVo) and outputs to analog outputs are explicitly allowed in the rules.

$350 is cost prohibitive???

[HDlife]

Are you saying that your multi-thousand dollar TV sits idle because you can't afford a $300 HDTV set-top-box?

...or a $30 indoor or outdoor antenna?

That excuse is years out of date.

If $400 is cost prohibitive, then you shouldn't have such a nice TV. Heck, $400 only buys you 6-9 months of crummy cable TV.

MPEG2 Broadcast

[freeduke]

Cool, they already broadcast HDTV in MPEG2 format. Next step is How to rip the signal?

The difference here with TV, is that there may be a mean to directly get the broadcasted signal, instead of capturing the resulting pictures.

That will be time very effective, less power consuming, and this MPEG2 ripped signal could be directly broadcasted through multicast on the internet.

Thanks to HDTV, we won't need HDTV.

Re:I got one delivered to me on sunday...

[setes]

Would that be "Black" Space Stormy?

I'll wait until Apple does it right.

[Anonymous Coward]

another Apple solution coming up I'm sure....call me a fanboy but no one else is seeing the solutions to new technology better than Apple in the PC world I know of, stupid shit like "vendor lock-in" "closed source" "linux will have this in a month" not withstanding. :D

question

[il grecho]

Who provides the best package of hd channels? It's cox vs direct tv i guess. I saw a commercial for some new provider that claims to have the most hd channels. I can't remember the friggin name though..

Re:question

[il grecho]

Voom was the name i couldn't remember :P http://www.voom.com/vhdo/index.jsp

Re:question

[finse]

Do your self a favor, dont get voom.
I tried it, and cancelled in a month. Netflix would be a better choice, and cheaper at that.

Re:question

[il grecho]

badluck with voom eh.. was it poor service? too expensive?

Re:question

[finse]

poor service, lousy selection of channels, poor reception, no locals...

Extremetech article inaccuracies

[acoustix]

From extremetech:

"SDTV is often painful to watch compared to the superior image quality of DVD movies"

Um...they're basically the same resolution. 480 compared to 525 (and technically you don't get the full 525). They should probably take a look at that.

-Nick

Re:Extremetech article inaccuracies

[Steve525]

Actually the article is correct. Over-the-air SDTV (or anything else that comes in your RF or composite cable, such as VHS or cable) is limited in its resolution, particularly when it comes to colors. This is because color TV was a hack on the previous B&W TV technology in order to keep the technologies compatible. While it was a brilliant way to keep compatibility, it means that the color information is very bandwidth limited. I think the color information has about half the resolution as the B&W information. In addition separating the color information from the B&W information is non-trivial, hence the need for such things as 3-line comb filters.

This why S-video and component connections provide a better signal than a composite connection from a DVD player.

Re:Extremetech article inaccuracies

[Jeremy Erwin]

There are two different standards for over the air television transmission in the United States: NTSC and ATSC. NTSC is the older standard, and provides for 525 interlaced lines of resolution, transmitted in an analogue fashion, with a funny mechanism for splicing a low quality color signal onto a standard originally designed for monochrome television. Thus the perennial joke-- NTSC stands for "Never the same color."

ATSC is a mechanism for delivering a MPEG stream over the airwaves. This stream can be High Resolution (HDTV), medium resolution (EDTV), or low Resolution (SDTV). Generally HDTV delivers 720 lines, or 1080 interlaced lines; EDTV, 480 lines, and SDTV, 480 interlaced lines of resolution.

SDTV is essentially equivalent to a DVD. Its color components are much more stable than a NTSC broadcast, assuming that you didn't try to go the cheap route, and once again commingle the signals on a composite or Y/C connection.

Re:Extremetech article inaccuracies

[TheSync]

While the resolution might be the same, it is true that DVDs are generally compressed better than SDTV both in terms of overall bitrate and also in terms of encoding quality. SDTV is usually encoded "on-the-fly," DVD encoding is a multi-pass slow non-real-time process that can do a better job.

On the other hand, over-the-air SDTV is generally better than DBS SDTV, because DBS will drop down to 2-3 Mbps whereas over-the-air SDTV is 4-5 Mbps.

Re:Extremetech article inaccuracies

[ian mills]

The chroma channel on DVDs is also only half the resolution of the luminance channel so that argument isn't really valid. DVDs are stored in 4:2:0 format.

this article explains it nicely in the chroma formats paragraph a little way down. The problem has more todo with seperating the two channels and analog signal loss.

Re:Extremetech article inaccuracies

[Steve525]

Thanks. I did not know that. You really do learn something every day.

What we need now

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Is a card with hardware MPEG4 encoding/decoding, HDTV CABLE tuner as well as over-the-air, MythTV support (implying linux support). If any of those things are missing it's really not worth it to buy.

YOU don't get it

[gr8_phk]

What we NEED is people to stop paying to watch television. In my area there are 8 stations available. Just think if the broadcasters used multiple subchannels - I could have 8*6 = 48 shows all for no monthly bill. FOX should provide their news,sports,kids,and regular channels in HDTV all the time. Why don't they? Because people like YOU like to pay to watch TV. They like getting paid by both advertisers and the cable companies. Vote with your wallet.

Actually, I think this potential abundance of channels is why they are using the FCC to get broadcasters to be decent - Profanity will soon be the only thing cable has going for it.

Re:YOU don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to pay for television.

I simply liberate all my television shows from Suprnova. It's fully within my fair use rights, and there are no commercials to get in the way.

:..out of the air for free!..Marshmellow Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unfortunately, due to the new PPFB(Perpetual Profits for Broadcasters) Act of 2004, you can't actually watch any of the programming without paying a weekly license fee..."

As opposed to the TV tax that Britians have to pay.
Americans are just plain spoiled. Gas goes up, they complain. Pay money towards TV, complain. Jobs outsourced, complain. BTW I bet you guys hate cable. Monthly LICENSE FEE you know.

So can PC users

[DHR]

dctrecord

ob simpsons quote

[ithmus]

"You can't just skip the commercials, thats like stealing TV!" --Homer.

"for free!" if your mind has no value

[SlideGuitar]

"Free software is only free if your time has no value..." and free TV is only free if space in your brain has no value.

HTDV vs. Broadband

[upsidedown_duck]

Last night, PBS had another one of those "digital TV is the future" specials ironically mentioning how long and expensive the upgrade has been for them...but how affordable it will be for us all. Now, some choice quotes: "digital HTDV-capable TVs can be had for as little as $700" (!) or "set-top boxes for analog TVs can be had for as little as $600" (!). They are hoping for 85% household penetration within a few years.

I am still baffled, somewhat, by the digital TV "revolution." I have seen digital cable and its compression artifacts. My luck with DirecTV has been a bit better, with only dropouts during very heavy rain. Regardless, I do not own a digital TV, no longer have DirecTV (it's $400/year, you know), and now have a regular broadcast antenna. The news available on the WWW is better than most TV news and The News Hour on PBS is better than all cable news, which leaves me wondering why I should ever invest in digital TV at all (missing only The News Hour and a very small number of other shows), when I can bypass all of it in favor of getting a better Internet connection and keep using my VCR/DVD player for rented/purchased movies.

Re:HTDV vs. Broadband

[TheSync]

Over-the-air standard-definition DTV is generally done at higher bitrates than DBS compression.

You don't really need a DTV television to watch standard-definition DTV, you can just buy a DTV receiver and hook it into your analog TV. Some will even downconvert high-definition TV to your analog TV set. Both will look better than analog TV.

If you want to watch high-definition TV and see all the detail, you will need a television set with HD resolution, which will be pricey ($1500 and up).

I watch HD DTV with a separate DTV reciever and an unused computer monitor. Most DTV receivers will have an RGB/VGA output. No, it isn't like my friend's 65 inch projection HD display, but cool to watch anyway.

Many over-the-air DTV broadcasters will have multiple standard-definition vidoe feeds per TV channel. Public television stations do this a lot, sometimes having four different video feeds per television channel during the day, and going down to one standard-def and one hi-def feed during prime-time.

For example, some PBS member stations will run a multicast with PBS Kids (kids shows) and PBS You (continuing education), along with their regular local standard-def video stream on their DTV channel during the day.

Re:HTDV vs. Broadband

[upsidedown_duck]

Everything you said is true, but when will the burden of upgrading to DTV be less than $200? Everyone has a limit where moving to new technology for the sake of it is simply too expensive. My limit right now is very low, especially considering all the other technologies competing for my money, such as cell phones, PDAs, portable MP3 players, various subscriptions, etc. Exactly how much disposable income to broadcasters think I will put towards their digital TV project?

Unless a nominally low cost for a new digital TV is reached, I will keep my analog TV going until it dies of old age. If my analog TV stops working due to a mandatory switch to all-digital broadcasting, and digital TV is still too expensive, then I will very likely simply do without a TV at all. It isn't like I have magic money trees for spending on all the new technology. I really hope the businesses aren't betting on people abusing their credit cards forever, which is currently the source for a lot of their income, right now.

Re:HTDV vs. Broadband

[The Wicked Priest]

ATSC set-top boxes can be had for as little as $150. That's what I paid for mine two days ago. Granted, it was a discontinued demo unit; but that $600 figure is strangely outdated. A variety of new models are available at $300. And they'll only get cheaper -- they're basically the same technology as DVD players, needing a little more processing power, but without the moving parts.

Standard-definition digital cable, DirecTV, etc. shouldn't be lumped together with HDTV. Even standard-def digital broadcasts are far superior, and quite noticeably better than analog. (DirecTV is only 480x480 resolution on most channels, while SD OTA starts at 704x480, and HD starts at 1280x720.) Despite which, my switch from analog Comcast to DirecTV in 2000 was a huge improvement in picture quality.

Re:HTDV vs. Broadband

[upsidedown_duck]

ATSC set-top boxes can be had for as little as $150. That's what I paid for mine two days ago. Granted, it was a discontinued demo unit; but that $600 figure is strangely outdated. A variety of new models are available at $300.

This is encouraging. If I can get a $39 digital HDTV receiver one day, then I just may upgrade. Even if the picture resolution isn't as high, due to my old analog TV, at least I could continue watching the few shows I like. I think they have to reach the $50 threshold before the FCC deadline, though, because analog TV is "good enough" for a lot of purposes and forced upgrades don't bode well for many people.

Linux drivers ?

[Etyenne]

Off course there's none, but we may ask.

As a side note, which card do people recommend to watch HDTV with Linux ?

Re:Linux drivers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a side note, which card do people recommend to watch HDTV with Linux ?

The pcHDTV.

Just wait...

[rock_climbing_guy]

Just wait until Jack Valenti hears that you can get movies on your computer out of thin air in HD resolution. He'll flip out.

Those computers must be confiscated from those filthy pirates.

Re:Just wait...

[JTMON]

We'll all have to live in farraday(sp?) cages

Re:Just wait...

[Paulrothrock]

Filthy pirateses. Evil nasty pirateses. The stoles our movies and we wants them! [/gollum]

Hardware links

[Darth Cider]

I've been researching chipsets for digital TV. Here are my links to current hardware products:

STMicroelectronics System on Chip (2) Get Linux here
ATI Xilleon 220 (Products)
Sigma Designs Digital Media Processors (Products)
IBM PowerPC405 STBxx (Zarlink [2], Araneo)
Texas Instruments DM642 DSP (i3 Mood Box , X-Designs Flikit + Softier MediaLinux)
NEC EMMArchitecture2 (Galaxis + LinuxTV , PRISMIQ + Linux)
Equator Technologies BSP-15 boards
Via CN400 (Mini-ITX Board), PM800 and PM880 (w/ HDTV for Pentium 4) , ShowShifter HMN, Soyo Multimedia Ready Motherboard (with TV Tuner, $129.99)
Toshiba TX System RISC (MontaVista Linux)
Windows chipsets:
Intel 815 VisionPlus terrestrial box (Korean OEM)
AMD Geode (CoCom)
ARM (Samsung, etc.)
Digeo X-Stream (Paul Allen company)

HDTV card buyers guide link

[j_dot_bomb]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=207262&highlight=wintvhd

avsforum is great for home theater pc

I still dont trust ATI. I just bought a 9000 PRO AIW after some good reviews. All their drivers are WHQL certified now. So at least standard video / multiple out stuff dosent cause crashes. But the Tv-on-demand software causes 100% cpu utilization on a 2ghz p4, and often crashes. I saw a whole forum/poll for snapstream where people were buying the Hauppauge 250 or 350 to replace various ATI AIW cards. Like 90% were very happy with the switch (well they just use the AIW as a video card)

Re:HDTV card buyers guide link

[JTMON]

I've had AIW cards using the TV on demand since the first one and I've never had a problem really except hard drive space issues...sometimes it would crash right on launch but really not that often.

Captured from HDTV but not quite the smae thing

[Chris Pimlott]

Most HDTV captures (unless you're talking about the raw transport stream ones, which are pretty huge (4-6 gigs)) are scaled down from native HDTV resolution (usually 1280x720) to around half that. 640x368 and 624x352 are some common resolutions.

Also, most rips nowadays are encoded with XVID, although some people still use DivX.

Does History Channel Come in HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

If i bought this card could i watch the history channel w/o having to get cable tv?

Re:Does History Channel Come in HDTV?

[JustNiz]

not unless you also run windows... :-(
No linux drivers, stupid ATI

Bleeding edge tech?

[Mudcathi]

From the article: "Known for their "TV Wonder" and "All-In-Wonder" series multimedia cards, ATI is a true pioneer in the industry, being one of the first to bring TV to the PC."

That's very interesting, given all those Amiga users who were using genlocks, VideoToasters, and whatnot to manipulate & display TV on their monitors back in 1990. I remember using my $35 garage sale genlock on my $150 Amiga 500 to use a live broadcast TV background for my desktop back before Windows had a desktop background!

Re:Bleeding edge tech?

[gatekeep]

From the article: "Known for their "TV Wonder" and "All-In-Wonder" series multimedia cards, ATI is a true pioneer in the industry, being one of the first to bring TV to the PC."

That's very interesting, given all those Amiga users who were using genlocks, VideoToasters, and whatnot to manipulate & display TV on their monitors back in 1990. I remember using my $35 garage sale genlock on my $150 Amiga 500 to use a live broadcast TV background for my desktop back before Windows had a desktop background!


It's also interesting given that the ATI tv capture cards SUCK. They don't do any mpeg encoding on the card, so if you want to capture and save to disk you can watch your CPU utilization shoot up. The cards made by Hauppage and others do hardware MPEG encoding too. You can even run multiple Hauppage cards in the same box to record multiple channels at once with very little CPU utilization. Having that CPU free means you can play DVDs, games, etc while recording.

We get HDTV Signal

[Anonymous Coward]

Main screen turn on

Legal Issues

[dunc78]

With that said, why aren't tuners available that would unleash all the digital content streaming into my cable jack. Are there legal issues, because if I bought a digital tuner, why would I even let the cable company know that I was receiving digital content and pay the extra cost (unless they use an external filter to filter out the digital channel spectrum). Or do they encrypt the channels in some fasion? I have no idea, just curious because you would wonder why they would not increase the channel capability of this card they designed.

Jeebus, for what that'll cost just get a HDTV TiVo

[microbob]

Heck, that setup will cost 'ya over a grand and maybe closer to a grand and a half.

Why not get a HD-TiVo?

-mb

Well holy hell... you don't need a mac.

[Ayanami Rei]

You can use anything with firewire that can record DV. Even a PC with linux would do.

I HAVE TO GET THAT. I'm such a moron. Thanks FCC!

Re:Well holy hell... you don't need a mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't DV, it's an MPEG2 Transport Stream. DV software won't help you here.

But if there isn't a Linux or windows program to capture MPEG2TS over firewire, writing one shouldn't be that hard.

its not for the PC, its only for Windows

[JustNiz]

Yet another piece of hardware I won't be buying because it has no linux support.

Why do all these comapnies assume people with PC's don't ever run anything other than Windows?

Re:its not for the PC, its only for Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are trying to make money and the majority of users will be running windows. Spending money to develop drivers for linux isn't going to pay off for ATI. Plus, if they do release the drivers they will not be open source and you people will bitch about that... I hear you clamoring for them to release the specifications so someone can write an open source driver. ATI will not do this either, because of patents, and it will decrease the "value" of the software they are providing. Then linux users will say, we want to buy the card without the windows software because we don't need it... That's just another headache for ATI. It's not really worth doing any of the above to draw the slim numbers of customers that will be running linux.

Just buy the linux compatible card and stop bitching. That one doesn't even have windows drivers yay!

But does in run under LINUX

[Anonymous Coward]

If not, I do not care!

these reviewers are "bought"

[leuk_he]

from the review: we encountered a series of various errors and crashes or the software simply hung. This is part user error and part poor interface design, but once you learn the proper steps, the software worked as promised. We think ATI is truly going in the right direction with this, letting users record HDTV shows and back them up on DVD in a few clicks, but the process could be made easier.

If tom said: "MMC stinks and is full of bugs" then he would not get more hardware to review. multi media center keeps getting new features, but only a few of bugs are solved. Ati makes this software availble as upgrades, but the bugs are left there.

Re:Mac users can do it with a cheap firewire cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap... now I can actually do something with that useless iBook that's laying around the house!

Guess I Didn't Get All Of It Either....

[BRock97]

Thanks for the correction. Due to the ol' company firewall, the only info I could find was an ATI press release which mentioned the QAM with the onboard chip; all those review sites are blocked!

Gotta say it

[ChefInnocent]

If you had an Amiga, you could VHS capture much ealier.

Sorry, I know, the Amiga is dead.

still waiting for AIW PCI support

[Anonymous Coward]

phuck ATI... i'm still waiting for support for the AIW PCI cards (and don't tell me about gatos.sourceforge.net)...

news?

[alexq]

haven't there been products out for ages that do this? the hauppauge wintv-hd for one? even the wintv-d? and there was another competitor whose name also began with H, i think, but i may be wrong.

ATI driver developers can't do shit.

[Ayanami Rei]

Every time Windows has ever crashed, it's because of an ATI product and it's shitty drivers.

It's completely unacceptable that my machine crashes because I want to watch TV.

(It's weird because in linux the same products would work fine... like I said, they can't make drivers for shit)

Re:ATI driver developers can't do shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao, yet they currently make better drivers than nvidia. They get the crown again and again..yes their drivers used to suck but that was awhile ago and have been up to par for a long time now so get over your amd bashing...did you ever stop to think maybe it's a windows issue or is it just more fun to try at ATI...maybe when some other company releases an all in one card...ho hum still waiting!!

Even easier.

[Ayanami Rei]

use ddr1394 (or equivalent). Just pipe that crap into mplayer.

Move over, the boat's crowded

[Atario]

Yeah, I was in the same boat as you. I updated every driver and swapped out more or less every component in an attempt to solve the constant blue screens. Eventually what solved it was putting in a bunch of extra fans on a bracket above the card area, blowing directly on the AIW (and other places, just for good measure). I think the thing (the AIW) was just overheating -- the chips were too hot to touch.

WTF

[David_Bloom]

"The first was a slight difference in aspect ratio between the two with the DVD image having a more elongated appearance."

It's called anamorphic widescreen, dumbass.

People who don't understand pixel aspect ratios shouldn't be getting these cards before me. Dammit.

Re:WTF

[Babbster]

It should be noted that 16x9 HDTV signals, like good DVDs, are ALSO in "anamorphic" widescreen (despite it becoming standard, I hate that terminology). That means it's possible it's a software/driver issue (any good PC DVD player should automatically compensate for the "anamorphic" signal when doing PC monitor display) and might not be the fault of the reviewer at all - though, admittedly, the reviewer should probably have been able to explain this and/or fix it. :)

HDTV isnt worth it yet. Here's why

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Most HDTV broadcasts are nothing more than scaled up versions of standard NTSC footage. (
m not talking about your HDTV line doubling)

I'm talking about the taping of actual shows in HDTV.

Most shows that do film in HDTV... They have 1 HDTV camera at best, while the rest are standard NTSC cameras that have their signal scaled up to meet the HDTV standard res. Then they simply claim it as "HDTV" When it is not. Most shows dont even have the HD cameras or editing equiptment. They simply scale it up before sending out the HDTV signal.

The cost for HDTV is too much for even major broadcasters to justify with the small number of HDTV viewers.

DTV's signal has become more and more compressed as they add channels. I recently looked at my fathers DTV signal and thought it looked like Reel Video. It was really bad. Its just so compressed so that they can fit their channels in their limited bandwidth.

Cablevision here claims Digital IO (100$ a month) is HDTV digital cable. When the truth is less than 10 channels are HD. And again you have the problem of shows simply just SCALING UP existing shows, or even NEW shows, claiming their HDTV when they're not.

HDTV is not worth it yet. Its over priced and the cable companies are out of their fucking mind price wise.

Re:HDTV isnt worth it yet. Here's why

[Babbster]

Your description of the hardware situation for TV shows is close but a little deceptive. If a show captures in high-quality (think movie-theater film) analog, then they can create a very high-quality digital master which can then obviously be used as the basis for the eventual 1080i or 720p transmission. As another example, modern DVDs are not being taken directly from film to 480p but instead are going from film to high-definition digital master to 480p. Using high-resolution digital cameras only becomes a big issue when doing live work where you don't have the benefit of having time to develop film and then remaster it in digital.

In short, while there might be some programming that is being up-converted from old 480i/p (analog OR digital) to 720p/1080i, a good many shows can be in "true" HD resolution even if the original source material was analog.

Get a Firewire equipped HDTV Cable Box

[SimonDorfman.com]

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040 426151111599 excerpt: Step 1 - Get the Cable Box! If you have cable, your first step involves calling your provider and requesting a new "Firewire capable" or "IEEE 1394 enabled" HDTV cable box. Even if you don't own an HDTV, all these boxes have S-video out and work perfectly with regular TVs. Most cable companies charge a nominal monthly fee for the box, and provide local stations in high defenition for free (this is the only cost involved). For example, I am on Time Warner Cable, and I pay about $8.00 extra per month, which includes PBS, NBC, ABC, CBS and Discovery HD Theater. Plus, if you subscribe to any premium station, like HBO or Showtime, that price includes the high definition version! Once your provider delivers the box, you just need a Firewire cable long enough to reach your Mac. Any Firewire cable (with the right connectors) will do. I actually used one of Apple's dainty-thin white iPod Firewire cables, and it worked like a charm when run to my Aluminum 15" PowerBook.

Check out avsforum in you're interested...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been enjoying a MyHD-120 card for many months. Unfortunately, Windoze only,but very nice. Web based recording via titanTV, DVI output. I highly recommend it. The picture quality for OTA is outstanding. Plus you can record movies, edit out the commercials and reencode with Xvid. I lower the resolution down to 1024 (still a lot better than DVD) and files that fit on single DVDs.

For a very detailed discussion of HDTV equipment and software for computers I would highly recommend avsforum.com.

consider the price of a HDTV TV

[koan]

around 2500$ is the cheapest one Ive seen so these cards are great in the sense you can get high def without having to pay 5000$'s

I wonder if subliminal messages work better on high def....

NOT 1920x1080

[cryptor3]

1920x1080 is an interlaced format. If you watched TV on your monitor at this resolution, you'd have to perform deinterlacing, which causes information to be lost anyways, so it's basically like downsampling. I would go with the 720p resolution of 1280x720 which is not interlaced.

Therefore, a 1280 wide resolution would be recommended.

I live in a dead zone you insensitive clod!

[otis wildflower]

Seriously, I can't get OTA broadcast TV without breaking my lease and possibly a local ordinance: I live in a trough among steep hills.

Too bad I can't get HD over firewire from my cable box :(

Aint gonna mean squat

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I get Gomer in HD? How 'bout Mr. Ed?
Will it stretch the Hillbillies to fit the
screen? That would SUCK!

Elmo Bodine

This is a first?

[shplorb]

The way this is being talked about it's like it's some revolutionary new thing.

In the developed world, DTV has been going for years now. I have a HDTV tuner card for DVB-T in my PC - records the raw MPEG2 stream being broadcast over the air. 720p broadcasts look friggin' sweet on my 21" Sony. 1080i looks great too, but because it's a progressive display it doesn't look as wonderful and fluid as progressive does. It just gets better and better as more and more content is shot in digital.

.au differs from the DVB standard slightly I believe, in that we use AC3 audio rather than MPEG audio. At first it's a bit of a bummer because the hardware wasn't available as fast, cheap and plentifully as we'd have liked, though the great benefit is that you can just spit the raw audio stream straight out into your home theatre receiver - pure digital quality!

Did someone say TV BT?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tvt.milfclan.com

Re:Jeebus, for what that'll cost just get a HDTV T

[Glendale2x]

Heck, that setup will cost 'ya over a grand and maybe closer to a grand and a half.

Why not get a HD-TiVo?

Because there is no such thing besides the DirecTV model; you need a DirecTV account to use it.

For the rest of us who want to record HD, I can get these channels for free in my area and timeshift them. Most places have the same channels, and more, available OTA.

OTA HDTV is a great resource, but it seems most people aren't aware of it. Yes, I understand there are conditions where the antenna won't work, but many don't even try. They instead think that whatever cable/DBS feeds them is all they can get.

If you have a HD capable DBS unit, chances are there's an OTA tuner in there, too. Try it. You might be surprised how good OTA HD really is.

Do the math...

[Kjella]

...and you realize it can't work. That would make a full CD 2 hours. What does that sound like? Oh, a DVD rip, and a 1CD rip at that. So you can compress a HD stream to the same size as a SD stream without losing the "HD" part? I don't think so.

I believe what you've looked at are either HD downscales or the incredibly stupid SD upscales. A good HDTV rip + AC3 sound would usually be at around 1DVD+/-R per movie. That would make 1 hour shows weigh in at about 2gb, as xvid/divx/wmv9...

Of course, scaling down from HDTV you should be able to get a damn nice SD picture, much better than digital cable. But it's still nothing like true HDTV...

Kjella

Recompression issues

[trezor]

Let's see:

1. Digital to digital-recompression to decompression to analog.
2. Digital to analog to digital to digital recompression to decompression to analog.

Actually those last steps doesn't matter. If you are to recompress a precompressed digital source, any noise you add will confuse and lower the efficiency of the compression algoritm, and thus adding extra "noise".

You may not see it, like some people can't hear the compression of a 128 kbps MP3, but it's still unwanted, excess loss.

I detest the industry for attempting to locking consumers out from the technology they buy. Hey guys, you sold it to me. Now it's my stuff, you hear?

HMO??

[Anonymous Coward]

Health Managment Organization?? Isn't that a bit much to ask from DTV?

bull.

[Ayanami Rei]

I downloaded some open-source WDM drivers for my ATI WinTV card (forget about the AIW, never went near the thing) that worked a hundred times better, and they don't have access to ATI's docs!

WTF?

And where was I bashing AMD, by the way? I don't hate ATI, I hate their non-pro products, especially when it comes to keeping Windows from dying. Nothing can save you from a shitty driver that assumes an UP and no-APIC environment, that's NOT windows' fault.

ATI does have good support for their current RV3xx cards and Fire series, but I don't feel they are as concerned with providing stable drivers for media conversion. They don't make any of those chips, and they don't seem to try to use the driver kits that those chipmakers send, instead going their own way (and doing not a very good job). They should be outsourcing that driver work to Pinnacle or Osprey or somebody that knows what they are doing, and can integrate into Windows WDM properly for use in 3rd party media apps.