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.

For HDTV n00bs...

[darth_MALL]

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

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: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.

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

[Rascasse]

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

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: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 :-).

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)

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!