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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!"
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.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
1/2 hour show per DVD?
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.
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!
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.
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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).
... and HMO is now -free- on standalone TiVo's.
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
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).
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Does anyone know how, or if, this card will handle the FCC Broadcast flag?
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
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.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
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!
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb