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Uncompressed TV Video Over USB 2.0 from ATI

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the want-to-build-a-mythtv-box dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ever wanted to watch TV on your notebook computer? Well, you used to be stuck with an external TV tuner that will usually compress the video so much to squeeze it down the USB interface, that it's not worth watching. But the new ATI TV Wonder manages to push uncompressed video down the USB 2.0 interface, producing superb image quality. It also comes with ATI's suite of multimedia applications and utilities. The reviewer reckons it's a great unit, although a little bit on the expensive side."

7 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Dupe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    See this story.

    *Sighs for some dupe checking*

    1. Re:Dupe by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sure... duping happens. Sure... I can understand it happening even as frequent as it does. with all of the Mods and such. But notice it is almost ALWAYS CmdrTaco.

      On a slightly unrelated note, expect to see this modded into the ground, right before my account becomes mysteriously banned.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  2. Nothing for you to see here. Move along. by SEWilco · · Score: 5, Funny
    Generally the problem is that the TV signal is not worth watching before any compression.

    (Oddly, /. itself at first thought that I should not see this article either...)

  3. What type of tuner by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is this, TV only or is it Cable as well. Potential problem, even if it has cable capabilities is that cable companies are moving towards all digital, where you must use thier boxes. However, presently (at least in MD) you can still get the old signal. FREE (don't tell Comcast), if you have broadband

  4. Watch more TV with ATI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdot : Commercials for nerds, it's money that matters.

  5. Not Great by Jozer99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, using uncompressed video over USB just uses lots of bandwidth and processor power, both to encode the signal in software for PVR, and to control the USB bus. Sometimes a good MPEG2 codec can look great AND be used for PVR purposes without sending your P4 or Athalon XP to 100% usage and filling up your RAM and diskspace with gigantic uncompressed video. I had a card that used uncompressed video, and one with hardware compression, trust me, there is no compairison in terms of performace. My dream would be a USB tuner with a decent and flexable encoder chip, so that I could stream video as MPEG1, MPEG2, DivX or XviD.

  6. some people... by ashpool7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... want uncompressed signal so they can do more than dumb stuff like record TV and play it back.

    Some people, like myself, want uncompressed video so we can load it into a editor, chop out all the commercials, and encode it with DivX or Ogg Theora or something else. Or write it out to a DVD. Now they don't have to Fast Forward through the commercials.

    Here's another thing some people like to do. Hook up their VCR to the capture card, put in some old VHS tapes, and start recording. Then they can edit it, arrange the clips, and write it back to a DVD so it doesn't get degraded. The Macintosh is amazingly good at this sort of thing, particularly with DV cameras (if you don't have one, use a Formac Studio TVR).

    Anyway, you can't do any of these things with MPEG, because most editors don't do MPEG editing. Final Cut Pro and Premiere don't even do it (I've tried with v3 and v6 respectively). Why? Because it's lossy!

    Uncompressed, non-lossy video is good, particularly in open formats. Just because it doesn't suit your application doesn't make it any less cool.