HDTV Onto a PC Through FireWire?

William George asks: "As of April 1st, 2004 it has been required that all cable companies in the United States be able to provide customers, upon request, with a High Definition set-top box with IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connectivity (e-CFR Part 76.640 Section 4 Subsection i). This was designed to allow easier connections between modern TVs, set-top boxes, and digital PVRs. However, it should also allow for a connection to a computer... at least in theory. Well, I am out to test that theory. After extended communication with my local cable company (CableONE) they have arranged to send out a pair of techs to help me try this out. The arrangement is for them to come out on September 22, and with phone support from their corporate offices and Motorola (the company that provides their set-top boxes) we are going to see if it will work." "I have a Windows XP-based PC, and I recently added a 3-port FireWire card specifically to test this out. There is only one problem: software. Macs apparently have software built in for this, but I am having trouble finding a solution for Windows (Linux would be worth trying too, but I have not had any experience with it before). Does anyone out there know of any software for Windows that allows viewing and/or recording of an MPEG-2 transport stream over a FireWire connection? I found one website with a trial version of some software available for download, and I think it might have even been mentioned in a previous Slashdot post. However, their software crashed during installation even though my hardware meets their stated requirements and my FireWire card is based on a TI (Texas Instruments) chipset as they specify. Contact to their tech support resulted in instructions to try again, which I did with no luck. From reading their software description, however, it looks like it is only designed to store the video recording on a computer and then display it back to a TV - which is not what I need anyway. I want to get rid of the TV completely and allow for viewing and recording of pure, digital HDTV directly on a PC. Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated, and if this works I will set up a website with instructions on how to do it yourself!"

Comments

HDTV over firewire

[mknewman]

I wonder if this ruling applies to DirecTV, Dish and VOOOM also? I know the Tivo HDTV unit has USB 2.0 but no firewire. Marc

Re:HDTV over firewire

[paul_friedman]

These guys: http://169time.com/ will add FireWire to your DirecTV, Dish STBs so that you can do this. They also provide a How-To guide for recording in High-Def.

Re:What about a PCI solution?

[mknewman]

Notice in the "Key Buying Points: S-video, Composite and audio inputs, Dual RF Inputs both HDTV compatible " There is no digital inputs. The beauty of the Firewire/USB2.0 approach is that it's 100% digital. Marc

Re:What about a PCI solution?

[Jherico]

That almost certainly won't work. Cable carried HDTV content is not in the same format as airwave carried HDTV content. The coaxial inputs on the card you suggest will probably not be able to interpret the cable signal and convert it to HDTV data. In many areas the HD content available over a cable box is going to be more extensive that what you will get over an antenna. On the other hand most cable companies will encrypt all the channels except the over the air ones (which they are prevented by law from encrypting) meaning the firewire data is worthless anyway.

I haven't found a solution yet for capturing the HDTV data over the firewire port yet, though I have a mac for this purpose. The mac is unable to render the HD content because its an old G4 400Mhz, but it can stream it to disk just fine and I'm able to use a cross platform tool to render the saves streams on my PC. In practice this ends up being more trouble than I'm usually willing to go through, since I can't actually do this for movies (because of the encryption as stated above) but its what I've got. This does at least let you play the MPEG-2 streams on a PC.

These are not the forums you are looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

You should probably head on over to the avsforum.com and spend a few days searching and reading there. You'll find out almost all you need to know if you learn how to navigate (and learn how to protect your eyes from the wicked garish color scheme). The avsforum is large and noisy, but has tons and tons of gems for hdtv geeks.

For example, you'll find out that you won't get your cable company's on screen display through the firewire port of the motorola box, which may be a serious problem for you*. You'll also find a big community of PC users hashing out the same firewire-to-PC issues you are.

*They may have updated the box to fix this, and this may be a comcast-only problem.

The broadcast flag may prevent this

[__david__]

Next year, when manufacturers are required to implement the broadcast flag, you will not be able to use your computer to view programs that are protected (channel 7 in LA (ABC) now sets the broadcast flag for almost all content). This is because protected content is required to be transmitted accross 1394 encrypted by DTCP (an encryption/key management standard). The DTCP license explicitly disallows the use of the standard on a computer. Specifically, it does not allow unencrpyted data to go across a PCI bus which rules out all firewire interfaces to your computer.

You can only get the details of DTCP if you sign a contract that says you owe them $8,000,000 if you leak any details of the standard.

So you will be SOL as more and more programs get the broadcast flag.

-David

Here you go

[LiNT_]

Read here and here. The second link is mainly for Mac's but also has a bunch of relevant information.

I also suggest you ask further questions on this topic over at the AVS forum. Slashdot is great but for this type of thing, you'll get better info over there.

Bad news about the VividLogic software

[3waygeek]

I've had a Motorola DCT-6200 box for about 6 months now, and spent quite a bit of time over at AVSforum checking out the various threads related to HD recording. One thing to be aware of is that you need proper firmware on the Moto box; you need at least version 7.10 for proper 1394 support. I bring this up because I was stuck with version 7.07 until about a month ago, when I was upgraded to 7.15; the upgrade is downloaded off the cable, so it has to be instigated by the provider (something to keep in mind when the techs visit you on Wednesday).

Bummer about the VividLogic software -- I've been considering it for some time, and have almost bought it on several occasions. However, given your experiences and those of AVSforum members that have had similar outcomes, I'll probably give it a miss.

In my spare time, I've been working (very slowly) on an XP driver for the DCT-6200 boxes; it's going slowly because there's not much doc for streaming video drivers, even less doc for MS's AV/C and 1394 drivers, and none at all for the DCT-6200's AV/C capabilities (i.e. what commands the box recognizes, etc.).

I've been recording HD content to a Mac OS X box for some time using the free VirtualDVHS app that's part of the Apple Firewire SDK mentioned in another post. You can pick up an old blue & white G3 Mac (the oldest/cheapest Mac that can handle the job) for a few hundred off eBay; that's what I did. Note that the Mac solution works even with the old 7.07 firmware.

You mentioned Linux -- you might want to check out the lib1394 project. Some people over at AVSforum have reported success using it with the Moto boxes.