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pcHDTV Card Available, Legal for Now
corby writes "pcHDTV has announced that their new HD-3000 Hi Definition Television Card will be shipping tomorrow, November 8th. The card is supported under Linux, and captures NTSC and ATSC video streams. It also ignores the Broadcast Flag, which means that it will be illegal in the States starting July 1st, 2005, under a recent FCC Order. If you are interested in being able to make your own decisions about what you can do with broadcast HDTV content, this is your last, best, chance."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2091723/
I've pointed out time after time that Democrats are just as bad if not worse... DMCA was signed by Clinton, after all.
Grrr... that argument is really old. The Democrats differ from the Republicans on any number of issues -- education, foreign policy, preemptive war, abortion rights, prayer in schools, civil rights, tax policy, health care, social security reform, etc etc etc. I'm really tired of hearing about how evil both parties are when it's clear that there are major policy differences between the two parties for anybody that bothers to look past the propaganda of Ralph Nader.
That said the DCMA was written by lobbyists and passed through a lazy Congress that (by and large) didn't even bother to read the bill. I'm sure banning third-party garage-door openers and generic ink cartridges wasn't what anybody (even the Republicans) had in mind. Two other issues that will doubtless be brought up can similarly be explained -- the CDA was one of those "Look -- I'm protecting the children! Re-elect me!" issues that had a lot of public support and the Patriot Act was rammed through a stunned Congress after 9/11. Should the Democrats have had the balls to vote against it? Yes. Are they the same as Republicans? No.
To claim that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats is to do a huge disservice to both parties. I suspect that most Republicans would agree with me.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That last line is a remarkable reversal from the usual state of affairs. Normally announcements don't mention Linux compatibility (but it's available at your own risk if you snag some source from their web site).
That alone makes me want one.
sigs, as if you care.
The drivers are a bit rocky - unfortunately they are not in the mainline kernel, and if you are running a newer kernel getting the patches to apply is a bit tricky.
Also, the version of xine they have modified to support tuning and selecting the video streams on a multi-stream HD transmission is OLD - 0.7. Again, they have not moved the support into the main line Xine.
Alsa (sic), under 2.6.x and ALSA sound you cannot get audio for normal TV as the modified video driver claims the resources the ALSA sound driver needs. Yes, the primary focus of the card is HDTV not NTSC, but still, IMHO they should fix that.
Lastly, you had DAMN WELL have a meaty machine if you plan on watching 1080i streams - my Athlon-xp 3000 with an ATI 7500 AIW, with everything tweaked in as much as I can, needs about 120% CPU to watch a 1080I stream. IF you have an nVidia card, IF you have the modified version of Xine with XvMC support THEN you can lower the bar a bit, but otherwise, no.
I'd like to see them make the effort to get all the software into the main line codebases - I believe the hold-up is the issue of possibly supporting the Linux DVB API rather than bodging the ATSC support into V4L2.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I have one, it doesnt work as advertised. Only a few resolutions work and they chop off the edges. Its a piece of crap...
;)
--Just an FYI
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
The Democrats have the best legislator on the issue, Rick Boucher. But they also have the worst, Howard Berman. There are good Republicans like Lamar Smith and bad ones like Orrin Hatch. Neither party has a stellar record on the issue.