EFF Reviews HDTV PVR Solution for Mac

enrico_suave points out this "PVRBlog post about EFF's Review of Elgato's EyeTV 500, an HDTV solution for the Mac. Well, a very speedy dual-processor G5 Mac, apparently. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been doing a lot of important work defending our online and digital rights including opposing the dreaded FCC mandated broadcast flag (cue boos and hisses) Elgato and Plextor also have a Standard Definition homebrew PVR solution with an EyeTV and ConvertX PVR bundle (Wired review)." (See also this earlier review from a Slashdot reader.)

Comments

RTFA?

[DreadPiratePizz]

I've got no problem with reading ONE article, but this is ridiculous!

Am I missing something here?

[thammoud]

If you intend to have your Mac handle all of your DTV duties--watching live TV, recording, and playing back recorded shows--you'll probably want a dual-G5 PowerMac

On Monday, comcast will install a $10 a month PVR with dual tuner and one that can record 15 hours of HDTV and 60 of regular TV. Why should I invest in a dual G5 power mac and an additional $350 to basically get the same functionality.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[PornMaster]

Can you archive HDTV broadcasts, though? 15 hours isn't much in the whole scheme of things.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[BJH]

Because, uh... you already own a Mac?

Come on, I'm sure whoever wrote the article wasn't expecting you to immediately run out and plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for a Mac just to use this peripheral.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Possible things you're missing:
1. If you get Comcast's PVR, Comcast controls your PVR and you do what they tell you.
2. Comcast isn't worldwide, last time I checked.
3. Ridiculously excessive, far more expensive hardware is way cooler.
4. I could hook up a RAID array and record a metric gazillion hours of HDTV! What now, Mr. 15 hours?
5. Comcast is the devil and they will kill your dog. If you don't have a dog, they will give you one for the express purpose of killing it.
6. Because I say so! Buy this! Do it! Do it now!
7. ???
8. Profit!!!!

mission option: the mac supports video editing to insert sex with a mare into all your favorite shows.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Presumably, because Comcast will kowtow to the major media companies and start respecting the "broadcast flag." The hope is that this device will remain blessedly versatile after July of this year.

However, suppose that some major media properties persuade Apple to rewrite their firewire drivers, necessitating a a similar driver update from ElGato. The question then becomes: Is ElGato legally required to cripple its software in the course of this update? Could one reinstate compatibility with the old, pre broadcast flag driver by rewriting portions of the Darwin source?

Perhaps the best solution would be to build a Linux PVR server, possibly adding on a suitable mac client, a la vlc. After all, Linus Torvalds doesn't own an online media shop.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[steve_bryan]

I hope people don't take your casual claims as anything authoritative on the subject. Have you tried to "just build an HDTV capable MythTV setup"? If you follow the discussion on AVS forum of people trying to use the only linux HDTV board you might not be so sanguine about your prospects. The EyeTV product is priced higher than I'd like but once you purchase it you'll have something that just works.

I've used their USB product for a while and it uses the same software. It is much less finicky than the corresponding HDTV software I have for my PC.

Re:Broadcast flag

[KlaymenDK]

Well, that's a fine idea ... so it's probably illegal (in the US). In fact, such a box would constitute a "circumvention device" wich is, as far as I have understood, exactly the thing you're not allowed to have. Bah.

Glad I live in Europe.

iTele

[ed 'g3']

iTele [for os x] is free, works with generic digital tv tuner cards and supports the high definition picture for those regions where it is available, i.e. everywhere except the uk.

http://www.defyne.org/dvb/

Will it be able to connect to iHome?

[WildKard]

just think about not only being able to connect your iPod or DV camcorder or digital camera or flash media reader, but third party peripherals like this HDTV tuner to it. and it all being networked!

Re:Will it be able to connect to iHome?

[node 3]

No, because the iHome does not exist (well, except as a plastic and cardboard hoax mock-up).

Something like it may debut at the Keynote next week though.

Re:Broadcast flag

[CrackedButter]

"Glad I live in Europe"
Why? Because we are next in line after Australia?

Comments

[MBCook]

OK, interesting gadget. I just have a few questions.

Why do you need such a great CPU? The article says it's because the hidef MPEG2 content is decoded in software. Huh? I though graphics cards started doing MPEG2 assist and later complete MPEG2 decoding years ago? It that feature just not in the drivers, or was it dropped due to cost and faster CPUs? Guess you should budget in some more for an MPEG2 decoder card, but they are not easy to find anymore (at least not as easy as they were), they tend to require passthrough (I've never seen pass-through DVI, and would it handle dual link for 30" screens?), etc. Seems like a big problem.

Only an antenna? If this thing can record HD and SD content (as long as it's digital), why not give it an HDMI connector so I could record off equiptment that has HDMI out? Or give it a DVI in for recording off that? Just an antenna seems.... measly.

Interesting though. The CPU problem is not as bad as it sounds considering how many people would currently want to use their computer to timeshift full glory HD content. If you have the TV and such for that and you can afford this box, you can probably afford a computer to play the file (or at least an MEPG2 decoder card).

Re:Comments

[Jozer99]

If you read the article, it clearly mentioned that although modern Mac graphics cards have hardware MPEG2 decoding, the APIs for accessing it are not documented by Apple for 3rd party manufaturers.

Re:Comments

[mkldev]

Even when the hardware is doing some of the work, it's usually not doing all of it, a few specialized MPEG-to-video output cards notwithstanding. There are several different parts of playing back MPEG video, including: decompressing, deinterlacing (optional), scaling, color space conversion, etc. The hardware only provides the last one, and sometimes the next-to-last, IIRC. The actual decompression occurs in software (doing all the inter-frame math, etc.), as does deinterlacing, generally, assuming you are using an MPEG player that supports it.

Basically, doing full MPEG decode in the GPU made sense before we had vector units in the CPU, but these days, it isn't enough of an advantage to care. And besides, you usually want to have some software control over the presentation---the ability to float windows over it, etc. That sort of thing doesn't work too well if the GPU is doing all of the decoding for you.

And, of course, HD video is a different animal---different resolution, higher data rate, etc. Even if you have custom hardware to decode SD video and send it to a TV on-the-fly, doing the same for HD is sufficiently harder that it probably isn't worth it, particularly since you have a fast CPU handy already.

Re:Comments

[Wesley Felter]

why not give it an HDMI connector so I could record off equiptment that has HDMI out?

And what is your Mac going to do with a >100MB/s uncompressed video stream? Oh, and HDMI is often encrypted.

Dual G5 requirement should be improved

[tji]

A dual G5 requirement for smooth HDTV playback is a big problem. You should be able to easily do this with a midrange G4 system.

The problem is that Apple has not opened the API for the MPEG2 acceleration available in most of the video chips in Macs. ( The equivalent of DxVA in Windows, or XvMC in XFree86 ). In the x86 world, this takes the CPU requirement down from ~ 2.4GHz P4 to ~ 800MHz P3.

Apple's DVD player uses the MPEG2 acceleration, but they don't allow others to use it. So, we're stuck with extremely high CPU requirements of dec oding those hi-res HDTV files.

Re:Dual G5 requirement should be improved

[arazor]

just go to http://www.avsforum.com and find the correct topic for your area. Exellent info on HDTV and other expensive AV equipment. You might also want to check out http://www.antennaweb.org for the general antenna info.

Re:Dual G5 requirement should be improved

[steve_bryan]

"In the x86 world, this takes the CPU requirement down from ~ 2.4GHz P4 to ~ 800MHz P3"

That is a marketing lie which was commonly told a few years ago. There are HD tuner cards that specifically include hardware decoding on the card (not the video card) which people have used successfully in less powerful PC's. But using DxVA from a video card doesn't buy you much if you are using a Fusion card or some other software decoding solution.

Also it is worth noting that although Apple's DVD player uses MPEG2 acceleration it still doesn't do de-interlacing decently. You can probably get better results with VLC.

Re:Dual G5 requirement should be improved

[tji]

> Getting a good signal, on the other hand, is a problem. Does anybody have reccomendations on what Antenna to buy? I live in Berkeley, so the signal I'm getting is coming from San Francisco, which is across the bay. ~20 miles...

20 miles across the bay should be pretty good for reception.. not too many obstructions.

Most stations broadcast from Mt. Sutro, and all locals but KNTV (NBC 11/12) are UHF.

I have had good results with are the Radio Shack Double Bowtie indoor antenna (it's not carried in-store anymore, but they can special order it for you. It's only ~$15)

If you can put up an outdoor antenna (even just tacked up on a balcony) the ChannelMaster 4228 four bay bowtie works great for a lot of people.

Many people like the Silver Sensor indoor antenna. It's a very directional UHF antenna. But, it didn't work well for me in Mountain View.

I have also heard that the Winegard Square Shooter is good. But, I have no direct experience with it.

Re:Dual G5 requirement should be improved

[tji]

> That is a marketing lie which was commonly told a few years ago.

Actually, No.. DxVA is what makes the CPU requirements reasonable, even with the software decode products. The 2.4GHz -> 800MHz was specifically addressing DxVA offload of HDTV MPEG2 decode.

I have two MyHD cards and two FusionHDTV cards. The MyHD cards have an onboard MPEG2 decoder and they display the HDTV output directly from the receiver card - not through your video card. It does the complete MPEG2 decode in hardware, so the CPU requirements on the host are VERY low. You could do it with a Pentium II.

The Fusion cards only do the reception of the ATSC Transport Stream - they pass that 20Mbps data stream to the host for processing. All MPEG decoding and display is done in software (which is the same as with the Sasem USB HDTV device, ATI HDTV Wonder, pchdtv.com HD-3000 for Linux, and the EyeTV 500). In this model, the decoding is done on the CPU in software, and some of the more compute intensive portions are offloaded to the video card via the DxVA API. Specifically, the iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) and motion compensation are hardware accelerated. So, it still takes a decent CPU, to do the MPEG decoding, but much less than for full software decode. On my Athlon64 3400+, the CPU utilization goes from ~ 70% to ~ 35% when I turn DxVA on.

I prefer the MyHD cards for a number of reasons. But, their main drawback is flexibility. They just do the HD video output. If you want to integrate with a PVR solution, like XP Media Center, you need the video to be displayable on the PC video output. So, the hardware decode cards are becoming less popular.

> Also it is worth noting that although Apple's DVD player uses MPEG2 acceleration it still doesn't do de-interlacing decently. You can probably get better results with VLC.

That's just a limitation of Apple's software.. DVD Player is not exactly renowned for its video quality.
The video hardware and MPEG2 accel are fully capable of good de-interlaced display. The FusionHDTV software does a good job of de-interlacing 1080i output when using DxVA. It looks almost as good as the output from the MyHD.

Re:Dual G5 requirement should be improved

[steve_bryan]

"Actually, No.. DxVA is what makes the CPU requirements reasonable, even with the software decode products. The 2.4GHz -> 800MHz was specifically addressing DxVA offload of HDTV MPEG2 decode."

I know they claim that. What I was reporting is that it is a lie. I had a 700 MHz Athlon which was originally claimed to be sufficient for the Fusion I card (using DxVA) and it was not. I upgraded to a 1500 Athlon and finally the 2400+ which is sufficient for software decoding with DvXA assist. Without DxVA you get a more stable picture but it has to throw out every other scan line. I actually prefer that picture generally because it doesn't have the artifacts that you get with DxVA.

If someone has an older box with a sub 1 GHz processor he will need to get a MyHD card to get good results. I wouldn't recommend Fusion cards to anyone with less than a 2 GHz processor. I am using the computer monitor. Maybe the picture from the DVI port gives better results with less CPU.

It has been reported elsewhere in the comments that dual 1 GHz G4 Mac will produce good results with EyeTV 500. If that is the case then the results are not so starkly different. I'm sure the software is less finicky because I have and use EyeTV (I just use it with the EyeTV USB but it is the same software). It doesn't restart the Mac just because I commit the mistake of running VLC or some other video program. In fact on the Mac I have the option of having multiple programs running at the same time without causing a crash.

The broadcast flag is a Good Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

This may sound as troll, but hear me out:

Times have changed since the days when VCRs were introduced. Back then, we had a few channels to choose from, and even fewer good programs. E.g., there were 2 or 3 sci-fi shows a week and if they were shown at the wrong timeslot you were SOL. Worse, video rentals hadn't been invented and tapes of TV shows even less. So back then, recording TV shows for time-shifting was quite useful.

Nowadays, the good shows come out on DVDs which you can rent from the corner store or through the net, and the not-so-good shows, well it's not the end of life if you miss one or two episodes. So there's really not so much urgency to time-shift. Furthermore, we're moving away from the one-way TV, using the internet and interactive entertainment more and more, which is good.

The broadcast flag will make it harder for us to watch TV. This'll force us to move away from TV even more, move away from commercials and the social pressure of watching certain "must-see" shows. It'll force us to be more picky about the shows we watch (through DVDs) and open the market to independent shows released on DVDs only. So while this will have a serious effect on the life of some people, it'll be a good effect in the long run.

Re:Can you..

[akac]

1) Answered in the article.
2) Answered in the article, and isn't it the same as #1?
3) Answered in the article.

Amazing what 3rd grade reading skills will do for you. And if you're still too lazy to read it - YES to all those questions because its all just MPEG2 after all.

Re:The G% is a slow processor

[akac]

Have the P4 or AMD do it in software and it'll take you to a dual or very powerful single processor.

THe only reason (which you would have found out if you read the article) it requires a Dual G5 for SMOOTH playback is because Apple decided to be stupid and keeps the MPEG2 hardware playback API private so that they have to do the decoding in software and not hardware like a normal Intel based system can.

Its not a hardware issue at all, but a simple OS design issue. One of the very few places where OS X actually fails compared to Linux or Windows.

Re:The G% is a slow processor

[displaced80]

I'm not excusing Apple's behaviour -- there's a whole heap of things that they've kept undocumented/private which annoy me in current versions of OS X.

However, my impression is that much of the video rendering systems within the OS have been in flux over the course of OS X's development. Remember, QuickDraw's still in active use. QD's really in need of replacement, and will be deprecated in Tiger.

From what I've seen, The Core[whatever] frameworks in Tiger will finally put this issue to bed, and provide all the APIs a developer could want... Quartz 2D Extreme looks like it'll round things out, with some nice things like full resolution-independence for each application individually.

For those who understand these things better than I, there's the WWDC's graphics 'State of the Union' presentation available here.

It's generally a nice look at how OS X's video architecture's finally coming together.

Re:The G% is a slow processor

[yabos]

Right, just like MS's HD WMV takes a P4 3GHz CPU to decode their HD content in software.

Put it out to graphics hardware and it takes basically no CPU cycles. This should change in Tiger, where all of the graphics sub system is going to be hardware accellerated, including video playback.

No G5 needed now...

[AaronD12]

Elgato Systems updated their software and it only requires a reasonably fast G4 system. My EyeTV 500 works perfectly on my Powerbook G4 1.25GHz laptop at full screen.

-Aaron-

Re:No G5 needed now...

[justinstreufert]

Yeah, but.. the screen on your 12" PB is only 1024x768, which is way smaller than "full frame" for HDTV. Have you tried outputting to a larger monitor or (ideally) an actual HDTV?

Aldo, Elgato's site says Dolby Digital 5.1 sound output is only possible on a dual G5. Does anyone know if any other machines (esp. an iMac G5) can simply pass the DD stream somehow?

Thanks
Justin

Re:No G5 needed now...

[skufy123]

I'm curious, how do you know he doesn't have a 17" PB?

Rick

MythTV on OSX - Soon

[GameGod0]

I'd just like to throw in that over the past few months there have been TONS of patches added to MythTV that add OSX compatibility.
I'm not sure how close Myth is to working completely on OSX, but I don't doubt that once it's working on OSX, it will be a formidable entry into the world of PVR software for this operating system.

QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component.

[Yaztromo]

I'm somewhat interested whether playback using Apple's QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component makes a significant difference here. It's only $30 CDN ($19.95 US -- I guess they haven't changed their pricing since the Canadian dollar gained on the US dollar), and doesn't require QuickTime Pro, so I imagine a non-dual G5 user who wanted to use this system to watch their captured video could just buy this.

I'm tempted to buy this to test it out and post the results here. Does anyone here have the MPEG-2 playback add-on for QuickTime who can comment on this?

Yaz.