I just picked up a few 120GB disks for $110/each. That will hold a lot of DVD's worth of Data. If the data needs to be kept on-line, HD's are much faster than any DVD drive. You'll also need another DVD drive for each 5-10GB of data, if using DVD's. So, the HD solution is much cheaper too.
DVD's are fine for backing up that data, but for real-time access, they are not ideal.
Take one of these D-VHS VCR's, add a MEMS display, such as a TI DLP projector, and top it off with a kick ass DD5.1 / DTS surround sound system, and you're getting dangerously close to the digital theaters that George Lucas was pushing for Episode 2.
Episode 2 was recorded in 1080/24p, HD resolution.
This equipment gets you pretty darn close to a digital theater in the comfort of your own home.
If you used LaserDisc, you're probably the target market for this product. This is aimed at the 'videophile', who wants the best quality possible. The people that have the expensive, 16:9, HD capable sets.
This is not meant to replace DVD's.. They are still in the process of milking that market. And, D-VHS has obvious disadvantages in flexibility.
A few years down the road, we will have HD-DVD, which will have the storage capacity for a full HD quality movie. Until then, some of us will be recording HD, and viewing High Definition movies in this format.
I'll gladly retire the D-VHS at that point.. but I am not willing to wait the several years until HD-DVD is here to have my 1080i movies.
D-VHS is currently the only format that allows true High Definition resolutions in a removable format. It allows you to record HD content from a HDTV Set Top Box (if the HD receiver is equipped with a firewire port). It also allows playback of pre-recorded movies at 1080i resolution.
DVD's don't have the storage capacity to hold an HDTV movie. Broadcast HDTV is about 9GB per hour. Pre-recorded movies on D-VHS will be even more than that, up to twice the bit rate of broadcast HDTV.
DVD's are at best 480p (720x480), the D-VHS VCR supports HD resolutions, 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080). The HD movies are over four times the resolution/quality of DVD's. The difference is very dramatic.
This variant of D-VHS, D-Theater, includes an encrpytion, to stop the pre-recorded movies from being copied (much like CSS was supposed to do with DVD's). That is the only restriction that this format has, which is a welcome change from all the other attempts to control HD content.
The JVC unit also has analog component video outputs, allowing 1080i playback on all existing HDTV's. This capability is one that Hollywood has been threatening to disable in HD receivers (block the "Analog Hole").
If you look at the statistics for HD capable TV's sold vs. HDTV Set Top Boxes, you'll see that most people with the nice 16:9 HD-Capable TV's are not using the full capabilies of their TV's. They are just using them for DVD's. D-VHS could be the first chance for them to really use their HDTV.
Wow, that's an incredibly uninformed "clarification".
In terms of performance/quality, there is no clear difference; they are both digital video formats
Wrong. DVD is 480i (720x480, interlaced), and can be translated into 480p (progressive scan) by the DVD player.
D-VHS supports HDTV resolutions, including 1080i (1920x1080, interlaced; the most common format), and 720p (1280x720, progressive scan). 1080i is over 4x the resolution/quality of a DVD. THAT is the reason people are interested in this.
With D-VHS, there is no easy tape-to-computer interface
Ever heard of IEEE-1394, aka Firewire? That is the interface that the D-VHS VCR's use. I have read reports of people using these with the Linux IEEE-1394 support, and they also work with XP.
This is very close to DIVX
How so? DIVX had all kinds of features to get more money out of viewers, like charging more if you wanted to view the movie again. D-VHS has nothing like this. It only has an encryption to prevent making copies of the movies (as do DVD's, albeit a very weak scrambling method).
I don't know that I would give Dawn so much credit. The headline and intro paragraphs give the impression that this is a big problem. The vast majority of people probably stopped reading at this point, giving them the wrong impression.
She has written several articles on HDTV with the same style.. Inflammatory headline, and a couple paragraphs to support that position. Then at the end of the article quietly contradicting the headline.
Coincidentally, there was an article on the front page of the Business section of the San Jose Mercury today, where Valenti was spreading FUD about online piracy hurting movie sales.
I am not sure why, but to illustrate this problem, they used two huge blockbuster movies, which are setting records for revenue, SpiderMan, and Attack of the Clones.
The article quotes from our favorite superhero, in his typically understated manner:
``It's getting clear -- alarmingly clear, I might add -- that we are in the midst of the possibility of Armageddon,'' said Jack Valenti, president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America.
This guy has been meddling in politics since LBJ was in office. His view of technology has obviously not changed since that time.
Yes, I agree. The decision of what hardware to use would depend on what your performance requirements are.
For higher performance, I would go with a 0.13u CPU, either a Celeron / P3, or a P4. If I used a P4, I might underclock it to keep the heat down.
The C3 is for low performance situations. I use a C3 800 in my Linux firewall, www server, mail server, dns, dhcp, voicemail, file server, etc. It performs at roughly the level of a Celeron 500. But, for this application, that's plenty.
It has no CPU fan, a very quiet Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive, and a small PSU fan, in a slimline case. It's not silent, but it's very quiet. You have to lean down next to it to hear it. I don't notice it above the ambient room noise.
Re:You're not gonna get a silent Athlon system..
on
Shuttle SS40G Mini-PC
·
· Score: 2
The noise ratings at Storage Review are interesting.. The Seagate Datasheet for the Barracuda IV shows 25dB idle noise.
I have one 40GB and one 80GB Barracuda drive, they are very quiet, I have to get very close to the system to hear them. The sound of the 40GB drive is easily drowned out by the tiny 150W PSU fan on the power supply.
You're not gonna get a silent Athlon system..
on
Shuttle SS40G Mini-PC
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't know what the submitter considers "silent", but the article lists the noise levels between 44 and 55dB. That wouldn't even rate a quiet on my scale.
Quiet would be a device like the Seagate Barracuda IV hard drives, which are around 30dB.
The main problem with the SS40 is using the Athlon CPU's. These things just run HOT, and are going to require some significant cooling.
To get a truly quiet system, you should start with a cooler CPU, like one of the 0.13u Celeron or PIII's. Or, take a P4 and underclock it to run cooler. To make it really cool, start with a low power / low heat CPU, like the VIA C3 - which doesn't even require a CPU fan.
They mention HDTV in the article, but only in the context of HDTV output of a lo-res source. The DVD's are 480p at best. So, you can scale them up to 720p or 1080i, but it's not full HD.
Slap an HDTV PCI card in there, and get true 1080i (1920x1080) HDTV. They also HD PVR functions, and some even do DVD decoding & scaling in hardware.
Unfortunately, none of these (that I know of) support Linux. The MyHD is the newest, and the HiPix has an open source effort to enhance their Windows software.
The Zaurus SL-5500 supports the D-Link DCF-650W out of the box. Just plug in the CompactFlash 802.11 card, and configure the SSID and WEP settings in the standard config app, and you're off and running.
The included Opera browser does a good job of scaling pages to the small PDA display.
And, since it's Linux, there is no end to the cool apps you can run on it. Check out Kismet. It's an 802.11 sniffer program, great for "War Driving". Between my office and home, I picked up 80 different 802.11 networks on one trip. I am in Silicon Valley, so your results may vary. But, it's great for finding public access points too (whether they are intentionally or accidentally public).
I agree.. This NTSC tuner merits a big yawn for me.
DTV makes more sense for PVR functions. The data is already compressed digital. All you have to do it save it to disk. And, the quality is leaps and bounds better than our 50 year old NTSC standard.
It's about time they got on board with DTV. I would be the first in line to buy one.
Overall, the article was very good. But, unless I missed something, he was wrong about the Hollings' Bill mandating Microsoft.
What really has the GeekPAC founders steamed, though, is Hollings' most recent entertainment-industry-backed proposal, which would mandate that all future home-entertainment electronic devices and computers contain "rights management" technology patented by Microsoft.
As far as I know, the content restriction method is not developed yet (one of the huge gaping problems with the legislation).
No, the problem is that it is still too difficult to use secure e-mail.
If they select a check box to "Secure E-Mail" when sending e-mail to someone, and the details of how it happened were hidden, people would do it.
But, if it requires you to exchange keys with someone & manually manage the process, only the techies will do it.
It's a tough nut to crack.. To do it right, you need a trusted authority to manage identities & keys. I don't see any sign of this happening.
Re:Need Digital TV Support for the U.S.
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 2
The encryption on the AccessDTV files is a problem. I think that's one of the reasons there is more of a community of users for the HiPix. They don't encrypt the files, or restrict your usage in any way. You could have one or more systems recording programs, and do playback on a seperate system. HiPix even has API's to allow for user extensions/modifications in their software. Check out AVS Forum, in the HTPC section for a lot of information on these cards.
As for the display, these cards would have the same display quality as any of the other HDTV decoders available today. Obviously, a SDTV picture tube (and composite or S-Video inputs) would be the limiting factor in picture quality. You would get a much better idea of HDTV quality by displaying it on your computer monitor.
Re:Need Digital TV Support for the U.S.
on
PVR For Linux
·
· Score: 2
Yes, with either of those cards you can watch off-the-air HDTV on your computer monitor. You can also hook them up to an external HDTV & watch it on the big screen.
It also supports PVR functions (saving HDTV to disk), which doesn't exist in a commercial product (there is no HD compatible Tivo or ReplayTV).
The only drivers that I know about for these products are Windows based...
But, they both use HDTV decoder chips from Teralogic, which has done some Work with Linux. So, the drivers are out there somewhere.
Need Digital TV Support for the U.S.
on
PVR For Linux
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This is a great project.. a fully open sourced PVR. If I lived in Europe, I would be all over it.
For use in the U.S. a Digital TV receiver card such as the HiPix or the AccessDTV.
Depending on how the hardware interfaces with the control software, it would be excellent if it could be made to work with U.S. cards.
Pay Per View in itself is not a problem.. The issue here is that they are using public resources, the airwaves. This is a tremendously valuable public resource, and they have licensed the right to use it from the FCC.
Now, they want to take our public property, and sell access to it? I don't think so.
This is like my city giving a company rights to my sidewalk, then charging me a toll to walk into my yard.
If they want to do Pay Per View, they need to find a private resource to use, such as Satellite or Cable TV.
I have been a long time Yahoo user. I use the "My Yahoo" page daily, my @yahoo.com e-mail address is my primary web mail account, and I have purchased several things through the Yahoo shops.
The amount of spam on yahoo mail has jumped dramatically in the last few months. I have noticed that the spam has more and more personal information (first name, last name, etc.). Their ads have also become much more intrusive and obnoxious.
So, today I went through and removed every bit of personal information from my yahoo accounts & preferences. I was surprised to see just how much was in there.. It takes some digging, make sure you follow all of their sub-categories. I deleted information wherever possible. Some places did not allow blank entries (addresses, phone numbers) so, I replaced them with bogus entries.
And, yes.. I know they need to make money to pay for their services. But they need to be careful to avoid pissing off too many customers, or their usage goes down & they have to add more ads & sell their data to more spammers to stay afloat.
The DVD's sound great, and I will definitely be getting one on the release date.
The only thing that would be better is a full HDTV 1920x1080i version of this beauty. A few months ago, JVC announced their "D-Theater", HDTV on a digital VHS tape. LOTR would be the ultimate movie to show off this technology & all your HDTV equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
Why mess with DVD-Anything for online storage?
I just picked up a few 120GB disks for $110/each. That will hold a lot of DVD's worth of Data. If the data needs to be kept on-line, HD's are much faster than any DVD drive. You'll also need another DVD drive for each 5-10GB of data, if using DVD's. So, the HD solution is much cheaper too.
DVD's are fine for backing up that data, but for real-time access, they are not ideal.
Take one of these D-VHS VCR's, add a MEMS display, such as a TI DLP projector,
and top it off with a kick ass DD5.1 / DTS surround sound system, and you're getting dangerously close to the digital theaters that George Lucas was pushing for Episode 2.
Episode 2 was recorded in 1080/24p, HD resolution.
This equipment gets you pretty darn close to a digital theater in the comfort of your own home.
The video data is stored in compressed MPEG2 format.
I think the maximum data rate in this D-VHS is 28Mbps.
As a point of comparison, broadcast 1080i HDTV is done at approximately 19Mbps.
If you used LaserDisc, you're probably the target market for this product. This is aimed at the 'videophile', who wants the best quality possible. The people that have the expensive, 16:9, HD capable sets.
This is not meant to replace DVD's.. They are still in the process of milking that market. And, D-VHS has obvious disadvantages in flexibility.
A few years down the road, we will have HD-DVD, which will have the storage capacity for a full HD quality movie. Until then, some of us will be recording HD, and viewing High Definition movies in this format.
I'll gladly retire the D-VHS at that point.. but I am not willing to wait the several years until HD-DVD is here to have my 1080i movies.
Wow, there's a lot of FUD floating around here..
D-VHS is currently the only format that allows true High Definition resolutions in a removable format. It allows you to record HD content from a HDTV Set Top Box (if the HD receiver is equipped with a firewire port). It also allows playback of pre-recorded movies at 1080i resolution.
DVD's don't have the storage capacity to hold an HDTV movie. Broadcast HDTV is about 9GB per hour. Pre-recorded movies on D-VHS will be even more than that, up to twice the bit rate of broadcast HDTV.
DVD's are at best 480p (720x480), the D-VHS VCR supports HD resolutions, 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080). The HD movies are over four times the resolution/quality of DVD's. The difference is very dramatic.
This variant of D-VHS, D-Theater, includes an encrpytion, to stop the pre-recorded movies from being copied (much like CSS was supposed to do with DVD's). That is the only restriction that this format has, which is a welcome change from all the other attempts to control HD content.
The JVC unit also has analog component video outputs, allowing 1080i playback on all existing HDTV's. This capability is one that Hollywood has been threatening to disable in HD receivers (block the "Analog Hole").
If you look at the statistics for HD capable TV's sold vs. HDTV Set Top Boxes, you'll see that most people with the nice 16:9 HD-Capable TV's are not using the full capabilies of their TV's. They are just using them for DVD's. D-VHS could be the first chance for them to really use their HDTV.
Wow, that's an incredibly uninformed "clarification".
In terms of performance/quality, there is no clear difference; they are both digital video formats
Wrong. DVD is 480i (720x480, interlaced), and can be translated into 480p (progressive scan) by the DVD player.
D-VHS supports HDTV resolutions, including 1080i (1920x1080, interlaced; the most common format), and 720p (1280x720, progressive scan). 1080i is over 4x the resolution/quality of a DVD. THAT is the reason people are interested in this.
With D-VHS, there is no easy tape-to-computer interface
Ever heard of IEEE-1394, aka Firewire? That is the interface that the D-VHS VCR's use. I have read reports of people using these with the Linux IEEE-1394 support, and they also work with XP.
This is very close to DIVX
How so? DIVX had all kinds of features to get more money out of viewers, like charging more if you wanted to view the movie again. D-VHS has nothing like this. It only has an encryption to prevent making copies of the movies (as do DVD's, albeit a very weak scrambling method).
Huh? This is just another display alternative. HDTV is a digital broadcast format, allowing higher resolution material to be displayed.
In fact, many of the new HDTV displays are using MEMS technology. See http://www.dlp.com/
DLP is used both for front projectors, and reap projection HDTV's.
I don't know that I would give Dawn so much credit.
The headline and intro paragraphs give the impression that this is a big problem. The vast majority of people probably stopped reading at this point, giving them the wrong impression.
She has written several articles on HDTV with the same style.. Inflammatory headline, and a couple paragraphs to support that position. Then at the end of the article quietly contradicting the headline.
Coincidentally, there was an article on the front page of the Business section of the San Jose Mercury today, where Valenti was spreading FUD about online piracy hurting movie sales.
Online film piracy cuts into industry profit
I am not sure why, but to illustrate this problem, they used two huge blockbuster movies, which are setting records for revenue, SpiderMan, and Attack of the Clones.
The article quotes from our favorite superhero, in his typically understated manner:
``It's getting clear -- alarmingly clear, I might add -- that we are in the midst of the possibility of Armageddon,'' said Jack Valenti, president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America.
This guy has been meddling in politics since LBJ was in office. His view of technology has obviously not changed since that time.
Yes, I agree. The decision of what hardware to use would depend on what your performance requirements are.
For higher performance, I would go with a 0.13u CPU, either a Celeron / P3, or a P4. If I used a P4, I might underclock it to keep the heat down.
The C3 is for low performance situations. I use a C3 800 in my Linux firewall, www server, mail server, dns, dhcp, voicemail, file server, etc. It performs at roughly the level of a Celeron 500. But, for this application, that's plenty.
It has no CPU fan, a very quiet Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive, and a small PSU fan, in a slimline case. It's not silent, but it's very quiet. You have to lean down next to it to hear it. I don't notice it above the ambient room noise.
The noise ratings at Storage Review are interesting..
The Seagate Datasheet for the Barracuda IV shows 25dB idle noise.
I have one 40GB and one 80GB Barracuda drive, they are very quiet, I have to get very close to the system to hear them. The sound of the 40GB drive is easily drowned out by the tiny 150W PSU fan on the power supply.
I don't know what the submitter considers "silent", but the article lists the noise levels between 44 and 55dB. That wouldn't even rate a quiet on my scale.
Quiet would be a device like the Seagate Barracuda IV hard drives, which are around 30dB.
The main problem with the SS40 is using the Athlon CPU's. These things just run HOT, and are going to require some significant cooling.
To get a truly quiet system, you should start with a cooler CPU, like one of the 0.13u Celeron or PIII's. Or, take a P4 and underclock it to run cooler. To make it really cool, start with a low power / low heat CPU, like the VIA C3 - which doesn't even require a CPU fan.
They mention HDTV in the article, but only in the context of HDTV output of a lo-res source. The DVD's are 480p at best. So, you can scale them up to 720p or 1080i, but it's not full HD.
Slap an HDTV PCI card in there, and get true 1080i (1920x1080) HDTV. They also HD PVR functions, and some even do DVD decoding & scaling in hardware.
Check out the MyHD Card, the HiPix, or the AccessDTV cards for options.
Unfortunately, none of these (that I know of) support Linux. The MyHD is the newest, and the HiPix has an open source effort to enhance their Windows software.
If you live in an area that has digital TV broadcasts (most major cities do), HDTV is the way to go.. there is a LOT of HD Programming available.
The Zaurus SL-5500 supports the D-Link DCF-650W out of the box. Just plug in the CompactFlash 802.11 card, and configure the SSID and WEP settings in the standard config app, and you're off and running.
The included Opera browser does a good job of scaling pages to the small PDA display.
And, since it's Linux, there is no end to the cool apps you can run on it. Check out Kismet. It's an 802.11 sniffer program, great for "War Driving". Between my office and home, I picked up 80 different 802.11 networks on one trip. I am in Silicon Valley, so your results may vary. But, it's great for finding public access points too (whether they are intentionally or accidentally public).
Kalamazoo is not far from the home of Slashdot..
And it dwarfs Slashdotville (Holland, MI) in size and enlightenment. Holland is a center for the ultra-conservative, ultra-religious types.
One can only hope that this will be as good as the "People Mover". The monorail running through the Urban Blight Theme Park: Detroit.
I agree.. This NTSC tuner merits a big yawn for me.
DTV makes more sense for PVR functions. The data is already compressed digital. All you have to do it save it to disk. And, the quality is leaps and bounds better than our 50 year old NTSC standard.
It's about time they got on board with DTV. I would be the first in line to buy one.
As far as I know, the content restriction method is not developed yet (one of the huge gaping problems with the legislation).
No, the problem is that it is still too difficult to use secure e-mail.
If they select a check box to "Secure E-Mail" when sending e-mail to someone, and the details of how it happened were hidden, people would do it.
But, if it requires you to exchange keys with someone & manually manage the process, only the techies will do it.
It's a tough nut to crack.. To do it right, you need a trusted authority to manage identities & keys. I don't see any sign of this happening.
The encryption on the AccessDTV files is a problem. I think that's one of the reasons there is more of a community of users for the HiPix. They don't encrypt the files, or restrict your usage in any way. You could have one or more systems recording programs, and do playback on a seperate system. HiPix even has API's to allow for user extensions/modifications in their software. Check out AVS Forum, in the HTPC section for a lot of information on these cards.
As for the display, these cards would have the same display quality as any of the other HDTV decoders available today. Obviously, a SDTV picture tube (and composite or S-Video inputs) would be the limiting factor in picture quality. You would get a much better idea of HDTV quality by displaying it on your computer monitor.
Yes, with either of those cards you can watch off-the-air HDTV on your computer monitor. You can also hook them up to an external HDTV & watch it on the big screen.
It also supports PVR functions (saving HDTV to disk), which doesn't exist in a commercial product (there is no HD compatible Tivo or ReplayTV).
The only drivers that I know about for these products are Windows based...
But, they both use HDTV decoder chips from Teralogic, which has done some Work with Linux. So, the drivers are out there somewhere.
This is a great project.. a fully open sourced PVR. If I lived in Europe, I would be all over it.
For use in the U.S. a Digital TV receiver card such as the HiPix or the AccessDTV.
Depending on how the hardware interfaces with the control software, it would be excellent if it could be made to work with U.S. cards.
Pay Per View in itself is not a problem.. The issue here is that they are using public resources, the airwaves. This is a tremendously valuable public resource, and they have licensed the right to use it from the FCC.
Now, they want to take our public property, and sell access to it? I don't think so.
This is like my city giving a company rights to my sidewalk, then charging me a toll to walk into my yard.
If they want to do Pay Per View, they need to find a private resource to use, such as Satellite or Cable TV.
I have been a long time Yahoo user. I use the "My Yahoo" page daily, my @yahoo.com e-mail address is my primary web mail account, and I have purchased several things through the Yahoo shops.
The amount of spam on yahoo mail has jumped dramatically in the last few months. I have noticed that the spam has more and more personal information (first name, last name, etc.). Their ads have also become much more intrusive and obnoxious.
So, today I went through and removed every bit of personal information from my yahoo accounts & preferences. I was surprised to see just how much was in there.. It takes some digging, make sure you follow all of their sub-categories. I deleted information wherever possible. Some places did not allow blank entries (addresses, phone numbers) so, I replaced them with bogus entries.
And, yes.. I know they need to make money to pay for their services. But they need to be careful to avoid pissing off too many customers, or their usage goes down & they have to add more ads & sell their data to more spammers to stay afloat.
The DVD's sound great, and I will definitely be getting one on the release date.
The only thing that would be better is a full HDTV 1920x1080i version of this beauty. A few months ago, JVC announced their "D-Theater", HDTV on a digital VHS tape. LOTR would be the ultimate movie to show off this technology & all your HDTV equipment.