quick question regarding HD

[mbedford]

Hello.

A couple of quick hardware questions as I get started with this project. I want to make sure I get the right equipment.

1. I have Directv and have the HD receiver from them. Is there a supported PCI card or method to hook my Directv HD receiver to the computer? I saw alot of the PCI cards focus on having a tuner and antenna to pick up HD off-air. I don't need this, but instead need either Component of DVI HD inputs.

2. How would the media extender work if my main tv is an HDTV (and my recordings will be HD) but the media extender and the tv I am extending to does not support HD?

3. For what I want to do, what is the best/most cost effective PCI card, remote and IR blaster equipment?

Thanks!

Mike

[GKusnick]

Most of these questions have been discussed extensively in other threads. Here's a quick recap as I see it:

1. There is no simple, inexpensive way to capture satellite HD. Component video capture cards are quite expensive (> $1000). Most people opt for a moderately expensive (~$500) alternative called R5000-HD by Nextcom, which involves modifying your satellite receiver to provide a USB output. For details, search on R5000.

2. Streaming HD content to a media extender is doable, but it involves on-the-fly transcoding to a lower resolution on the server side, so you need decent CPU horsepower on your server to do this. Image quality is of course degraded to SD during transcoding, but I don't own an extender myself so I can't comment on how good the result looks on screen.

3. Again, there is no cost-effective PCI card for HD capture. Which remote you use is largely a matter of personal preference; pretty much any remote can be made to work. Some remotes come with IR receivers that are compatible with Sage out of the box; others might require you to invest another $50 or so in a USB-UIRT. For control of your satellite box, a serial or USB connection is generally preferred to IR blasting (although the USB-UIRT has a blaster built in if you really need one). Search on "serial control" for details. If you go the R5000 route, control is done via the same USB connection that delivers the video.