Future of recording HDTV

[stanger89]

Well the fact that in the last two months Dish has added:
Discovery
Animal Planet
Science
TLC
History

And DirectTV has added (additionally)
Sci-Fi
Speed
Cartoon Network
and a bunch of news channels....

The skepticism I'd held since DirecTV's "100 National HD Channels" announcement at CES has basically been eliminated.

[eobiont]

Well, I finally got off the fence and bought a Tivo HD today. I was just too tired of not being able to record Fox and CBS. Buying a QAM card for ~$100 just seemed like throwing good money after bad, and it would still only let me record one HD program at a time. The real battle for me was choosing between having my leased STB R500HD-ized and continuing to use sage or flipping over to Tivo.

Hopefully, I won't regret this. The Tivo decision just made the most economic sense. If the R5000HD were a couple hundred dollars less expensive, I think I would have go that way, but they really are priced out of the market with TivoHD.

What finally tipped it for me was the ability to drop a 1T drive into the Tivo, and the release of the extraction software last week. I also found some scripts that can export programs, cut the commercials and then reimport them back to Tivo.

So anyway, that's what I'll be using for the next three years. Hopefully, by that time, the PC situation will have improved and Sage will be interfacing with ATI. Right now, the ATI tuner alone costs as much as a TivoHD.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by eobiont

Well, I finally got off the fence and bought a Tivo HD today. I was just too tired of not being able to record Fox and CBS. Buying a QAM card for ~$100 just seemed like throwing good money after bad, and it would still only let me record one HD program at a time. The real battle for me was choosing between having my leased STB R500HD-ized and continuing to use sage or flipping over to Tivo.

Hopefully, I won't regret this. The Tivo decision just made the most economic sense. If the R5000HD were a couple hundred dollars less expensive, I think I would have go that way, but they really are priced out of the market with TivoHD.

What finally tipped it for me was the ability to drop a 1T drive into the Tivo, and the release of the extraction software last week. I also found some scripts that can export programs, cut the commercials and then reimport them back to Tivo.

So anyway, that's what I'll be using for the next three years. Hopefully, by that time, the PC situation will have improved and Sage will be interfacing with ATI. Right now, the ATI tuner alone costs as much as a TivoHD.

Re you sure video extraction works for cablecard recorded content? Can you post a link that references that?

thx
mike

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by eobiont

Well, I finally got off the fence and bought a Tivo HD today. I was just too tired of not being able to record Fox and CBS. Buying a QAM card for ~$100 just seemed like throwing good money after bad, and it would still only let me record one HD program at a time. The real battle for me was choosing between having my leased STB R500HD-ized and continuing to use sage or flipping over to Tivo.

Hopefully, I won't regret this. The Tivo decision just made the most economic sense. If the R5000HD were a couple hundred dollars less expensive, I think I would have go that way, but they really are priced out of the market with TivoHD.

Really? By my math (assuming you don't have a Tivo account) the cheapest way to get into a Tivo HD is $600 ($300 for the Tivo HD, and $300 for 3 years of service). That's one of the things that always puts the breaks on Tivo (I acknowledge the new Tivo HD looks nice), the service fees are killer.

[eggman51]

Well.... at $600 for the Tivo for 3 years... add in a set top dvd player (not HD or BD) for another $200 and it's about $800:

Versus:
Sage TV $80
Two Cable Card capable HD tuners (that don't exist, so I am guessing about $250 each) ~ $500
HTPC ~$1000+
Time spent pulling hair out getting cable card to work: priceless

So by my view, it's about $1600 for an HTPC solution you have to tinker a LOT with versus about $800 for a Tivo / DVD player that should take about an hour to get up and running and about the same in maintenance over 3 years.

The switch to HD broadcasting has, for me, made PC based PVR a non viable solution. I got into it because I was curious and a few years ago it was possible to come up with a better solution than CableCos were offering. I can't get Tivo in Canada, but the CableCo PVR has proved to be MUCH more viable and family friendly than the various HTPCs I've had through the years.

I'm evaluating the suitability of an Xbox 360 as a replacement for the other HTPC activities (music, photos, dvd playback, network movies, etc). I'll make my mind up over the coming weeks, but I have a feeling I am going to end up with an Xbox, a CableCo PVR and a PS3 for BR playback (and a Wii for the drinking games). As a gamer I gravitate that way, but it was largely driven by the frustrations of HD HTPC, increasing annoyance from my family and less and less hobby time to devote to the HTPC (inversely encroached upon by a desire to have more and more leisure time with the home entertainment system).

ymmv but after several years of tinkering I am gravitating away from an HTPC and feel as though my entertainment time in front of the TV is better for it.

egg

[sandor]

Originally Posted by kevine

Hope you are correct.

they are ready for it - production costs of HD are low, broadcast prices are low, HD is a grand new marketing tool (all the Philly OTA majors have HD evening/morning news now, and i assume most major markets are similar)

in hearing from some of the local broadcasters, they are fully looking forward to being able to dump NTSC broadcasts in early 2009.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by eggman51

Well.... at $600 for the Tivo for 3 years... add in a set top dvd player (not HD or BD) for another $200 and it's about $800:

Versus:
Sage TV $80
Two Cable Card capable HD tuners (that don't exist, so I am guessing about $250 each) ~ $500
HTPC ~$1000+
Time spent pulling hair out getting cable card to work: priceless

So by my view, it's about $1600 for an HTPC solution you have to tinker a LOT with versus about $800 for a Tivo / DVD player that should take about an hour to get up and running and about the same in maintenance over 3 years.

The switch to HD broadcasting has, for me, made PC based PVR a non viable solution. I got into it because I was curious and a few years ago it was possible to come up with a better solution than CableCos were offering. I can't get Tivo in Canada, but the CableCo PVR has proved to be MUCH more viable and family friendly than the various HTPCs I've had through the years.

I'm evaluating the suitability of an Xbox 360 as a replacement for the other HTPC activities (music, photos, dvd playback, network movies, etc). I'll make my mind up over the coming weeks, but I have a feeling I am going to end up with an Xbox, a CableCo PVR and a PS3 for BR playback (and a Wii for the drinking games). As a gamer I gravitate that way, but it was largely driven by the frustrations of HD HTPC, increasing annoyance from my family and less and less hobby time to devote to the HTPC (inversely encroached upon by a desire to have more and more leisure time with the home entertainment system).

ymmv but after several years of tinkering I am gravitating away from an HTPC and feel as though my entertainment time in front of the TV is better for it.

egg

how much storage space does the Tivo have for HD? i've got 400+ hours free right now.... not counting hard drives (apart from my first 500 GB one) i have spent about $750 for my 3 tuner HD SageTV box - i have no problems that aren't self-inflicted, and the WAF is incredibly high.

i know there is a vocal group that seems to have problems with HD playback, but with an AMD 3800 and a 7600GT w/nVidia Purevideo decoders, the picture quality is outstanding.

certainly i am only dealing with OTA, but we're fine with the 25 or so channels ATSC supplies us with, and always have far too much recorded content to watch than time to watch them.

our other thought has always been that skipping the monthly cable bill, and have a netflix subscription lets us watch all the showtime and hbo shows we love at a much much much lower price. so it really all depends on priorities.

[EdwardATeller]

Originally Posted by sandor

I know there is a vocal group that seems to have problems with HD playback, but with an AMD 3800 and a 7600GT w/nVidia Purevideo decoders, the picture quality is outstanding.

Can't really speak for others, but I don't SEEM to have trouble with HD playback, I DO have trouble with HD playback. I doubt others would be complaining if they didn't actually have trouble. Maybe it's a fine semantic point, but it really jumped out at me.

I am also leaning towards the TiVo HD option. Since I have lifetime service on a current Series 2 box, I can transfer it to a TiVo HD for $200. That makes the total product lifetime cost $500 plus as much eSATA storage I care to add.

[eobiont]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Really? By my math (assuming you don't have a Tivo account) the cheapest way to get into a Tivo HD is $600 ($300 for the Tivo HD, and $300 for 3 years of service). That's one of the things that always puts the breaks on Tivo (I acknowledge the new Tivo HD looks nice), the service fees are killer.

Yep, $600 is the figure I worked with for TivoHD + 3 years of Service. I also figure three years out is probably all the further ytou can plan with TV changing as rapidly as it is. This matches the cost of the R-5000HD. $550 for mod + $50 for SageTV interface. With this I only get 1 HD tuner, and I have to continue to pay $10 a moth to the cable company for STB rental. CableCard rental is $8 a month less than STB rental, so over 3 years, the r5000HD costs $288 more.

certainly i am only dealing with OTA, but we're fine with the 25 or so channels ATSC supplies us with, and always have far too much recorded content to watch than time to watch them

If this was all I cared to watch, then I would agree with you. SageTV is clearly the best choice for recording OTA HD.

how much storage space does the Tivo have for HD?

As much as you want to buy. It comes with a 160G drive that can easily be replaced with a 1T drive. It has one eSATA port where you can add (currently) up to 1T additional space. It is not as flexable as a PC since you only get 2 drives maximum, but the cost of the space is the same between the two.

Are you sure video extraction works for cablecard recorded content? Can you post a link that references that?

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=57574
caveat: You will need to modify the onboard PROM chip which requires some soldering. Services are available for this for ~$60.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by EdwardATeller

Can't really speak for others, but I don't SEEM to have trouble with HD playback, I DO have trouble with HD playback. I doubt others would be complaining if they didn't actually have trouble. Maybe it's a fine semantic point, but it really jumped out at me.

no, your wrong. "it seems" is correctly used to point out a factual or correct statement.


seem |s?m| verb [ intrans. ] give the impression or sensation of being something or having a particular quality


usage:

"used to suggest in a cautious, guarded, or polite way that something is true or a fact : it would seem that he has been fooling us all."

[toricred]

I believe it is also a true statement that not everybody has a problem playing back HD. I personally have it playing back perfectly on 3 clients. One of which is also running Sage Server as a network encoder and is pretty underpowered (Sempron 3000+, 1GB of RAM) but does have a 7600GT with Purevideo.

[eggman51]

Originally Posted by sandor

how much storage space does the Tivo have for HD? i've got 400+ hours free right now.... not counting hard drives (apart from my first 500 GB one) i have spent about $750 for my 3 tuner HD SageTV box - i have no problems that aren't self-inflicted, and the WAF is incredibly high.

i know there is a vocal group that seems to have problems with HD playback, but with an AMD 3800 and a 7600GT w/nVidia Purevideo decoders, the picture quality is outstanding.

certainly i am only dealing with OTA, but we're fine with the 25 or so channels ATSC supplies us with, and always have far too much recorded content to watch than time to watch them.

our other thought has always been that skipping the monthly cable bill, and have a netflix subscription lets us watch all the showtime and hbo shows we love at a much much much lower price. so it really all depends on priorities.

I can't comment much on the Tivo because I've only used one in a condo I was in temporarily (older one a couple years back). On paper the Series 3 look nice and afaik it's pretty easy to make them have 2tb storage which is a fair amount.

Where I live in Western Canada (Vancouver) you get 2 OTA HD channels. There are a few clear QAM channels (at least I think they are), but for the most part the HD channels are encrypted. So basically anything decent on HD is not easily recordable.

I am also unaware of any way to capture HD or SD with 5.1 audio. Not a huge deal, but mildly annoying.

My experience upscaling 480 to 1080 was that it required a pretty hefty processor. In contrast an xbox or dvd player can do this with stellar quality for about the price of the processor alone. If you are in a position that I am where the HTPC is old enough now that it needs wholesale replacing, it's not so cheap to look at all the same capabilities that can be had from components and/or an xbox.

Not saying that an HTPC can never be made to work .. on the contrary I think it's a great concept and with some care and feeding can provide the best bang for the buck when compared to high end solutions.

But to the original topic of the original poster, the future of HD recording on the PC is, imo, quite bleak until some industry or defacto standards are accessible and affordable that take the pain out of it. I think that's gonna be a while because it's a pain introduced by the content providers.

[deliverer]

I'm running into the same issues. I recently upgraded to HD, but my server nor my Hard Drives can keep up. So do I dump money into Sage, Dish Network, Time Warner, or a Tivo.....

There is also the wife factor to deal with. Example, there appears to be a bug playing certain HD content on the media extender. That is not cool with the wife...So I got HD working, but can't play it on all the TV's.

I'm looking at probably $500-$600 bucks to get things working right with Sage. I could go "rent" a Dish HD receiver DVR with programming for an additional $31 a month....$372 a year. 1 DVR receiver for 2 TV's. There is also the benefit of getting rid of all these computers that are on 24/7 if I go that route.

Maybe another option is the mod on the dish receiver with a non DVR Receiver. As others, I don't see HD working in Sage long term....It was cool at first, but now it's just a hassel IMO.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by deliverer

As others, I don't see HD working in Sage long term....

I think the jury should remain out until after we have a chance to play with the HD extender. For my purposes, the HDHR (currently) provides enough HD channels with only paying for a basic analog cable bill and no STBs etc.

Adding disk to the sage server to hold more content is dirt cheap -- I already have over 5TB on the server. Assuming the new extenders let me play HD remotely, then I think Sage is still very much in the running. If the extender doesn't do what I expect, then I"ll consider deploying HTPCs. But I have held off on that because I fully expect the extender to be a good solution.

If I cared about premium channels (which I don't subscribe to now anyway), or if some the channels I get in clear QAM now via the HDHR were to suddenly get 5C'd by my provider, then I may have a different view.

[NEOSG]

Originally Posted by deliverer

.... As others, I don't see HD working in Sage long term....It was cool at first, but now it's just a hassel IMO.

If you've got the money to burn, no other system can touch Sage. Combine OTA/QAM HD tuners with some R5000 modded Sat/Cable boxes from as many HD providers as you want. Add a ton of drives for storage. Add full clients that can play HD. You have a whole house HD DVR solution.

I went this route, and yes have spent a fair amount of money. But, it is a great feeling to see the wish lists of HD DVR users from various providers and know I already have it in Sage, while they can only dream.

With Dish and eventually BEV MPEG4 sat boxes able to accept an R5000 mod, Sage and the R5000 modded boxes, along with HDHR QAM and OTA tuners will be my HD DVR solution for MANY MANY years to come.

While, I do realize this is not for everyone, the sky is the limit with Sage. That is one reason why I can be a harsh critic when things DON'T work, because I experience on a daily basis how awesome they are when they DO work with Sage. People can mention Cable Card all they want, but I'll take my DRM free R5000 andHDHR boxes over a CC solution riddled with DRM, regardless of cost.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by NEOSG

If you've got the money to burn, no other system can touch Sage. Combine OTA/QAM HD tuners with some R5000 modded Sat/Cable boxes from as many HD providers as you want. Add a ton of drives for storage. Add full clients that can play HD. You have a whole house HD DVR solution.

I went this route, and yes have spent a fair amount of money. But, it is a great feeling to see the wish lists of HD DVR users from various providers and know I already have it in Sage, while they can only dream.

With Dish and eventually BEV MPEG4 sat boxes able to accept an R5000 mod, Sage and the R5000 modded boxes, along with HDHR QAM and OTA tuners will be my HD DVR solution for MANY MANY years to come.

While, I do realize this is not for everyone, the sky is the limit with Sage. That is one reason why I can be a harsh critic when things DON'T work, because I experience on a daily basis how awesome they are when they DO work with Sage. People can mention Cable Card all they want, but I'll take my DRM free R5000 andHDHR boxes over a CC solution riddled with DRM, regardless of cost.

I agree. The biggest disadvantage is the being able to easily get high quality HD playback in windows. The extender may help avoid this problem, but in the end the Sage guys make the product more like MCE, by bundling a hardware acceleration capable decoder, and recommending tested drivers that are known to work. And if they want it to work on Vista, which is important, they need to support EVR. I know MSFT didn't need to develop yet another rendered, but the driver support basically requires it these days.

Cablecard equipped MCE systems are a market failure. The question is does MSFT lick it's wounds and go back and push for a non DRM'd approach. If not, this whole PC DVR segment will remain a niche, of which Sage is the functionality leader right now, and looks to be for some time to come. The R5000 makes this possible.

For such a high end solution though, I am still amazed at the level of problems we have to chase down. MVP's that stop playing, timeline issues with some encoders, lack of EVR support, lack of unencrypted HD-DVD and BR support, etc... Sage is SO CLOSE to being the hands downs best solution, yet it seems unpolished in so many ways.

I wish the Sage guys would just double the price of everything and hire another developer to clean all this stuff up. Heck if we could pay bounty's for features (or even fixes) I'd be willing to do it. Those of us who have spent a lot of money on TB's of disk and R5000's would easily spend more to make it a solid well supported highest end solution.

As for the future of HD on PC based DVR's, as far as I am concerned, Sage is the BEST place to be. I wish I could get a R5000 mod for DirecTV's new boxes, but sadly I can't. But I don't see any DirecTV solution for MCE either. Of course, if cablecard MCE was a success, that might have motivated the DirecTV guys. As it is, they they clobbering cable right now and MCE isn't helping because it was gelded so badly.

Thanks,
Mike

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mikesm

I agree. The biggest disadvantage is the being able to easily get high quality HD playback in windows. The extender may help avoid this problem, but in the end the Sage guys make the product more like MCE, by bundling a hardware acceleration capable decoder, and recommending tested drivers that are known to work. And if they want it to work on Vista, which is important, they need to support EVR. I know MSFT didn't need to develop yet another rendered, but the driver support basically requires it these days.

Unless Sage starts selling pre-built PCs, there's not really anything they can do as far as stability goes.

Cablecard equipped MCE systems are a market failure. The question is does MSFT lick it's wounds and go back and push for a non DRM'd approach. If not, this whole PC DVR segment will remain a niche, of which Sage is the functionality leader right now, and looks to be for some time to come. The R5000 makes this possible.

MS is powerful, but CableLabs has no interest in recording on the PC, I forsee no "DRM free" CableCard solution, ever.

For such a high end solution though, I am still amazed at the level of problems we have to chase down. MVP's that stop playing, timeline issues with some encoders, lack of EVR support, lack of unencrypted HD-DVD and BR support, etc... Sage is SO CLOSE to being the hands downs best solution, yet it seems unpolished in so many ways.

There are not yet any Directshow filters supporting unencrypted HD DVD or BD. Until there are the requisite source/splitter/navigator and decoder filters in place, there's not much Sage can do. And Sage is basically beholden to the open source community for those, since there's no market for "pay for" HD DVD/BD filters that won't work with retail discs.

[mikesm]

We can't talk about certain things involving HD-DVD or BR playback. But I think it is safe to say that if you have unencrypted content that it can be converted into a form that can be played back through directshow, if you lose certain functionality re: menus and such.

Thanks,
Mike

[stanger89]

Agreed, but HD media files aren't really a problem, and aren't really what I was getting at. My point was simply that there are a lot of calls for Sage to do something in the way of "HD DVD/BD support". To me, that means adding support for the handling the logical structure of an HD DVD/BD the way Sage can handle the logical structure of a DVD. Now before I go farther, I would love to be able to pop in an HD DVD or BD (say into a new LG H20L drive ) and hit "Play DVD" in the Media Center menu and happilly play the movie, just like I can with a DVD.

However the reality of the situation is, nobody is making Directshow components to support the logical structure of HD DVD/BD because you can't play retail discs via directshow (Note that there are no "unencrypted" BDs because AACS is mandatory on prerecorded BDs, it's optional on HD DVDs).

I've resigned myself to the hope that somebody (ffdshow or ac3filter) will add DD+ decoding support so there is a dshow filter capable of decoding DD+ other than the one in Sonic Scenarist (which is $$$$). If I can put DD+ audio, VC-1/H.264 video, and chapters in some sage-compatible container, I'll be happy

[bialio]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Now before I go farther, I would love to be able to pop in an HD DVD or BD (say into a new LG H20L drive )

I've got one of those on the way from the egg. I will find a way to make it work, somehow, from or with Sage.

btl.