BlackMagic Intensity Pro: recording HD via HDMI/Component

[heffneil]

Yeah that card has two HDMI inputs that is why I was asking. I didn't know it was such a touchy subject.

[dadavo]

Originally Posted by heffneil

Yeah that card has two HDMI inputs that is why I was asking. I didn't know it was such a touchy subject.

Actually only 1 is an input the other is an output on both cards.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/pro...ity/techspecs/

[heffneil]

Thanks for the clarifications. That means I need twice the number of cards...

[dadavo]

I should also mention that you can only capture from either HDMI or component but not both simultaneously. Just in case anyone was wondering.

[heffneil]

I have a crazy question and I hope no one will flame me for it but how does the Tivo HD do it? I mean I can't imagine that thing has a great processor but it plays live HD while recording like sagetv. I guess is there some crazy video circuitry in there that we should consider for our machines to offload from the CPU?

Thanks,

Neil

[GKusnick]

Tivo HD doesn't need a lot of processing power because it's not doing anything very demanding. It's just storing the already compressed MPEG stream as it comes off the air or cable and then playing it back through a hardware decoder. This is pretty much what Sage does with over-the-air or clear QAM HD. The main difference is that Tivo uses CableCard to comply with the cable provider's copy-protection requirements, and can therefore record the encrypted cable channels, whereas Sage does not support CableCard and therefore cannot record encrypted content.

What the Blackmagic card does is completely different. It takes a raw, uncompressed HD signal meant to feed a monitor (either component or HDMI) and uses your CPU to compress it down to MPEG in real time. That's why the CPU requirements are so much higher than for Tivo or for OTA/QAM recording in Sage: because there's an extra compression step in there that Tivo doesn't need to do.

Sorry if you felt like you were being flamed earlier. As flamage goes, that was pretty mild. But the best way to make sure it doesn't happen again is to search the forums before posting, read what's already been written, and try to avoid posting questions that have already been answered multiple times. (For instance, here's what has already been written about HDMI in this thread.)

[heffneil]

I didn't feel too flamed but there were two simultaneous threads going on about the same stuff essentially so I was asking in two places. When the one guy said he just used component that wasn't what I was looking or hoping to hear. I was most curious if the HDMI was working ok or if component was the only way to go. I don't have sage implemented just yet. I have it running on my laptop with no capture card just to kick the tires. I know it isn't close to full capacity in this configuration but before I spend the money on it I wanted to see what its capabilities are. I just became involved in home automation and I was looking at MainLobby as a front end. They have DvDLobby which is their disc management software. I really want something better to record and distribute TV. I guess one of my questions is how do most people with SageTV watch HD signal that is "premium" with Sage? Are you using the decoder box with the antenna out of the box in to a traditional tuner card? How is the quality in this case? I have lot more questions but I don't want to overstay my welcome.

Thanks,

Neil

[fyodor]

I think that most people get their HD from some combination of over the air broadcasts and QAM (unencrypted digital cable transmissions). A lot of people use the firewire output on the back of their digital cable boxes.

If you are new to STV I think that the solution in this thread is probably not a good fit for you. In a month or two Hauppauge will be releasing an HD capture card that automates a lot of what people are talking about in this thread (i.e. it captures and compresses component inputs). You could also get an HDHomerun which will allow you to digitally capture the HD channels that your cable company does not encrypt (usually locals+a few basic cable channels).

Originally Posted by heffneil

I didn't feel too flamed but there were two simultaneous threads going on about the same stuff essentially so I was asking in two places. When the one guy said he just used component that wasn't what I was looking or hoping to hear. I was most curious if the HDMI was working ok or if component was the only way to go. I don't have sage implemented just yet. I have it running on my laptop with no capture card just to kick the tires. I know it isn't close to full capacity in this configuration but before I spend the money on it I wanted to see what its capabilities are. I just became involved in home automation and I was looking at MainLobby as a front end. They have DvDLobby which is their disc management software. I really want something better to record and distribute TV. I guess one of my questions is how do most people with SageTV watch HD signal that is "premium" with Sage? Are you using the decoder box with the antenna out of the box in to a traditional tuner card? How is the quality in this case? I have lot more questions but I don't want to overstay my welcome.

Thanks,

Neil

[dadavo]

Yes I would have to agree. At the time I built my media center using the Intensity Pro seemed to be the only feasible solution to record HD from my satellite box. Now with the upcoming solution from Hauppauge I would also recommend waiting to see how that works out before investing in this. I would imagine that using the Hauppauge solution would be as easy as plug and play where as using the Intensity solution is a project.

[fyodor]

I'll also add that h.264 is better for storage, taking up about half the space for the same quality.

BTW, do you have any ability to compare the quality of your recordings with straight digital transmissions(QAM, OTA, etc)? I'm curious how much is lost with the extra D/A conversion and decoding/encoding.

Originally Posted by dadavo

Yes I would have to agree. At the time I built my media center using the Intensity Pro seemed to be the only feasible solution to record HD from my satellite box. Now with the upcoming solution from Hauppauge I would also recommend waiting to see how that works out before investing in this. I would imagine that using the Hauppauge solution would be as easy as plug and play where as using the Intensity solution is a project.

[dadavo]

The only way I can do comparisons is with my eyes. I wanted to post actual videos however uncompressed video captured from the card for just 2 seconds is 222 MB large.

[fyodor]

I was thinking of your visual impressions between ATSC/QAM captures and the mpeg2 recordings you get from this. I'm not interested in the quality of the uncompressed streams since someone using such a system would be viewing the recompressed recordings not the uncompressed captures. Thanks!

[dadavo]

Visually they look the same to me. I cannot compare them side to side to pick out the differences but I cannot really tell any difference. I am encoding using VRB 15 - 20 Mbits/s with a Dish Network VIP211 receiver as my source.

[karpodiem]

so I've read a few pages of this thread and I believe I understand to a certain extent, however I have pretty basic question;

I have HD from Comcast that is subsequently fed to my TV through component cables. With the Pro version of this card, would I be able to capture encrypted channels (such as ESPN-HD) on my computer? What would be the resultant file type of the recorded files, and would I be able to encode them to a different format? Could I interface this through SageTV, or would I have to do it some other way?

And finally, what is the learning curve for using this card?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by karpodiem

I have HD from Comcast that is subsequently fed to my TV through component cables. With the Pro version of this card, would I be able to capture encrypted channels (such as ESPN-HD) on my computer?

yes

What would be the resultant file type of the recorded files, and would I be able to encode them to a different format?

I believe in the configurations described above, it creates an MPEG-2 file, which could be transcoded.

Could I interface this through SageTV, or would I have to do it some other way?

Yes using sgraphrecorder I believe.

And finally, what is the learning curve for using this card?

I'd say rather significant, it's not plug and play by a long shot. Unless you simply can't wait 'til the May/June release of the Hauppauge HD PVR, you're MUCH better off waiting for it.

This solution uses the CPU to compress the video, which takes a lot of horsepower and it requires fiddling with directshow graphs and network encoders. The HD PVR will use a hardware encoder to compress video, and should be natively supported by SageTV.

And finally the described configurations compress to MPEG-2 where as the Hauppauge HD PVR will compress to H.264, a much more efficient codec.

[karpodiem]

Thanks for the reply! It looks like I should probably just wait it out for the Hauupauge HD PVR.

[Olias]

Originally Posted by karpodiem

Thanks for the reply! It looks like I should probably just wait it out for the Hauupauge HD PVR.

I'm using the pro and am very satisfied. But unless you really like to tweak your system (I do) you'd be better off waiting a month or so. The latest talk at avsforum indicates a May/June release.

[nyle]

Ok, so the Hauppauge HD-PVR is out but seems to have enough of it's own "support issues". Is there no chance that Sage will be adding native support out of the box for the Intensity Pro for high-end systems?

I'd love to buy one, plug it in and have SageTV know exactly what do to with it. Analog SD is dying and MPEG2 SD looks like crap on my TV. I'd love a simple solution to allow me to continue to use Sage but bring my cable box into it for full access to all the new content.

I can't believe I'm the only one and isn't Sage reaching a dead end if it doesn't come up with a migration path? I'd think that supporting HD-PVR and the Intensity Pro(the only two component level input solutions I've seen) would be the number one priority for every HTPC software solution.

I already have a 1.5TB hard drive - I'm more than willing to upgrade my HTPC to quad core, 4GB ram, ultra high end video card, etc. in order to use the Intensity Pro with Sage but it's got to be virtually plug and play.

It sounds like the solutions provided on this thread a usable but certainly no where near plug and play.

Any official comment from Sage? Thanks.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by nyle

Ok, so the Hauppauge HD-PVR is out but seems to have enough of it's own "support issues". Is there no chance that Sage will be adding native support out of the box for the Intensity Pro for high-end systems?

Probably not because it requires software encoding, which is inherently problematic.

I can't believe I'm the only one and isn't Sage reaching a dead end if it doesn't come up with a migration path? I'd think that supporting HD-PVR and the Intensity Pro(the only two component level input solutions I've seen) would be the number one priority for every HTPC software solution.

Problem is the Intensity Pro is it's a software encoder, those never work well. The cost of entry for an Intensity Pro is just way too high, $300+ for the card, plus hundreds in HTPC hardware to utilize it.

[paulbeers]

While I do think the HDPVR has some issues for some (mostly older units), I have never had any issues with mine and have been using it since July. Playback is solely thru HD100/200's. I think much has to do with getting h.264 playback working which is not as tried and true as mpeg2. I have no problems recommending the HDPVR.

And NO company is going to add native support for this card. This would be a support nightmare. The complaints about the hardware necessities will be huge....