HD Component capture with H.264 Encode

[crmartin]

Looks like it includes an IR blaster:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/s...38&newsLang=en

From this article the Hauppauge card can also create an AVCHD for file. Does this mean Sage could support AVCHD format files? I'm only curious because I have a Sony video camera that generates this format, and then I could copy directly into a Sage folder rather than converting. I'm assuming Sage doesn't handle AVCHD format now, but I've never tried either. So far I've just been storing the raw files for future archiving. My thought was I needed to edit / convert the files, but maybe this isn't the case.

-Craig

[Taddeusz]

I guess it's dependent on the container but AVC is simply a different name for H.264.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by otakucode

The technology has been around for years. Chips available as low as $15/ea (for small quantities even) from Motorola that could encode 1080i content from a component video source into h264 video. Why hasn't it been done before? People would kill for such a device! The reason it hasn't been done is because the cable and satellite companies would sue the company creating it into oblivion unless they agreed to some powerfully draconian DRM schemes.

Please tell me I'm just being paranoid and this device will really record component video to an AVI file containing standard h264 MPEG-4 video with no DRM. Please tell me that it will somehow get around the macrovision copy protection that I am fairly certain all cable and satellite boxes degrade their image quality with.

Heed my paranoia:
I remember what Big Hollywood/Studios did to my first love ReplayTV. If this unit does what we are hoping with no DRM limitations, Big Hollywood lawyers will be all over Hauppauge Digital, Inc like Stink on Sh!t. If this device works, buy all you want as soon as we can, because the first batch may be the last batch we ever see............. paranoid? yes, but that don't mean I'm wrong

[mikejaner]

What do I mean? Well, sorry for my pessimism about this, but I've been paying attention the past 5 years or so. ATI offers (or perhaps offered... or maybe just planned to offer... don't know if this is or ever was really sold, I am sure it didn't sell WELL at all) a card that will record from digital cable in full HD, every channel you receive with your service! It even takes a CableCARD! But the devil is in the details. To gain the certification to create such a device, ATI can only sell the card as part of a complete computer system. That complete computer system has to comply with a plethora of DRM requirements. You can't alter ANY of the hardware, no adding a bigger hard drive or upgrading your processor, nothing. Doing so will disable your capture card device.

What you are talking about is completely different from this device. ATI makes Digital Tuners, which are able to tune the encrypted channels coming from the cable company, and put an exactly digital copy of the Show/Movie on your hard drive. In order to "preserve their rights" the cable industry made them go through a bunch of hoops in order to prevent the "rampant piracy" from "eating into their profits" even further (all said with the Chris Farley gestures)

Hauppauge is presenting us with a perfectly legal Analog copy method for recording in HD. In theory, and probably reality, the copy of the content made by these devices is never going to be a perfect one. The cable companies have no choice in the matter, and the only way they can stop it is to change the law, or stop offering component output (which would kill thier customer base)

[mikejaner]

Heed my paranoia:
I remember what Big Hollywood/Studios did to my first love ReplayTV. If this unit does what we are hoping with no DRM limitations, Big Hollywood lawyers will be all over Hauppauge Digital, Inc like Stink on Sh!t. If this device works, buy all you want as soon as we can, because the first batch may be the last batch we ever see............. paranoid? yes, but that don't mean I'm wrong

Hollywood sued ReplayTV because they were automatically cutting commercials out of Television shows. This eliminated the paid for part of the tv shows. If Replay hadn't done this, they would probably be number two or number one in the market with Tivo. This is why Tivo hasn't been sued also. BeyondTV started with and ReplayTV switched to "Chapter Detection" which skirted the issue, and the suing stopped.

[rlvogel322]

Originally Posted by otakucode

Chips available as low as $15/ea (for small quantities even) from Motorola that could encode 1080i content from a component video source into h264 video.

Just curious, but what chip might this be? I don't remember seeing one from Mot.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Hollywood sued ReplayTV because they were automatically cutting commercials out of Television shows. This eliminated the paid for part of the tv shows. If Replay hadn't done this, they would probably be number two or number one in the market with Tivo. This is why Tivo hasn't been sued also. BeyondTV started with and ReplayTV switched to "Chapter Detection" which skirted the issue, and the suing stopped.

Hollywood didn't sue over commercial skip actually, they sued over the ability for IVS to function (which allowed one reply to send the program to another replay over the Internet, ala "poopli"). Replay agreed to drop IVS and autoskip before the case was fully ligated, so there no case law that says these features are prohibited.

[fyodor]

I am not sure if this is the same device that SageTV will be branding but here's a press release..

http://www.pr-inside.com/hauppauge-d...gh-r381217.htm

* merged *

[mikesm]

Yes, that's the device I was referring to.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by fyodor

I am not sure if this is the same device that SageTV will be branding but here's a press release..

http://www.pr-inside.com/hauppauge-d...gh-r381217.htm

* merged *

Ok now I'm glad I didn't get an HD extender yet, I'd much rather spend that money on one of these, or the Sage version, when available.

I was looking into another 1600 but I guess I need to wait now.

[morikaweb]

Just got to say sign me up for 4 . As far as a name... I suck at namming things so I'll stick to buying 4

[mikejaner]

Hollywood didn't sue over commercial skip actually, they sued over the ability for IVS to function (which allowed one reply to send the program to another replay over the Internet, ala "poopli"). Replay agreed to drop IVS and autoskip before the case was fully ligated, so there no case law that says these features are prohibited.

You're right, I forgot about the other part. I just knew it wasn't about the DVR functionality.

[hemicuda]

Originally Posted by jrog

The XBOX 360, can actually put out 1080p through the component video port, although most TVs can't handle that signal. I haven't verified that this is still true with the HDMI capable XBOX using component cables. On one of my TVs, it in effect creates two images of the screen squeezed into the same screen each getting half the width.

My Samsung reports 1080p from both the HDMI and Comp outputs of my X360. Image quality is superb, IMO. I still think HDMI is a bit buggy all-round, but using it keeps me from needing a separate A/V switcher for digital audio. I have a mix of tos and coax.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

I just knew it wasn't about the DVR functionality.

That wasn't my point. DVR's are not the problem in their eyes.

I was trying to point out that when you have a feature that "Hollywood" does not like they go after you hard and into bankruptcy if you don't kowtow to them. And I'm just guessing here, but I don't think they are thrilled about a HD Component capture card.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

That wasn't my point. DVR's are not the problem in their eyes.

I was trying to point out that when you have a feature that "Hollywood" does not like they go after you hard and into bankruptcy if you don't kowtow to them. And I'm just guessing here, but I don't think they are thrilled about a HD Component capture card.

Obviously they've already existed for professional use and are still available. If someone really wants to pirate material cost usually isn't that huge of an issue. Having a cheaper option shouldn't really set off the MPAA beast any more than the professional level capture cards that are already out there.

[korben_dallas]

Guys can we get back on topic??? We really don't need YetAnotherDRMThread..

I'm curious if the hardware in this unit is too large to be placed on a PCI board layout? I don't have anything against USB per se, but I was glad to go from my ConvertX usb to a Hauppauge 1600 PCI.. more tidy, less cables, two less lights to deal with in a dark room, etc.

Also, I assume since it accepts AC3 then it is storing a bit-perfect copy of that audio along with the compressed video?

Lastly, what kind of CPU/GPU requirements are going to be necessary for smooth playback of higher bitrate / higher compression MPEG-4 files? I'm hoping my Core 2 E4500 + ATI 9800Pro AGP is good enough, else this could trigger yet another hardware upgrade for me.

[Fluffdaddy]

None of them questions are going to be answered in this thread any time soon.

[Taddeusz]

I know my X2 4200 had problems with playback of 1080p H.264 but 720p played fine. I would imagine as far as decoding goes 1080i would be similar to 1080p. Or it may need a little bit more since it needs to be deinterlaced for playback.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

Guys can we get back on topic??? We really don't need YetAnotherDRMThread..

I'm curious if the hardware in this unit is too large to be placed on a PCI board layout? I don't have anything against USB per se, but I was glad to go from my ConvertX usb to a Hauppauge 1600 PCI.. more tidy, less cables, two less lights to deal with in a dark room, etc.

Also, I assume since it accepts AC3 then it is storing a bit-perfect copy of that audio along with the compressed video?

Lastly, what kind of CPU/GPU requirements are going to be necessary for smooth playback of higher bitrate / higher compression MPEG-4 files? I'm hoping my Core 2 E4500 + ATI 9800Pro AGP is good enough, else this could trigger yet another hardware upgrade for me.

They didn't have the actual unit available to see, as it was an engineering prototype, but they said it was pretty small. My friend who knows the h.264 encoding market says there is no reason why it can't be very small. It's really only a couple chips as the h.264 encoder is highly integrated (it has to be to hit that price point).

It'll take whatever you feed it via spdif, ac3, pcm, etc... I don't think they process it much since the older 5.1 formats are pretty much available as in the the BR h.264 profile. They picked the profile so you could take the encoded video, burn it to a DVD, and play it in any blu-ray player (BR players also play DVD's fine).

If you can play back a h.264 BR title fine, then this should also work fine. Theoretically, sage could transcode it in the background to MPEG2, which isn't a big CPU hog, but since the HD extender can handle this fine and most of the new cards can handle it fine, I don't think that's really necessary.

[stanger89]

You're going to have a hard time with an E4300 and a 9800 pro. My Athlon X2 4200 (2.2GHz, dual-core) can barely handle 9-10Mbps 1080p H.264.

My big question is how are they going to handle bitrate vs resolution. I hope that it can handle recording in native output (1080i for 1080i, 480i for 480i, etc). Hopefully it can do that, and you can set bitrate per resolution or something.