Comcast HD DVR -- Raising the Bar Out of Sage's Reach?

[stanger89]

My point was that the ADTV/Hipix already work (recording), the problem right now is just that SageTV can't reliably play recorded HDTV (studder/no subchanel). That problem will need to be fixed before any HDTV cards (old or new) will be useful. It does however show both that the guys at Frey are interested in HD, and that SageTV is perfectly capable of HDTV.

[mikesm]

Fair enough. You do need a lot of CPU to decode HD, and the MPEG codec needs to be pretty efficient at doing it's job. Fusion sends along it's own codec, which seems to work well for me on the sample ts files they have on their site.

Thanks,
Mike

[stanger89]

Sonic CP, Intervideo WinDVD, Fusion, all can decode HDTV cleanly with a little DXVA help. I could play HD on my old Athlon XP 1800+ with a Geforce 4 MX (DXVA). Actually it's pretty much been determined that the Sage Demux filter need some optimization to do HDTV cleanly. I can play HD just fine with the Sasem OnAir HD Editor or Sonic CP decoder/Elecard Demux, but if I throw in the Sage Demux I get horrible studder.

Now WMV-HD, that takes a hefty computer to play, my 2.4G P4 is just barely enough to play the 720p version of Coral Reef Adventure.

[AJ Bertelson]

cliff just chime'd in saying that the USB-HDTV doesn't have any sort of QAM support.

[mikesm]

Yeah, I am beginning to wonder if the 1394 approach is going to have to be the dominant way of fixing the CATV HD issue. Still, we'll see what ATI and friends do with the next gen all-in-wonder boards...

Thanks,
Mike

[AJ Bertelson]

Originally posted by mikesm
Yeah, I am beginning to wonder if the 1394 approach is going to have to be the dominant way of fixing the CATV HD issue. Still, we'll see what ATI and friends do with the next gen all-in-wonder boards...

Thanks,
Mike

apparently they showed a HDTV recorder at the board of directors meeting.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by mikesm
Yeah, I am beginning to wonder if the 1394 approach is going to have to be the dominant way of fixing the CATV HD issue. Still, we'll see what ATI and friends do with the next gen all-in-wonder boards...

Thanks,
Mike

Except for the fact that for 1394 to become widespread, content providers will insist on having 5C (copy protection) enabled and we're back where we started. How likely is it that a computer will become (or be allowed to be) a "trusted" box. There's really no technical difference between firewire and QAM in the sense that the hardware to impliment them already exists, the problem is primarily political.

/Rant on.
It's really depressing when you see that the people calling the shots are a buch of paranoid, technophobes who assume the general public is criminal and going to "steal" their precious content
/Rant off.

Sorry about that. Anyway, it is encouraging to see so many companies (MS, ATI, NV, Frey, SS, Sony, Dell, Gateway...) pushing the convergence. There are a lot of companies putting that have and are putting a lot of money into media PCs, and these companies aren't going to be very keen on all that money going to waste. FWIW, one encouraging fact is that the DVD Forum aproved AOD as the HD DVD format and VC-9 (Windows Media 9) is one of the possible codecs used in that format, it will be very hard to keep those from working in a PC, and on the Blueray front, Dell and HP are planning on adding Blueray support in their product lines.

Wow, talk about veering OT sorry, we now return you to our regularly scheduled topic.

[salsbst]

What if the PC records an encrypted stream via Firewire and plays back through the STB in order to have the STB do the decrypting? Wouldn't that be a satisfactory compromise (if the stream gets tied to the STB that delivered it)?

[AJ Bertelson]

Originally posted by salsbst
What if the PC records an encrypted stream via Firewire and plays back through the STB in order to have the STB do the decrypting? Wouldn't that be a satisfactory compromise (if the stream gets tied to the STB that delivered it)?

shouldn't be a problem with the 169time I believe
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0&pagenumber=6

check out lifters post about 1/3 of the way down

[salsbst]

In the cable domain, 169time works with only one dying breed of cable box if I'm not mistaken.

[stanger89]

And the 169time solution requires a dummy computer to convert the stream to the appropriate format.

[salsbst]

Originally posted by salsbst
What if the PC records an encrypted stream via Firewire and plays back through the STB in order to have the STB do the decrypting? Wouldn't that be a satisfactory compromise (if the stream gets tied to the STB that delivered it)?

Pardon me for commenting on my own comment, but I guess the acceptability of this compromise depends for the content owner on whether they are trying to prevent piracy or whether they want to make you watch commercials. I guess it's probably both.

[Deadbolt]

Wondering...how does DVHS tape recorders do this? If they use the 1394 port are they defunct also when 5c goes into effect...or do they record the uncompressed stream out of the DVI/Component video?

HDTV newbie,
Deadbolt