HDTV capabilities

[yahoojames]

Congratualtions on releasing SageTV. I was curious if Sage has or will have any HDTV recording or timeshifting capabilities.

[dkardatzke]

We have not looked at HDTV support yet, but it's one of our next steps. Any cards in particular you were interested in us supporting?

Dan

[RBTConsultants]

ACCESSDTV! (please, please, please) :-)

Bob

[Narflex]

Is software playback of content recorded by the AccessDTV card (or HiPix or anything else) something that anyone's doing right now?

Long-term we plan to support the hardware decoding capabilities; but there's a shortcut to implementation if software playback of the HDTV recorded content is possible and acceptable to users.

[RBTConsultants]

There are actually several solutions available for playback of the HD transport streams recorded by cards such as AccessDTV, Hipix, Hidtv and MyHD. Using the playback software that comes with the cards is one option.

Also, WinDVD is known to do it. I use zoomplayer with Sonic filters and have used Cyberlink decoders. There is a tool called DVHSTool which will also playback using these decoders.

Essentially, these decoders with a dmux (elecard) can be implemented in any directshow player.

The biggest issue with AccessdTV is the capture software. It records in small chunks with weird names. This forces an interim processing step where you need to combine the small files into a large file for playback. The PVR software is also very lame. I have heard that the PVR software for the other cards is equally problematic, with no integrated EPGs and unreliable scheduled recordings.

So, if you could solve the capture problem first, that would be fantastic.

Addressing playback later would also be fruitful. Playback of the streams can be done reliably and the decoders work fine, but we have had a hard time getting reliable seek capabilities such as FF, REW, etc. Some streams from some broadcast networks work fine with this, some don't. I suspect this lies somewhere in the mysteries of MPEG Sequence headers and directshow capabilities of the file source filters and demux filters. The card makers playback software seems to be able to handle this, but they all only playback to their own cards, which makes it impossible to playback something while something else is recording. Also, Accessdtv does not provide any seek capabilities for files that are not recorded by the card in the propietary naming standard.

A couple of other things to note: AccessDTV is the only card that is hardware capable of independent recording and playback. This is evidenced in their ability to do timeshifting with live pause, etc. However, they have never implemented this in software beyond timeshifting. All the cards use the Janus tuner, but AccessDTV implemented some additional hardware on their card.

AccessDTV developers had a strong spurt of development at the end of last year but have since disappeared from view so any support you could give to the card would bring a LOT of AccessDTV users. Maybe you could contact iTech about partnering with them to support the card.

This has all been discussed in great detail in the HTPC forum at HTTP:\\www.avsforum.com if you'd like to learn more.

Please let me know how I can help.

Thanks,

Bob

[edmc]

I would much prefer an HDTV Tuner Card more akin to the Analog Tuner Cards you currently support. The problem with AccessDTV, HiPix, MyHD, etc... is that they all require the "playback" thru the Tuner Card. This has many drawbacks which I think you alluded to in your post about preferring an HDTV Tuner Card which used Software Playback.

To that end, I am very encouraged by the DVICO Fusion HDTV II set for release over the next month or two. Check out AVSForum for several discussions of this, and other Korean competitor's cards. One very promising follow-on announced by DVICO is the Fusion HDTV III card which will have QAM support for HD-over-Cable Tuning. Finally, not having to (poorly) duplicate the capabilities of a Display Adapter (e.g. ATI Radeon 9700, GeForce4, etc...), such HDTV Tuner-only cards will come in at under $200...

DVICO's URL is http://www.dvico.com/products_mul_hd.html

[chadman]

I have used my MYHD card with Sage and it seemed to work well. I was not able to record or playback in HD but could use the card. I am looking forward to useing Sage to record in HD and hope they get there soon.

Chad

[RBTConsultants]

I agree that a "tuner only" HD card makes the most sense, and that there is no really good reason for an HD card to include expensive Video Display capabilities when we can use AGP cards to do it and software/DXVA to play it back. I would like to see a really good, full featured playback solution for captured ATSC streams.

However, none of these cards are available in the US market today so we still wait. And Dvico's software playback software still needs work from the demos I have seen.

And no one has addressed a good capture/scheduling/PVR front end for any HD card yet like Sage seems to be.

So, if it is expedient it sounds like the best approach would be first addressing the front end/scheduling/recording/capture first for available HD cards and outputting a standard file format. Then either use the HD Cards's playback or other available solutions and address a really good playback app next. This could then be a standard solution that could be used regardless of the HD capture card and it's ability to playback or not.

My $.02

Bob

[Narflex]

You don't know how happy it makes me to hear this:

I agree that a "tuner only" HD card makes the most sense, and that there is no really good reason for an HD card to include expensive Video Display capabilities when we can use AGP cards to do it and software/DXVA to play it back.

If I do it the way you recommend; that's the EASY way in my book. I was worried everyone would want to use the MPEG decoder on the HDTV cards....which is the HARD way for me to do it because I have to do an interface to their proprietary hardware.

HDTV's looking really good for the near future. Please don't ask about timing; there's no details to give on it.

[RBTConsultants]

Jeffrey -

I believe there would be great excitement for this. Go to the HTPC forum in www.avsforum and search on the fusion dvico card and other threads on playback of HDTV files and see how many people are interested in this. No one I have heard from cares a wit whether the playback is by the HD card or the AGP card as long as it plays back. Personally, I happily play back HD at 540p or 720p due to a problem with the older Radeon's not playing back at 1080i today in the video overlay. Newer Radeons have a component output dongle that supports 1080i and DX9/VMR is also an option.

Thanks for your support and your new products. I have been testing the Sage Recorder with my PVR250 card and I am impressed with the app. I particularly like recording in the background tonight while watching a DVD, something I have been able to with AccessDTV and HD but not with a regular NTSC tuner card.

I will be looking at SageTV soon to replace my own Tivos, as well as for a small business venture building/selling HTPCs.

Thanks again.

Bob

[dkardatzke]

As we look at the possibility of integrating HDTV cards with SageTV, we are trying to determine what card to start with for testing. Can someone point us to any discussions on AVS forum or elsewhere that provide an in-depth comparison of the cards? I came across a good post a few days ago on AVS but I can't seem to find it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Dan

[edmc]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=209915
- 1st Thread on DVICO's FusionHDTV Card(s)
- There are others and other cards discussed in this Thread

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=178484
- One of many threads discussing the AVS Developer supported HiPix

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=232360
- One of many threads on the MyHD card

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=234661
- One of several threads comparing various HDTV cards
- I would search around AVS's HTPC Forum for more if necessary

[RBTConsultants]

Note that AccessDTV cards are not discussed much anymore, but that is because of the lack of support. If we could get support with new software, the users would come out of the woodwork.

Thanks,

Bob

[mn3kgtvr4]

I'll second the request for Accessdtv support. It's a great card in need of great software.

[djg]

Let me also request AccessDTV support for all the reasons mentioned above. I've had great success using WinDVD 4 to play back the files so software playback is fine by me.

Thanks,

Dave

[Eiffel]

Here's another thread comparing the four HDTV cards currently available in the US.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=207262

I would certainly like to see support for the AccessDTV card (by the way, there are some publicly available scripts for scheduling records with this card, using the non-encrypted version of titantv. these can be found on the AccessDTV yahoo group).

Eiffel

[mstrange]

I'll add another vote for the AccessDTV card. I have it and am pleased with the card!

Mike

[Narflex]

Do any of these cards have DirectShow filters for doing recording (this is not a requirement)?

The basic API that's needed for me to interact with one of these cards is this:
1 - set tuning properties
2 - Start writing to a shared file (preferably where I can specify the name)
3 - stop writing to the file

If they support DirectShow for recording, then integration should be no problem. If they don't. I'd need to have access to an API that allows me to do the 3 things above.

Thanks for the help. So far it looks like there's a lot of AccessDTV supporters out there.

[RBTConsultants]

I did some looking and there are directshow filters for AccessDTV. There appear to be filters for a tuner and a capture. These are labled as "janus" filters. I was unsuccessful fiddling around trying to get them to connect to anything or each other in Graphedit. I don't know if someone with Directshow programming knowledge could make use of these, I have no experience. I believe that AccessDTV has been adamant about not making any API available.

Bob

[edmc]

Dan/Jeff,

We've recently gotten some excellent news on the DVICO FusionHDTV Tuner Card. It appears that the current/beta version (a.k.a. "Fusion I") is going to be liquidated shortly (see the AVS Forum thread previously referenced for the details) to be followed shortly thereafter by the "Fusion II" card which incorporates a better Tuner chip and more inputs (the Fusion I only had a single RF Input).

I'm hoping you can target this card for your HD Tuner support you are adding to Sage. It certainly better follows the model you have for your app :-)

Personally, living in the shadow of the Bay Area's East Bay Hills, I'm forced to hold out for the next version of the card, the Fusion III. No date on that card yet, but it was suggested to not be long after the Fusion II. The Fusion III will incorporate QAM demodulation required for getting HD off of Comcast Cable soon (<6 months) to be available in my area. The wait goes on :-(