HDTV capabilities

[mkerdman]

Mike,

As the owner of both hardware and software decoding based PC based HDTV card tuner/recorders, Eiffel's observations and suggestions about the further need for more NTSC recording solutions in a fast emerging DTV/HDTV world as well as the critical comparison of 1080i/720P images derived from HW vs. SW technologies are well informed indeed.


Murray Kerdman

[mikesm]

Guys, I understand QAM is not supported by any HDTV card today. My comment was that future users of SageTV will likely be receiving signals that are QAM modulated over a CATV system than OTA. That has been a big issue for HDTV so far, and a lot of effort is being put into support of QAM into new TV sets. Comcast, TW, and many other MSO's are now rolling out HDTV in earnest in major markets, with good acceptance.

Interestingly, none of QAM broadcasts appear to be encrypted, at least so far, though that will likely change for non-local channels.

I would be very surprised if the demods in the existing HDTV cards that support 8VSB can also do QAM. Not unless they do the demod in DSP of some sort, and not of my looks at the cards indicate they use that approach to demod. This isn't a trivial task.

The question in designing a product is finding out what features in a product will drive the maximum amount of adoption of that product. SageTV as a product has only scratched the surface of demand, and HTPC's as a whole are still very immature. It will take a major OEM building a nice easy to use package (like Sony or HP) to really drive sales. These folks will need to target QAM support, since OTA reception is not a huge market anymore. These folks will likely use a DVICO fusion style architecture to acoomplish this for cost and a whole other range of reasons.

So while I think it's great that the folks at frey want to accomodate currect HDTV PC card users, their real goal to be to get the product so polished and functional that OEM's will adopt it and drive large volumes of sales. Integrating HTPC's from components will never be a mass market activity (even though I personally enjoy this very much!). This means targeting the next generation cards like the Fusion. I haven't seen any new hardware product announcements from the Access DTV or hiPix folks. Did I miss something or are these companies just milking their existing designs by enhancing their software support to appeal to additional HTPC users?

The encryption issue is a big deal, just as it is a major problem for HTPC adoption in the mainstream today for SD video from DBS and digital cable. Most HD is targeted at the local affliate stations, but more premium content is becoming available, and that will need crypto over the long run, but these issues are so thorny that today most cable offerings of HD and even VoD transmit the data in the clear with no encryption. If a board came along that could decode SD as well as HD unencrypted streams it would be a pirate's dream. :-)

Standard solutions need to address this (new HDTV sets are coming with QAM decoders and consumers hate cable set top boxes), so hopefully a standard implementation can also be ported to the PC's. If US DBS operators move to more standard technology as we see in Europe, those streams may be opened up to PC users too.

Either way, HD is going through a major growth spurt now, and that is being driven by CATV HD transmission as much as anything else. New cards will be needed to support this for PC's, and these will likely be in the Fusion architecture because it's cheaper and more flexible (and that PC's have gotten very fast - when did you last see a DVD-ROM drive ship with a hardware MPEG decoder?). I am hoping that Frey will target the right platform so they can b e more successful and afford to put in more features for me... :-)

Thanks,
Mike

[Narflex]

FYI - The current beta, 1.4.3, can playback HDTV Transport Stream files (i.e. a file recorded with the ADTV, HiPix, DVICO, MyHD, etc.). You definitely need to have a video card with DXVA for this to work correctly. Feedback on this is greatly appreciated (and please post it to the SageTV Beta Forum)

[corykim]

I'm going to buy an HD receiver card now. Which provides the best results with Sage?

[Mark Lamutt]

Jeff - how do you load a transport stream file into the library or into the Sage Recordings list so that it can be played? I couldn't get one loaded when I was trying this out this afternoon.

[Narflex]

I should probably add .ts to the default import list...whoops.

You can change the import list in the properties file, just add .ts to this list:
seeker/library_import_filename_extensions

[Mark Lamutt]

I'll try to give it a shot tonight.

[mkerdman]

Tried the .TS file playback feature of the 1.4.5 Beta SW with Cyberlink/Intervideo/and one other MPEG2 SW decoder using a P4 2.4GHZ PC w/ 512MB and a 64MB ATI 8500DV video card.

NOTE: The function worked though I am not entirely certain that the 64MB ATI 8500DV video card supports DXVA and their web site was help.

I do not recall right now which, decoder was which but:

One had a problems fully displaying the entire 1.78 aspect ratio as full screen. It did displayed the correct ratio- but "window-boxed" (smaller) than it should have been (similar to SagTV windowed vs. full screen).

Another displayed the white "safe image" overscan lines on the left and bottom of the image.

The third worked relativly well.

It did have some picture stutter and pixelization at times as well as slight audio sync issues.

It would seem that the MPEG2 decoder used and the tuning of the hardware acceleration of the video card is critical to the picture quality and performance.


Murray Kerdman

[sundansx]

I vote for HiDTVpro. I dont think you should concentrate specifically on the software based decoders.
I am running a P3 933 mhz machine and it works fantastic as a HTPC machine because the only thing it does in software is the DVD decode and even that is hardware assisted by my radeon card. To decode full resolution 720p or 1080i(with deinterlace) HD stream in software you would need at least a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 system and you would not have much horsepower left over for anything else. This info if from one of the Digital Stream developers. This might be aleviated some by a healthy hardware decode engine on the video card, but the only one that has that level of decode (and it wont help that much, it saves 10% decode load on a DVD decode) is a freaking ATI 9700 $300 video card. Can you say rediculous. I think a Geforce FX 5800/5900 might include that too, but they are off their rockers on price, also. Decoding HD on a processor is a different ball game than DVD. It wont be in the future, but it is now for a while.

[rfutscher]

I am waiting for the bundle - software, 8VSB HD tuner, QUAM digital tuner and analog tuner with MPEG hardware encoding.

The question is how long do I have to wait?

[coppit]

BUMP

Now that Fusion III Gold is out with QAM support, I'm more interested in HD support. Can anyone provide a status update? Now that Sage 2.0 is out, I'm hoping you'll tell me that an HD beta is coming out soon.

[flashbacck]

Yea. The Fusion software that DVICO provides sucks butt, and I would love to use Sage instead.

[Deadbolt]

Does the Fusion III Gold work with Comcast or Adelphia cable? How about the HDTV movie channels like HBO?

[stanger89]

Only the Fusion III QAM will do HD on cable, and only unencrypted channels (no HBO probably). The best place to find out about HD on cable is probably the AVS Forum, you should be able to figure out what's encrypted on your providers.

[wordgasm]

I just received my new myHD120 (not insalled yet) and read in this thread that it can be used with Sage (with no HD recording or playback). Could I get confirmation on this, so I can purchase Sage. This would be very good news AND MAKE ME VERY HAPPY!

I was planning on a win350 also, feed thru the myHD120 for scaling.(after I get the myHD up and running/configured) But if Sage works with myHD, this would save alot of setup and tweaking, not to mention cash!

TIA

Jeff

[Stealth1971]

Not sure if this is the right thread for this - but...

SageTV is great for my SD content so far, but I would love HD for my Samsung RP DLP TV. I had voted for a firewire solution so I could use well known name brands for OTA receivers. Some of these HDTV PCI cards are coming from smaller companies and give me some apprehension I like the ability to go to BestBuy and pick up a Samsung OTA receiver w/ firewire same day...

If there was a way to control the DirectShow filter graphs I would love to work on a solution for SageTV.

There are some helping hands out here! (actually I had started a similar product last year using DX9 with .NET/C# but life things happened....)

yadda yadda yadda...

[jake_friz]

FYI - This site claims that the OnAir USBHDTV can do QAM with the latest (beta) software.

http://www.copperbox.com/lite/sasem.php

[Niles]

I have both the PVR-350 and the MyHD MDP-120. Both are excellent cards for their function. Using the MDP-120 of course is far better than the PVR-350 in its respect. I have tried just about every turner/capture card out there. The MDP-120 is still king of the hill in my book both in video quality and compatibility. Do not get me wrong there were a few apps and configurations that did not like the MDP-120, but very few and with some minor work arounds.

Though not a cheap card, hence the reason most people will settle for a more less exspensive card, it should be consider as a high end alternative. Plus it has video loop cable that can allow for both TV and monitor support at the same time.

Now understand that some people may think that hardware decoding will become a thing of the past. I doubt it very much. Remember that DVD's are fixed at 720p and HDTV is maxed at 1080i with no prospect of increasing anytime soon. Hardware decoding will also relieve your system of those resources as well. I have tried both hardware and software. Hardware wins.

Video resolution support is very impressive.

- 1080i(1920x1080 interlaced, 33.7kHz)

- 1024p(1024x768 progressive, 48.3kHz)

- 720p(1280x720 progressive, 44.9kHz)

- 480p(720x480 progressive, 31.5kHz)

- 480i(720x480 interlaced, 15.75kHz)

http://www.mitinc.co.kr/mitinc/e_sit...rod_mdp100.jsp

[kny3twalker]

DVDs are fixed at 480i and HDTV's highest resolution for current TV is 720p
with 1080p movies available

[Niles]

My mistake, you are correct. The up coming HD-DVD will be 720p.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html