Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[Gustovier]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Okay back on topic. I have seen a couple of blogs where beta testers have prototypes working in sage. Anyword on the stability vs. HD PVR?

What blogs are those? Can u post some links, I'm interested to see...

[jptheripper]

http://www.missingremote.com/blog/hauppauge-colossus-qa

[mistergq]

Thanks for the link.

I am leaning towards replacing my two HD PVRs with Two of these. I like the idea of MPeg2. The IPad likes Mpeg2 recordings better than Mpeg4 recordings. Size is a slight issue, but at 5 TBs, I will be fine.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by mistergq

I am leaning towards replacing my two HD PVRs with Two of these. I like the idea of MPeg2. The IPad likes Mpeg2 recordings better than Mpeg4 recordings. Size is a slight issue, but at 5 TBs, I will be fine.

Are you sure about that? I don't think it supports either MPEG-2 or TS files directly but it does support other formats of H.264 which is closer to TS.

One thing to remember - I believe the question "Will Sage support MPEG-2 on the Colossus?" at least three times on this thread but we have yet to see a response. Therefore it is possible that we will never see MPEG-2 from this card in Sage.

And I still really wish they came out with a dual tuner of this card!

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by wayner

Are you sure about that? I don't think it supports either MPEG-2 or TS files directly but it does support other formats of H.264 which is closer to TS.

One thing to remember - I believe the question "Will Sage support MPEG-2 on the Colossus?" at least three times on this thread but we have yet to see a response. Therefore it is possible that we will never see MPEG-2 from this card in Sage.

And I still really wish they came out with a dual tuner of this card!

Yeah, I overstated. I am assuming that STV will support mpeg-2. But I will not buy it until I have confirmation that it does, or until HD PVR dies, then I will replace the HD PVR with an internal version.

Actually, I am probably over stating it again, I will probably replace the first HD PVR I purchased with one regardless because that unit makes me nervous. Its the one that flakes out every once in awhile.

[Clift]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. SageTV has always been consumer friendly. And from what I'm seeing, there is a growing number of users who want MPEG-2 support. I'm one of them.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Clift

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. SageTV has always been consumer friendly. And from what I'm seeing, there is a growing number of users who want MPEG-2 support. I'm one of them.

I agree - if I need to replace one of my HD-PVRs then I might consider these and I do see some advantage to MPEG-2 but don't forget that it can take quite a while to get everything supported.

If I remember correctly on the HD-PVR it took at least several months before digital audio was supported and then maybe a year until it was stable for a lot of users.

[wrems]

Originally Posted by Clift

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. SageTV has always been consumer friendly. And from what I'm seeing, there is a growing number of users who want MPEG-2 support. I'm one of them.

+1 MPEG-2 support would be a killer option to having a minimalist server and still retain the ability to have comskip running. I hope Sage pulls through with MPEG-2 support being an option. Hdd's are cheap so the extra storage requirements aren't bothersome to me anyway... I think the reduced overhead would be well worth the cost of additional storage...

Keeping my fingers crossed!

[Gustovier]

I need some enlightment here...Why are a lot of people really wanting mpeg2 support? I thought h.264 was the superior codec and allowed for better compression. Is it a comparability thing, and if so what is not playing nice with the .264 encodes that the hdpvr delivers today? I can maybe see a need for a different container other .TS but not the encoding codec itself.

[Fuzzy]

A big part of it is comskip/showanalyser analysis, which takes anywhere from 3 to 5 times as long on H.264 as it does on MPEG-2. There's also Placeshifter Transcoding, and file conversion, both of which are also MUCH faster with MPEG-2 source. The goal here is to be able to run those type sof tasks, even on minimalist servers, saving money and electricity in the process. (An Atom330/D510 server is more than capable of acting as a sagetv server, but trying to do these tasks with H.264 material is impossible).

[TallMomof2]

I really want to see this card! My HD-PVR has never been stable enough for full family acceptance. If this card works as well I hope then I'll pick up two, put the HD-PVRs on eBay, send back all but two HD cable boxes to Verizon and pick up a couple HD300s.

[wayner]

Another advantage to MPEG-2 is that it is easier to edit as there are lots of programs that edit MPEG-2 files, I think you can even use Windows Movie Maker. And as Fuzzy said, even an Atom process should be able to display 1080i MPEG-2 files, not so much with 1080i H.264 files.

From an SD MPEG-2 file you can burn to DVD without re-encoding and some other types of devices may be able to handle MPEG-2 but not H.264.

edit - One other thing that I forgot is that you may have more luck natively playing an MPEG-2 file on an iDevice using software like VLC, CineXplayer, or other non-Apple software since Apple doesn't directly support MPEG-2.

[wrems]

The only real disadvantage of using MPEG-2 is the file size. They are much larger than their H.264 counterparts. Hdd's are cheap so even that is not much of a concern. It makes things a lot easier overall. I think it should be an option, I'm sure some will still vehemently desire the h.264 recordings...

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wrems

The only real disadvantage of using MPEG-2 is the file size. They are much larger than their H.264 counterparts. Hdd's are cheap so even that is not much of a concern. It makes things a lot easier overall. I think it should be an option, I'm sure some will still vehemently desire the h.264 recordings...

Not really. The average bitrate used for OTA or QAM programming, at least in my experience, is about the same as the maximum bitrate for the HDPVR. So there's no real advantage or disadvantage there.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Not really. The average bitrate used for OTA or QAM programming, at least in my experience, is about the same as the maximum bitrate for the HDPVR. So there's no real advantage or disadvantage there.

It should be said that 'FOR THE SAME QUALITY', and MPEG-2 file will be much larger than an H.264.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It should be said that 'FOR THE SAME QUALITY', and MPEG-2 file will be much larger than an H.264.

True, but does it really matter? Most broadcast stations don't transmit much higher than 13.5Mb MPEG2 since they generally offer one or more SD streams along with the main HD stream. So that's actually the best quality you will get from a straight digital capture anyway.

In the case of the HDPVR and the Colossus if you don't use HDMI the video is being captured from an analog source. Most of the quality is going to be determined by the quality of the the video ADC. As good as component video might be a lower quality ADC will have fewer bits per sample. A result of this would be a gradient becoming less smooth or having obvious "stair steps" in the gradient afterward.

Not saying the HDPVR quality is necessarily bad but because the video is going from digital to analog and back to digital there is a chance for the introduction of noise or other artifacts that reduce quality due to this fact.

For my family and I, we are not recording for archival purposes. We record to watch and delete. There are very few programs that my family and I watch that we would actually want to re-watch. We don't have enough time right now to watch what we have let alone re-watching the same ones over again. For those that we do want to re-watch, such as Buffy for the kid, the DVD's are relatively cheap and of higher quality than could be had by recording them.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

(An Atom330/D510 server is more than capable of acting as a sagetv server, but trying to do these tasks with H.264 material is impossible).

So how fast does an Atom comskip/SA an ATSC broadcast?

Originally Posted by wrems

The only real disadvantage of using MPEG-2 is the file size. They are much larger than their H.264 counterparts. Hdd's are cheap so even that is not much of a concern. It makes things a lot easier overall. I think it should be an option, I'm sure some will still vehemently desire the h.264 recordings...

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Not really. The average bitrate used for OTA or QAM programming, at least in my experience, is about the same as the maximum bitrate for the HDPVR. So there's no real advantage or disadvantage there.

It really depends on what the bitrate ceiling is for MPEG-2. If it's 13.5Mbps, like H.264, then you're definitely going to want to use H.264 for top quality.

And as for the bitrate comparison to OTA or Cable/Sat broadcasts there's an important part of the equation missing here. That part is the Cable/Sat/OTA broadcaster has access to a "pristine" feed to which they can apply their broadcast compression. For example I read that this year's HD Formula 1 feed is going to be ~42Mbps MPEG-2. That feed is going to be crushed down to about 5Mbps by Dish.

Now that doesn't work too bad since the source is clean, but the process adds compression artifacts, noise. When you go to record it with the HD PVR you have to deal not only with the original signal, but also the noise, and that noise effectively explodes the required bitrate to avoid an essentially exponential increase in noise.

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

True, but does it really matter? Most broadcast stations don't transmit much higher than 13.5Mb MPEG2 since they generally offer one or more SD streams along with the main HD stream. So that's actually the best quality you will get from a straight digital capture anyway.

True, but as noted, it takes a lot more bitrate to re-encode a once compressed (and "artifacty") stream than the original compression allowed.

IMO the question as to whether or not MPEG-2 on the Colossus will be very usefull will be based on it's max bitrate. I'd say if it's not higher than the H.264 limit, then it's not going to be nearly as useful as the quality will almost certainly be worse. I mean original ~13Mbps MPEG-2 OTA broadcasts are already rather artifacty from a pristine source, and you compress it again, it's basically the square of the noise I think.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stanger89

For example I read that this year's HD Formula 1 feed is going to be ~42Mbps MPEG-2. That feed is going to be crushed down to about 5Mbps by Dish.

Now that doesn't work too bad since the source is clean, but the process adds compression artifacts, noise.

Damn, I'd like to see a Formula 1 broadcast at that bitrate. If only.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Damn, I'd like to see a Formula 1 broadcast at that bitrate. If only.

[OffTopic]Me too, I'm a big F1 fan. I used to live in Europe and have been to loads or races. If you have not made the pilgrimage to Monaco you must go. [/OffTopic]

[stanger89]

Who knows, maybe Austin in 2012