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DirecTV support won't be coming with Windows 7 Over the last couple of months I fell hard in love with Vista Media Center but lately the number of omissions ("issues" is being too kind to MS) that are there and apparently have been there since the beginning is making me look elsewhere. The lack of an internal h.264 codec or the ability for people to dependably use their own codecs is simply loving ridiculous. There is no excuse. This thing should be treated as a platform for running a house's digital media but MS appears to see it more as just another thing in the Accessories menu. At least if there was h.264 support we could use the Hauppauge HD PVR with it and not have to buy an entire new PC and $300 tuner to watch HD cable. (please don't be the "what are you talking about I use ClearQAM and get 12 channels!" guy, that's not what I'm looking for and you know it). They could have played Media Center in the 360 in a way that made it a counterpunch to the PS3's BluRay support, but they didn't. They could have courted developers in better ways than making GBS threads out a poorly-documented SDK, but they didn't. I love that I can throw OTA HD to my 360 but gently caress, they could do so much better so easily! vanilla slimfast posted:HD or SD content? You'll probably want to go for at least a core2duo 2.0ghz or better if you plan on playing back HD MPEG2 content, especially if you are going to do any post processing like deinterlacing. People need to stop saying this. My ballsack can do HD MPEG2. My single-core athlon 64 3000 does it. It's the HD h.264 you have to worry about with old systems. Jayzer posted:Currently I have an Athlon64 3500+ on an ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 with 2GB of RAM, and an 8600GT with 512MB of RAM. For my first attempt at an HTPC, it's actually not running too terribly. It plays 720p just fine (locally), but stutters a little bit on Hulu's 720p HD content. Local 1080p content is playable, but stutters just enough to be annoying. I hate that the internet decided one day to go to all-flash-all-the-time. Those sites are all motherfuckers on your CPU. TheScott2K fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Dec 11, 2008 |
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Dec 11, 2008 22:52
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dfn_doe posted:Have you actually tried using clear QAM? I get about 40~ channels plus another 25 foreign language and home shopping type channels which don't interest me AND about 50 music only channels. With the exception of "premium channels" like HBO and Showtime, neither of which I'd pay for anyways, I get nearly all the same HD content I'd get with a comcast provided HD box. YMMV, but don't discount it till you've tried it. Oh yeah there are the "bonus" channels that they broadcast other peoples' OnDemand movies which you can also watch but don't have any scheduling info to show whats coming up. Many of us who pay for HD cable are also interested in the "premium channels" like HBO, which are actually some of the best HD channels out there. I'd list ESPN with that as well, since I've never seen its HD channel come through anyone's ClearQAM. Either way, ClearQAM is not a replacement for actual digital cable support. It's an odd curiosity, not a solution. I don't want a few channels that I can see thanks to a confluence of federal regulations, I want the real poo poo. Right now the only real way to get HD cable into a computer is using cablecard, and if the posts on The Green Button are any indication even that is dependable maybe half the time. The Hauppauge HD PVR gives an analog-loophole way around this, but MS of course is years late in adding h.264 support. I haven't seen anything that can touch Vista Media Center in terms of stability and slickness, but there has to be some way to attain that without adding a 2-year lead time to every new feature.
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Dec 12, 2008 12:28
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dfn_doe posted:[jabbering] ClearQAM is not "plenty HD cable." If a person is looking to watch HD cable on their PC via ClearQAM, the odds are very heavily in favor of them being disappointed. I'm "looking for" what everyone else is looking for. Nobody wants ("wants" as in "is building an HTPC in the hopes of receiving") the few channels that their cable company *might* give them over ClearQAM, they want the lineup they're paying for. Your situation with the 40 channels is not the rule, it's the exception. Most people running ClearQAM are getting their locals, home shopping nets, and not much else. If someone is looking to watch HD cable on their computer and hook it up to ClearQAM they're probably not hoping to just get locals-plus. If I seem dismissive it's because this consolation prize of a technology doesn't do the job, and is therefore worth dismissing. Just because you like it doesn't make it a viable solution to CableCard. My cable box gets 200+ channels, including about 40 HD channels. You're the greatest success story I've ever heard of on the ClearQAM front and all you get is 40 total, and I'm betting that includes some poo poo that doesn't really count as TV. How can you be savvy enough to build an HTPC yet still have standards that are in the basement? Edit: And the whole remark was in the context of MS dropping the ball with DirecTV and CableCard being completely out of reach for the home builder. ClearQAM isn't what HD cable-seekers are looking for, it's what people who can't receive OTA signals are looking for. Sorry I got your panties in a twist over your awesome semi-cable. TheScott2K fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Dec 12, 2008 |
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Dec 12, 2008 22:40
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dfn_doe posted:I agree a hundred percent that people will have varying experiences, which is why I started my response asking if he had actually tried it. If he hadn't AND didn't have a want for premium channels I would have recommended that he give it a shot and see if it provided an experience like he was looking for. Like I said previously, my experience with clear QAM has been really good and it has saved me the hassle and money of trying to cobble together something HD-PVR based. Had someone advised me that clear QAM was useless and not worth the effort in the beginning I probably wouldn't have even pursued having TV capture capabilities in my HTPC. I was going to leave this alone but you had to come back and oval office up the thread with more whining so here we are. Tell me something - have you ever received your full cable lineup through ClearQAM? Do you know anyone who has ever received their full cable lineup through ClearQAM? Of course not because it doesn't loving happen! I was talking about it in the context of DirecTV/MS killing a piece of hardware that actually unlocks the entire lineup while at the same time lamenting the lack of options for actual digital cable support. I dismissed ClearQAM because it was and is irrelevant to the subject of true digital cable support in media PCs. Tell me how it's relevant, shithead. Tell me how the fact that you get your local channels plus QVC plus Telemundo unencrypted is in any way a substitute for or alternative to the true digital cable support that the homebuilt HTPC sector lacks and, it appears, will lack for the immediate future. You can't because it's not. You've had several chances to defend your assertion that ClearQAM is a viable alternative to CableCard and, by extension, true digital cable support, but rather than do so you've instead chosen to whine about the forcefulness of my language and "dismissiveness." I take it you have no actual defense for your position other than "it's fun to watch my neighbors fast-forward their ondemand movies." I don't think ClearQAM sucks. It's a neat little piece of tech that lets people with bad reception get highdef locals and gives tech savvy folks some bonus channels via digital means they otherwise wouldn't have. It is not, however, the real deal. It just isn't. In my original post I wanted to talk about the real deal. Doing so necessitated excluding ClearQAM. Otherwise we would have gone through a solid page of explaining to the rest of the thread what it is, why people use it, why it isn't really full digital cable, etc. Instead we got a page of you cunting around with your feelings and me getting pissed at you. Egg on my face, I guess. I had hoped to hear more people's thoughts on HD digital cable and the "elephant in the room" it has become to HTPC enthusiasts, but you decided that making yourself feel better about the smattering of content you get unencrypted through the wire was more important. Well done, you completely took the wind out of my sails. Now kindly gently caress off and watch some more NASA Channel. Edit: Might as well share some knowledge so the post isn't a complete waste: slaphappynickname posted:I got MPC-HC and enabled DXVA which made all of the movies that wouldn't play before just dandy now, but now some of the movies that were great before suck balls. I'm currently running an Athlon X2 4200 and I find still not guaranteed full framerate on high-bitrate movies unless I'm running the right codec. The answer always seems to be CoreAVC. The basic version only costs 8 bucks and while it doesn't include GPU support (the $16 version does) it should still do the trick if some demanding h.264 files are dropping frames. Vista support was rocky at first but it's been rock solid for me under Vista64 the last six months or so. The latest versions even have a beefed up config screen that lets you force off deblocking (among other things), which can make all the difference in the world lower-end CPUs. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 15, 2008 05:02
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Ryokurin posted:Actually GPU acceleration has been promised in CoreAVC for ages and hasn't been delivered as they say that both ATI and Nvidia are pretty vague in providing information to allow it. Well now I'm glad I only bought the $8 version.
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Dec 15, 2008 11:38
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slaphappynickname posted:I bought coreavc last night and gave it a whirl. I think there's some other issue with the other files because they are hiccuping every few seconds where before they did not at all, but the other 1080p files that were stuttering before now play great. Could you give us some information about the files that do stutter and the files that don't? Maybe we can help smooth this out. Unless you're using an intensive front-end an X2 5000 shouldn't have trouble with video playback.
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Dec 15, 2008 13:57
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Kreez posted:What IR receiver do people use with their Harmony remotes? I just got a 550, mostly because I lost the remote for my 10 year old A/V reciever, but it would be neat to also be able to use the harmony for on/sleep/play/pause type of stuff. I run the XBox 360 Harmony and it plays very nice with the Windows Media Center USB receiver. Much nicer than it did with my Hauppauge receiver, for what that's worth.
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Dec 28, 2008 14:10
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Kreez posted:Is there any point in buying something more expensive than this? http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=230312565447 If you're looking to control anything outside of your PC tuner and possibly a cable box via a blaster you'll need a more robust remote than that one. The Harmony remotes can "learn" signals from other remotes, tap a huge database of consumer remotes, and use that data to set up macros. When I press "Play XBox360" on my Harmony it clicks the projector over to HDMI, the stereo receiver over to Video 2, turns off the DVR, and turns on the XBox - the whole "valve lineup" necessary to play XBox games on my screen. It's a whole different level of functionality, meant more to run the whole home theater rather than just the media PC.
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Dec 29, 2008 01:54
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Ryokurin posted:No one has probably noticed but Divx 7 was released today, which is notable here as its brings h264 support along with mkv to a more mainstream audience. It seems to be pretty quick as well, and is a great alternative to using CoreAVC or ffdshow. Do updates to the Divx codec get pushed to XBox360s running NXE, or am I displaying too much audacity of hope?
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Jan 8, 2009 18:05
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tropical posted:I'm having trouble getting 5.1 output from my PC to my receiver. I have an Asus P5QL Pro motherboard that has coax digital out, which I've hooked up to the Video 2 coax digital input on my receiver. I'm running Vista x64. Just to be sure, what media are you using to test 5.1?
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Jan 11, 2009 18:16
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Ryokurin posted:There's no need for it, since its just another implementation of H264. Its just like how Divx can play Xvid and vice versa, its the same standard in the end. LoL "There's no need for it." Go try to play an HD MKV on a 360 and rate your success on a scale of 1 to 10. They don't support MKV on consoles. It's one of those frustrating, seemingly-unnecessary asterisks holding them back as media centers, and it's a hell of a lot easier to solve than the bigger ones like CableLabs being cunts. Here's hoping the consoles update to Divx 7 and finally natively support the best HD container anyone actually uses. If my WMC extender capabilities grew to include MKV playback that would just rule. I don't know how they're going to un-oval office CableLabs. edit: Is extender talk straying too far from the subject of HTPCs? TheScott2K fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jan 14, 2009 |
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Jan 14, 2009 03:56
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Noghri_ViR posted:I've been planning on building an HTPC for awhile now, but I can't seem to find a decent answer to this question. Is there a way for me to record content off the digital cable I get from Comcast? Has anyone here done it? We need to sticky the answer to this. Here goes - If you want to watch SD channels, yes you can. You use an IR blaster to tune the cable box (comes with the windows media remote receiver and any number of 3rd party remotes/tuners) and get video and audio through your tuner's composite input. It's not perfect, but if you have the IR blaster positioned and the software set up properly you're golden. A lot of people, myself included, run an over-the-air HD capture card alongside this and call it a day. If you want to watch HD channels, short answer is no. The only context in which you can take the digital feed coming out of your wall and turn it into TV is if you have a CableCARD tuner, a secondary Vista key to activate the capability (that they only give to OEMs), and a motherboard with a certain BIOS (that they only give to OEMs). So if you feel like buying a complete desktop PC from someone like HP, including the ridiculously overpriced CableCARD tuner, have at it. The wild card is the Hauppauge HD PVR, which in theory could enable you to do the thing with the IR blaster mentioned above, but analog loophole is a much uglier solution in HD than it is in SD. It's basically a component cable capture card that converts analog HD to a compressed h.264 stream. It looks pretty good, but you're still taking an already-compressed cable stream, converting it to analog video, and then re-compressing it into h.264, so you have the "burned my iTunes to CD then ripped MP3s" problem. It doesn't work with Windows Media Center, though that may change if they get a Windows 7 driver out, since 7 supports h.264. $250 seems to be the going rate for the thing and frankly I think that's too high. It also gets hot. So basically, if you want to do an HD cable media center you can either spend a shitload of money or check back in six months. edit: ClearQAM is in there too, but it's not going to give you the full channel lineup. In fact, it'll probably just feed you your locals plus the shopping channels. It's a nice alternative to an over-the-air capture card if you can get it to work but that's about it. That's all I'm going to say about it because last time I said anything some dude started an argument over me being "dismissive" and I got probationed. Suffice to say, it's not what you're hoping for. TheScott2K fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jan 21, 2009 |
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Jan 21, 2009 23:52
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vanilla slimfast posted:Like say in the FAQ thread? SA needs to start rationing  It's a question that gets asked a lot, all I'm saying.quote:Also worth noting that cable still broadcasts most channels in analog (even if you are a digital subscriber) and they probably won't be shutting that off for a while yet, so you could do straight NTSC tuning and capture. Expanding on this: analog cable has a tendency to show grain more than digital SD. Digital SD is more prone to artifacing but most people seem more put off by the former. If your analog feed strikes you as "grainy as gently caress" the first time you try it, give DScaler a look. It'll use your entire CPU if you let it, but it will reduce that grain. It's also pretty great at image stability and just plain tweaking the hell out of the image coming out of your cap card. quote:Yes, but I don't know why we even bother mentioning this as it's not viable for a DIY HTPC. Yes, yes, I'm an awful man who forgot to mention ClearQAM to the guy who was obviously looking for a way to get his cable into the capture card. My bad. I edited right before you hit "post" anyway and mentioned that you can audible an OTA cap card for it if you can get it to work, does that get your panties sufficiently wet? You also covered the firewire solution almost nobody uses, well done. quote:This is true that the analog loophole is an unfortunate necessity to solving this problem. It appears to be the only way to handle this when doing HD satellite (unless you have no qualms about hacking your receiver to add a firewire port). Cable in computers is my go-to answer for why I hate copy protection. We have this thing that we have the technology do, they just won't let us do it - HDMI capture. It's a bummer, but the HD-PVR really is the best hope right now as far as premium HD capture goes. I believe in addition to MythTV it works with BeyondTV and SageTV. Just no slick-360-Extender-tastic Media Center support yet. I'm hopeful, though. Apparently my $250 quote was on the high side, and I'm glad. I could see dropping some cabbage on one to play with if it hit $200. The one thing that worries me about component capture is that they could wake up one morning and turn it off. My cable box already won't output 1080i through component (just 720p), I could easily see them deciding to be dicks and gimp it down to 480p once they're convinced enough people are using HDMI.
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Jan 22, 2009 00:14
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chryst posted:Firewire out is usually limited to ClearQAM, so you don't get any more channels than you would from coax. Tho it'll be easier to record from. See this guy? Don't listen to this guy, his ego is writing checks his brain can't cash.
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Jan 22, 2009 23:28
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chryst posted:No, I'm simply over-estimating the ability of current capture cards. I thought the device I linked would do capture. DVI->HDMI has nothing to do with the analog hole. DVI is digital, HDMI is digital, both are capable of supporting HDCP. When you convert HDMI to DVI you are doing nothing but changing the way the cable looks and losing sound. And there's stuff you can do for the sound thing.
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Jan 23, 2009 00:30
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vanilla slimfast posted:DVDs are encoded with MPEG2, which requires very little horsepower to decode. Hulu, AFAIK, uses x264 which requires a LOT of CPU to decode (but is higher quality with lower bandwidth requirements). So this is not a fair comparison Hulu and its ilk (I'll lump silverlight-netflix in with it) seem to have difficulties other than those inherent to h.264 versus MPEG2. On my Athlon X2 4200 full-screen 480p Hulu gets choppy and that machine plays 1080p mkv's and BluRays without a hitch. Same goes for a similarly-specced machine elsewhere in the house. I really wish I could figure out why and how to fix it, but hopefully the Core2Duo I ordered this morning will fix things. I do find it odd that the internet as a whole is moving to a video streaming format that really does seem to demand a lot more power to get exactly the same result as if they'd just continued using streaming wmv or something similar, only with worse scaling and nonexistent MoComp.
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Feb 6, 2009 22:06
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http://www.geektonic.com/2009/02/hauppauge-hd-pvr-on-media-center.htmlGeektonic posted:Wouldn't you know, it wasn't Microsoft that brings Hauppauge HD-PVR support to Media Center - instead it was the crafty user-developers who hacked together a solution for us. Yes it's true, Media Center users can now use Hauppauge HD-PVR with their Media Center software! poo poo just got more viable. I don't have one so I can't test it out, which sucks because I'm actually running Windows 7. Aargh what unfortunate timing to have just spent that $200.
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Feb 8, 2009 14:59
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Randi Challenger posted:Bookmarked. Thanks, Im compiling a list for my HTPC rebuild. My buddy bought two of these when experimenting with MCE 2005 in college, both of the remotes ended up dying. The receivers turned out to be great, though. I use one in the living room with a Harmony and another in my room with a 360 media remote. And if your Windows is new enough you don't even need to install a driver. You'll probably have good luck with it.
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Feb 12, 2009 01:41
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Sasquatch! posted:I'm just starting to dabble in the idea of doing a "proper" HTPC. I've read the FAQ, the thread at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=940972#TV, and I've read this thread at least since Jan 2009, but I still have a few things I need cleared up if I can. Short of buying a complete new OEM PC the Hauppauge HD PVR is probably your best hope. SageTV is capable of using it with an IR blaster, and in fact sell the thing itsself bundled with the software on their website. Vista Media Center support doesn't exist yet but there is a complicated hack to get it going in Windows 7 Media Center and there are rumblings that Hauppauge might put out a 7MC-compatible driver in March-April. If you really want to go for the gold you could build your own CableCARD-compatible PC. Find an OCUR motherboard (Asus P5Q series tend to sport it), build a machine with it and get an ATI USB digital cable tuner off ebay. At that point all you need is someone who bought a Media Center OEM PC willing to sell you their key. TheGreenButton.net has some of these kind of people.
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Mar 1, 2009 04:30
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WantlessPonder posted:Okay, this is really weird. This worked. But it also works when you change back to "Speakers (VIA High Definition Audio)" - that is, I get sound out of the headphones. I still don't get any sound out of the TV speakers though. You did run the digital audio cable from your sound card/motherboard to the video card, right?
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Apr 10, 2009 18:25
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evilalien posted:I'm pretty sure a radeon 3300 is just the integrated graphics part of a AMD 790GX based motherboard so it definitely doesn't need this. Yeaup, stupid assumption on my part.
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Apr 10, 2009 19:41
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rugbert posted:do you have a link to back this up? last i red, the ION was only good with 720p and 1080p was choppy. What everyone is for some reason having trouble saying is that if the file is encoded to utilize the hardware acceleration, as most BluRay player software is and many completely legal mkv releases are, then playback will work no problem. If the file does not take advantage of hardware acceleration or is a non-hardware-accelerated format (whatup flv, you loving rear end in a top hat) things will be a little less dependable. My Atom 330 using CoreAVC for software mkv playback in XP juuuuust barely hangs on at 720p.
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May 24, 2009 23:40
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Another sound card and an onboard sound card can both exist in the same machine and be enabled, it'll just add more entries to Windows' available sound device listing. Set your output device to be your chosen sound card's digital audio output and see if that works. Audio over HDMI is still a bit finnicky on the PC, and using an unfinished operating system probably doesn't help anything. It could also just as easily be your video card drivers loving it up as your sound card drivers. You did run the cable between the sound card and the video card, right?
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Jul 11, 2009 12:47
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ninjawtf posted:Sorry if this is the wrong spot to post this, seems close though. Short answer: Welcome to the magical world of PC cable/satellite DVR. Kill yourself. Long answer: This all comes down to a question of what you're happy with. If you're happy with SD, you can dedicate one of their boxes to a PC with Windows Media Center, with Media Center controlling the box using an IR blaster (a light on a wire that acts like a remote). The shitter here is that you're basically limited to the capabilities of PC analog capture cards, meaning you're stuck with composite/svideo which are both limited to SD. Cable subscribers can get some (generally the locals and the shopping channels) channels in HD via a capture card using something called ClearQAM using the kind of card that can tune over-the-air HD, but that doesn't apply to satellite. DirecTV was actually working on a tuner for Media Center PCs but it mysteriously died after years of testing. You could use a box like the Hauppauge HD PVR, which converts component HD on the fly to an h.264 transport stream and comes with an IR blaster, but to make that work with Windows Media Center you need Windows 7 and a special utility someone made whose name escapes me because I use mine with (network PC-throwing-capable) SageTV after saying "gently caress it" after a year of waiting for Media Center to un-gently caress its digital cable situation. Once you have Windows Media Center set up you can pair it up with your XBox360, which is capable of fully duplicating the interface that you get on your PC. It's hard to do because they basically don't want you to do it. Media companies and cable providers both want you to stay in their fenced-in hardware yard and probably hate the poo poo out of the Hauppauge box and will someday exact their revenge by disabling HD output via component.
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Jul 28, 2009 23:42
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revmoo posted:
That's a beefy fuckin HTPC, you have my admiration. You running into a paybck bottleneck with the RAM or is it pulling double-duty as a gaming machine?
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Jul 29, 2009 01:43
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Revol posted:Let's talk HDD RPMs for HTPCs. I'm building a new machine to replace the hobo media center I build, and I want to focus on keeping it as cool as I can. I don't mean that in a sense of worrying about overheating issues, but I mean literal heat output of the unit. This is something I'll have on a whole lot, so I want to keep wattage down. If you're asking if HDD speed is going to bottleneck playback the answer is no.
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Aug 4, 2009 23:27
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evilalien posted:Hulu HD content would likely still be too much for that CPU to handle. I run an Atom 330 in my "shoebox" machine and it runs Hulu "decent" (half-framerate) at 360p and "slideshow" at 480p. I don't know what the gently caress is up with Hulu.
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Aug 6, 2009 00:06
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revmoo posted:For real though, what the gently caress IS up with Hulu? (desktop) Glad I'm not the only one. My 3GHz C2D runs PlayOn because it's basically the only way to get full-framerate Hulu on any of the other machines in the house. Even on that machine an occasional frame will get skipped. It doesn't help that Hulu blames any and all problems on bandwidth, which is definitely not an issue in this case. Seeing the internet shift over to Flash video has been really frustrating. WMV was hardly ideal, but at least it could run at proper speed and go fullscreen on a second monitor without demanding focus the entire time. Still, there definitely seem to be performance issues specific to Hulu - I can get much better results on comparable-quality Youtube videos on my lower-end machines. Hulu desktop just makes it worse. "Lets take this pure-CPU video and give it the worst scaling algorithm known to man. Great job, Johnson!" The "hardware acceleration" checkbox in flash options is such a loving tease.
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Aug 6, 2009 02:39
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weaaddar posted:flash supports acceleration for h264 video, the rest is more or less a gently caress you. Is there a video card I can buy that actually accelerates h264 in a flash container? I'll but it if it means I can run Hulu at full speed on a machine that isn't the fastest in the house.
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Aug 7, 2009 00:50
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Is MLB.tv flash-based? I ask because depending on its implementation flash can be resource-heavy as hell, especially when upscaled, and an E5200 may drop some frames.
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Aug 14, 2009 01:23
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evilalien posted:MLB.TV HD streams top out at 3 Mbps 720p. Judging by the min specs recommended on the MLB.TV site as well as Adobe's recommended specs for 720p flash vid (3Ghz P4), an E5200 is overkill. XBMC and I am assuming Boxee as well default to hardware upscaling so there is no cost to the CPU. You can of course enable software upscaling, but it isn't necessary. I don't buy for a second that a 3 Ghz P4 can handle 720p flash video at full framerate. I have an E8400 that handles pretty much all flash video I throw at it and an Athlon X2 4200 that chokes on Hulu at 480p. I'm just saying that getting confirmation from an E5200 owner that it's fully up to the task would be wise before spending money.
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Aug 14, 2009 02:05
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Gromit posted:CoreAVC operates under CUDA? I thought it was just a faster implementation of a software decoder. They added it a few versions ago, it prompted me to shell out money.
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Aug 16, 2009 13:31
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I figured once I bought the HD-PVR they'd open up CableCard, and of course that's happening. EngadgetHD has some pretty solid coverage of CEDIA and they have some info on a forthcoming four-strem PCI-E CableCard tuner:http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/09/10/hands-on-with-the-ceton-cablecard-tuner/ posted:We learned all about it this new tuner first thing this morning and were very pleased to see a "technology preview" of the card in action at the Microsoft's booth. As expected, it is a single PCI-E card that uses one multi-stream CableCARD and offers the ability to record four HD channels at once. The tuner shows up as a single network adapter in Windows and still uses UPnP like the currently available ATI tuner does. The configuration and diagnostic interface included tabs for each individual tuner and apparently two Tuning Adapters -- unfortunately there wasn't a working demo of the SDV tuning in action. And in case you are wondering, we did ask about the price and as you might expect we were referred to Ceton for specific product questions. We do already have an appointment with them tomorrow, but we'd be surprised if they were ready to tell us. This and a couple of XBoxen could lead to "goodbye cable DVR"
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Sep 11, 2009 02:17
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Ryokurin posted:It can't handle deinterlacing of 1080i mpeg-2 or VC1 content and it tends to struggle on inverse telecine as well. It can do 1080p but no post processing. Basically it's barely acceptable for blu-ray content, and not really acceptable if you watch a lot of 1080i content like off of CBS or NBC. I can buy VC-1 but I have a hard time believing any machine built in the last few years has any trouble with MPEG-2, especially at broadcast bitrates.
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Sep 11, 2009 11:34
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FogHelmut posted:Not sure if this is the right thread for this - Yes, but if your monitor doesn't take HDMI audio you're going to have to use a stereo receiver or PC analog line-in to hear anything.
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Oct 8, 2009 02:36
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Dijkstra posted:drat, that looks cool. As soon as flash 10.1 hits the streets and it looks like the GPU acceleration works correctly, I'll get one. Oh god I hope Flash 10.1 does what it's supposed to. The pure CPU dependency of Flash is such a god drat drag.
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Oct 18, 2009 17:25
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Thermopyle posted:Well, we're mostly on the same page then. I know there's no actual DXVA code, I just meant the foundations are being set...that it's something that the devs are aware of. I never meant you could go out there and download some sort of DXVA support right now. ... Thermopyle posted:Yes, it's actually under development right now and you can get it in SVN versions, IIRC. I don't think it's too stable yet, though. You could be pendantic about "under development" if you want, but it's clear to everyone else that you were mistaken. Personally I'd rather see a DirectShow player than the addition of DXVA to XBMC. I'd like to see both, really, but I'd like the ability to select my own codecs.
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Oct 23, 2009 00:47
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According to ArsTechnica, Hulu is headed toward building a paywall. While it seems awful that they want to charge for a lower-quality version of content that you can pull in with an OTA tuner that you can only view on a browser (PlayOn is a great hack, but it's a hack), I think it could actually prove to be a good thing. A hard enough flop could wake the networks up to the reality of what people expect on the internet.PitViper posted:[...] I keep seeing people cite 720p Xvids. Are you making these yourself or what? It's been my understanding that Xvid has been dead as an HD format since like 2006.
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Oct 25, 2009 14:42
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Jook posted:Since my computer is across the room from my TV I think I'm going to try to simply run everything from it via a LONG (30ft) HDMI cable. This can depend on your stereo receiver (if you're using one). Mine can put an analog stereo signal on top of HDMI video. As far as audio goes, if it's good enough for you it's good enough for you.
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Oct 29, 2009 01:17
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The Human Cow posted:I believe that you'll be able to stream video and recorded TV to the Xboxes, but not live TV. Streaming live TV to other things is something called Softsled, and it probably will never happen because Microsoft's been dragging their feet on it for years. It would be amazing if it worked, though. Crackbone posted:A little delusional. I think you guys are misunderestimating the XBox360 and (as many do for some reason) massively overestimating the power necessary to decode HDTV. Yes, it can stream live HDTV. It's MPEG-2. It doesn't take much power to decode MPEG2, even at 1080i. My Athlon64 3000 did it in college. I'm watching OTA HDTV on my 360 right now and that's at least the same bitrate as cable HD, if not higher. Streaming live HDTV to the XBox is in no way out of reach, the only hard part is getting the aforementioned cablecard tuner. The number I heard from Engadget HD was that Ceton was shooting for $300 for the two-tuner CC card and $75 for each tuner on top of that, which to me is pretty reasonable if you're feeding your whole house and just have to pay the $5 for a CableCard a month versus the $15 a month per box my provider charges.
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Dec 16, 2009 22:24
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