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pkd88 posted:What is wrong with the 360 as a DVD player? Is the picture quality poor? The 360 has about the poorest DVD playback PQ of any device you are likely to find in your living room. HQV rating is 20 or 25, vs about 30-35 for the average 50 dollar walmart player and 95+ with powerdvd and any reasonably modern gpu out of possible 130 point scale. edit: Here's some comparison pictures dfn_doe fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 7, 2008 |
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Jan 7, 2008 22:25
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As promised here are some shots of the VFD on my Antec Fusion (version 1 w/o ir sensor) I had to turn the flash off as the reflection of the screen totally obscured it, so keep in mind how dark the rest of the picture is IS actually a fully lit room.     Click for big... P.S. before some wiseguy makes a "vista=low uptime" joke, I just updated my video driver and required a reboot...
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Jan 9, 2008 06:35
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Odoyle posted:Frontend goons, I just got a great deal on a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600. I think it's a pretty good PCI HD tuner card. What front-end will run/record HDTV over QAM? I have a pair of these cards and as far as I can tell, since the QAM uncoding isn't REALLY part of the official spec sheet for them the only program which seems to work for doing it is the one they come bundled with. Otherwise they are only useful for ATSC and analog.
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Jan 14, 2008 06:35
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sigma 6 posted:Somebody mentioned using a Hauppauge NOVA DVB-T dual tuner in a random post. You'll have to excuse me belaboring this question, but... Any reason why people seem to be trending towards the 8800 over the 8600 or even the 8500? The 8800 draws more power, generates more heat, and in fanless configs has a heatsink that takes up more space inside the case. The 8500 and 8600 both have full vc-1, mpeg, and x.264 acceleration and plenty capable of playing any high def content available. The 8500 only lags slightly behind the performance (in some reported benchmarks) of the 8600 in some limited interlacing tasks as it uses the shader to process this (which runs at slower speed). I have the 8500 and have no problem running 1080p, 720p/i, and 480p/i and only very occasionally do I see a stutter when deinterlacing 1080i. Do most of you guys run games or something else on your htpc boxes? Why the bias away from the 8500 and 8600?
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Jan 15, 2008 07:42
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Randi Challenger posted:I'm looking for a HTPC case with only 1 5.25" bay and like 3 3.5" bays. Is there such a thing? I've had no luck on FrozenCPU, Newegg or Tigerdirect. one 5.25 and two 3.5 seems to be the standard config for purpose built HTPC cases, however most have enough room under the 5.25 to mount another 3.5 if you want to cobble up a mount or just slap some double sided foam tape on the drive.
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Jan 17, 2008 01:30
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Randi Challenger posted:Whats with all this front touch screen nonsense? Is it a basic front-end to getting to your movies and poo poo? Well, you /should/ be able to use it for whatever sort of interaction you desire, although I'm not sure who goes the hassle of building an HTPC and then wants to get up and fiddle with the front of it to do UI interaction. I however would be very interested in seeing something like a fusion with a decent sized screen on the front which could display media info imdb,allmusic,etc but the touch capability seems pretty worthless especially when you look at the price premium for it. edit: I said "should" since I only know one person with a case like that and he has thus far been unable to get it to do anything worthwhile.
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Jan 17, 2008 02:13
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Saddamnit posted:After looking at a bunch of guides, I'm still confused about QAM. Basically, I want my HTPC to be able to hook up to cable and be able to use all the channels I'm signed up for (even the digital ones) without the need for the cable box. Can I get that sort of functionality by using a card like this?: http://www.digitalconnection.com/products/video/fusion5.asp Nothing that confusing about it. On your cable there are both encrypted and unencrypted signals. The unencrypted ones are "clear" QAM which any digital tuner that advertises QAM compatibility can tune. OTOH the encrypted channels can only be tuned/decrypted by cablecard based tuners of which the only one available outside of a prebuilt machine is the ATI occur external tuner box. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly certain that the occur tuner won't work with DVR software aside from vista media center. So, if you want "all the channels [you] are signed up for" you will need to have a cablecard tuner if any of those channels is encrypted, which unless you only have basic cable will likely be the case.
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Jan 24, 2008 20:31
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Bender posted:I have a Hauppauge HVR-1600. I know it supports QAM and ATSC. My fear is simply that if the card sucks at getting QAM (something it SHOULD be getting and something that is available in my area), then why should I assume that it will be any better at getting the ATSC OTA stuff? Not to belabor the obvious, but... You sure you have it hooked up correctly? The 1600 has two coax connector on the back, one is for analog cable and the other is for ATSC/QAM digital. In my experience the analog works just fine and I was able to tune a few ATSC digital stuff with an antenna. I've never tried to use it for QAM, but I've read many time in many forums that people having trouble have the cable jacked into the wrong connector. Also, its been a few pages since I last said it, so... Make sure you don't have too many splitters on the line, low signal strength will result in a poor analog picture and inability to get a proper lock on digital channels too. Every 1>2 split is at least a 3.5db drop in signal strength (more with crappy splitters or bad splices) which mean even the strongest cable-drops (usually 11db from the pole) can become unusable if they split to several rooms in your house and then to several devices in the rooms. It isn't uncommon for the pole drop to go directly to a 1>4 way splitter where it enters the premise which means that each wall jack will have 4db or less total available signal.
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Jan 25, 2008 23:53
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SnatchRabbit posted:Well, I've just about given up trying to find out if Media Portal supports Firewire capture, at all. So can anyone recommend a media center platform that satisfies the following criteria: Sage support firewire capture and seems to have a reasonably large user base. As for the other stuff I don't know, but since firewire capture is the one 100% needed function for you I'd start with figuring out what supports that and sage is the first thing that comes to mind.
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Jan 26, 2008 02:31
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.Nathan. posted:Can i get some opinions on the HTPC build i'm thinking about : I'm not sure what the price premium is for quad core over dual core right now, but if you aren't doing any gaming or other processor intensive tasks I don't see the need for that much processor. Most of the builds I've seen in this thread are dual core, which has enough grunt and should let you get away with a smaller heatsink/fan combo which means less noise in the end.
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Jan 26, 2008 05:18
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Little Brittle posted:Is there anything like Popcorn Hour but cheaper? I don't need HD output, just composite or s-video will be fine. All I'm looking for is something that can connect to network storage and play XVID files from my ReadyNAS on a regular 27" TV. My only other requirement is that it needs to have a remote and interface for browsing files. Does something like this exist under $150? As a last resort I can run cable from the nearest PC's TV-out, but ideally I'd like to have something where you can pause/play with a remote on the TV rather than going back to the computer. An xbox with xbmc is just about the simplest cleanest and cheapest solution for doing this exact thing. For all the chatter about htpc boxes and software there is in this thread I think you will find that the most common requests are from people looking for something which emulates the function of XBMC but is HD capable. If you don't need HD then just go for the real deal and use XBMC.
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Feb 1, 2008 21:44
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adorai posted:I successfully set up xbmc for linux today, really wasn't much effort to get it all working. I am working on getting x264 to play back right now, if I figure it out I am going to put together another box I just specced out that I think should be able to 1080p x264 for under $300, configure everything, and post a step by step guide of what I did. It'll be a few weeks probably. I'm skeptical about anything hitting that price point and being feature complete for playing the full gamut of SD and HD content. But please keep us updated.
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Feb 4, 2008 19:42
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EC posted:It really depends on how much stuff you have already. I just did a really nice build for about $320, but that was mobo/cpu/memory only. That is exactly my point, maybe I misread what the original poster was saying, but I read it as "300USD for a complete linux htpc solution which can play 1080p". I don't think there is any configuration currently available that could hit that price point and do that task. 300 dollars buys a lot more computer today than it did even 6-12 months ago, but I'd be sincerely surprised to see someone post a BoM for a machine that is capable of playing back 1080p for even 400 bucks. Something like: decent motherboard with onboard intel video - 100 amd 3800 proc retail boxed with heatsink - 80 psu - 60 case - 60 that's 300 bucks right there with no hd, no ram, and no optical drive. Now if you stick to buying refurb prebuilts from woot or overstock you could probably get something which would be in the ballpark of the price/perf of a 300 dollar htpc box. But I don't think that most home builders could piece something together for that ammount unless they already own half the parts..
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Feb 4, 2008 20:47
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vanilla slimfast posted:It comes with a heatsink/fan combo. It'd be a good idea to get an aftermarket cooler that will run cooler and quieter than the OEM one. Uhm, OEM usually doesn't come with a heatsink/fan combo, the retail box comes with that stuff. I've only built a handful of machines recently, but that has been the case in my experience.
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Feb 8, 2008 20:02
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Saukkis posted:A harddrive uses maybe 10 watts when running, a PSU won't even notice that. I would think the sudden current spike when starting a harddrive would be more damaging. This is exactly correct, the inductive load of spinning up a hard drives uses WAY more juice than the average draw once it is running. Spinning drives up and down as needed will demand more of your PSU (especially if a bunch spin up at the same time) than just having them stay spun up. Also, I question your choice to put as many as 8 drives into an HTPC box, aside from the heat, noise, and space requirements of 8 "bargain hard drives", the scale of increases in size/cost ratio means by the time you are buying a fourth or fifth drive you will be more than doubling you capacity with each additional drive (unless you are REALLY download crazy) this pretty much means that 2-3 drives if judiciously upgraded as prices fall and sizes increase will provide you with nearly identical actual utility while at the same time not present any of the caveats I've listed. From your post I take it you haven't really been in the loop on the whole htpc thing, but generally these machines are setup with only 1 or 2 local drives in order to minimize sound pollution in your theater space and any additional storage needs above and beyond what can be accommodated by local storage is usually put off on a network fileserver of some sort which can be geographically separated from the HTPC box.
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Feb 12, 2008 21:07
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Kreez posted:Could someone summarize what exactly can be hardware accelerated these days? Well, powerdvd provides the directvideo "codec" which offloads the proccessing to the card. Any software which uses regular directx graphs will be able to use HW accel. Anything which uses it's own codec/video stack won't use it; so things like beyondTV and zoomplayer get HW and VLC get SW only.
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Feb 14, 2008 20:43
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Kreez posted:So it's just a matter of paying $50 and having powerdvd installed on the system, I don't actually have to use it then? Pretty much, I have power DVD Ultra which supports BR and HD-DVD, not sure if all the same directshow filters are present in the basic version of power-dvd.
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Feb 15, 2008 19:08
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diis posted:Does anyone have any input on a good HTPC keyboard? I'm looking for one with an integrated pointing device, BT or RF, and preferable rechargeable. I've been using an old IR Logitech keyboard and mouse, and I hate having the signal drop out all the freaking time when the cat decides to sit in front of the IR receiver. I am pretty happy with my gyration keyboard and mouse combo, now it doesn't have an integrated pointer, but I end up doing most of my navigation with an X10 remote control anyways. I too eyeballed that DiNovo edge but it occurred to me that having a BT keyboard means that your BT stack needs to be working for the keyboard to work, which means that you will have issue doing things like getting into bios setting or may end up with a more complicated than expected setup for linux or other OS's. It certainly doesn't help matter that it is so expensive and my local Fry's has about 20 open box models on the shelf and zero unopened ones which implies they have a very high return rate and very low sell through rate. If anybody else has a suggestion or a review of the edge, I too would certainly be interested in hearing it.
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Feb 16, 2008 00:55
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Saukkis posted:I don't think HDCP is necessary currently. A Blu-ray movie may require it, but I haven't heard of any that does it. Just to be clear about this, any hd-dvd or bluray movie requires a full unbroken hdcp chain to play back at full 1080p resolution. I believe that cyberlink has a tool on their website which will tell you if your setup meets this requirement. A full chain implies one of the handful of software players (powerdvd, nero showtime?, and one other who's name is escaping me at the moment) and a hdcp compliant video card, and a display with hdcp.
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Feb 22, 2008 20:47
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Crackbone posted:For what it's worth, Nvidia's new 8200 chipset is due out on March 4th, which is their mATX solution, with an integrated video chipset that does onboard decoding. Sounds great! I hope they package it on mobos with hdmi and some decent audio hardware. I'll definitely being keeping an eye out for this.
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Feb 28, 2008 20:31
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The_Franz posted:HTPC software under active development: Don't forget the commercial players: Windows MediaCenter Snapstream BeyondTV SageTV
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Mar 7, 2008 19:58
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Crackbone posted:You absolutely CANNOT use a cablecard to watch/record HD cable on a regular PC. You have to have specific PCs from OEM vendors with special bios that enable the use of HD cablecard tuners. You can use an ATI Occur external HD cablecard tuner box... Not sure what availability is on those right now, but AFAIK it's the absolutely only way to get cablecard tuning on a box not equipped as such from the OEM.
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Mar 21, 2008 02:53
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Crackbone posted:The only way those will install drivers/show as a tuner in Media Center is to have the special bios that allows the whole thing to work. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but the ATI Occur is an external tuner box which is connected via USB and is/was intended to be sold as an add on for existing systems. AFAIK it doesn't require any specific OEM computer or "special bios" to be used, although I'm not sure if ATI ever even managed to ship the thing. I think you are referring to systems which come equipped with a cablecard tuner *card* not the external tuner box. I could be totally wrong, but I think that is what I read last time I looked into it.
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Mar 21, 2008 08:33
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vanilla slimfast posted:I don't think PowerDVD does x264/mkv playback, you'd probably want to use Media Player Classic or VLC I think he is referring to the directshow filters (cyberlink x.264, mpeg2, vc-1) that comes with powerdvd which enables the hardware acceleration of the underlying (at least on nvidia 8500+) codec. That filter is what would enable media player classic to hardware offload the x.264, although a mastroka container splitter filter would be needed as well.
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Mar 25, 2008 03:02
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Fifty Three posted:So... Install PowerDVD, start MPC, then... how do I choose the Cyberlink filter for off-loading awesomeness? Is it "Cyberlink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD7.x), under "External Filters"? Yup, that sounds just about right.
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Mar 25, 2008 04:56
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Fifty Three posted:Okay, what the heck. I'm still getting the same CPU usage regardless of whether I do this or not. I'm doing something wrong. :/ You need to have hardware accel enabled in the directshow filter, I'm pretty sure you can do this from the properties window in graphedit or one of the config dialogs in the powerdvd program itself.
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Mar 26, 2008 05:02
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Lowen SoDium posted:This might be a question for SH/SC, but is there a cheap IR receiver out there that I can use just a normal IR remote. It could be USB or serial, but USB would be better. I would also rather have something that comes with the software that it needs or uses free software instead of something that requires Girder. usbuirt plus eventghost is the best solution I've found thus far. Works great receiving signal from all the remotes I've tried it with and allows for total flexibility with how it interfaces with other programs. Also the ability to SEND ir codes with it via ir blasters makes some tricky automation tasks possible.
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Mar 31, 2008 21:46
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SynMoo posted:50ft will be no problem for HDMI and coax digital audio as long as you buy decent yet reasonably priced cables from Monoprice. Au Contrare, I have personally seen dvi>hdmi 1080p signal degradation fail to the point of signal drop on runs of only 10'. I have read of others having similar experiences. I have had no problem since moving to a 3' monoprice hdmi cable. Something in the 50' range could easily be problematic... just my .02
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Apr 11, 2008 05:32
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Randi Challenger posted:Whats a good IR receiver that I should be looking at? The USB-UIRT is bar-none the most flexible IR transceiver, however since you are using a pretty solid remote, you'd probably be just fine with a receive only unit; and I think that the standard MS media center receiver will not only work with your harmony, but I think the harmony has it as one of it's default device targets.
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May 12, 2008 20:14
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Just dropping in with a quickie note. I've swapped out my Nvidia 8500gt for an ATI HD2600xt and so far the results are good. The deinterlacing is much better and I had no issues with getting the drivers/configs setup to do native 1080p over hdmi. I'm gonna take a shot at getting the integrated audio up this evening. Preliminarily I'd say the only downside I've hit so far is the heatsink fan is a bit louder than the nvidia. Anyone have a recommendation for a quieter heatsink (perhaps fanless) which would work well on this card?
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May 13, 2008 18:30
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Craptacular! posted:Need to decide between Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800 or AVerMedia AVerTV Combo on a Vista 64-bit system running MCE. The Hauppage card is generally going to have better support. The 1800 is the pci-e version of the hvr-1600 which has reasonably decent windows support, forthcoming QAM support in beyond TV, and some rudimentary support in linux now. The hd-homerun is a pretty nice box as well, but has some issue with lag on channel changes and the driver/support is a bit kludgy. I have both the hvr-1600 and hd-homerun although I only use the hvr-1600 for analog right now to grab the channels which my local cable-co doesn't yet have clear QAM streams of. I'm part of the beyond TV open beta, but I haven't yet tried their latest QAM build that has native hauppage QAM support, but the comments on their forums seem to be generally positive.
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May 27, 2008 18:43
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Mugmoor posted:In regards to Blu-Ray drives that are out there; what one do you guys recommend? I'd assume since we're on a PC here that profile 2.0 and whatnot is fully usable, but in this early age of technology I don't wanna grab the wrong one The LG dual format BD/HD drive I recently bought works as advertised, is relatively quiet, uses SATA connectors and ships with a copy of powerdvd which will get you the cyberlink directshow filters to enable hardware accelerated video on nvidia and ati cards which support it. Also, being a dual format drive means you can take advantage of the closeout deals on hd-dvd movies now and have a nice little HD movie library for hardly any money.
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Jun 15, 2008 10:18
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Mugmoor posted:Does the nVidia 8600GT support the hardware acceleration? I'm very interested in getting the dual drive (for the HD DVD reasons) and that might just seal the deal. Yeah the 8500 and 8600 both support hw acceleration with the cyberlink directshow filters. However after recently upgrading from an 8500gt to an ati hd2600 I have to say I much prefer the visual quality of the ATI, the hw deinterlacing looks much smoother and the driver configuration is much more up front with exposing the configuration options. YMMV
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Jun 16, 2008 09:14
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TyChan posted:Are those Shuttle SFF cases good for HTPC functions? Would any of the current models work for a HTPC on their own or would I have to get a separate video card too? Would the cards that can handle 1080p work fit in the case? They're a bit cramped as it is and I suspect you can't put in a double-width card in a case like that. There are plenty of ATI and NVidia cards capable of doing hardware accelerated video which only take one slot. However be aware that the fans on some of these are quite loud due to their small size. I think alot of people on this thread get a bit carried away with buying high end cards and/or processors for their HTPC; when the fact of the matter is that the cards which support these features aren't running full tilt when they do the decoding. A 80-100 dollar ATI card with a decently quiet factory (or after market heatsink) will pretty much handle any video you can throw at it. Heck cyberlink has even started to offer their accelerated directshow filters unbundled from powerdvd, so if you were so inclined you could just buy the filters and the card and have the exact same playback quality as guys who are dumping 200+ bucks on video cards and you'll certainly have better video quality than the guys buying fast multicore procs and doing the decoding in software. I think anybody making these decision should REALLY honestly evaluate what they are going to be using the system for before making their decisions. If your intent is to watch 1080p video from legal legitimate sources (I.E. hd-dvd or bluray) and 1080i/720p/480i from a tuner you'd be very hard pressed to find a solution better than the cyberlink filters outputting over something like an ATI hd2600. You're gonna need to buy an HD optical drive anyways, so go with the LG model which is bundled with powerdvd (read: all the commercial filters you need). The cyberlink filters along with the ATI card will also get you some very nice looking deinterlacing for 1080i or other interlaced content (upscaling DVDs etc) and it supports some of the pull down detection features normally only found in higher end upscaling DVD players. That said, this setup may not be ideal if you are actually build a box for decoding filezzzz from torrent sites. so lets call a spade a spade and for the sake of clarity can everyone who's intention is watching illegal ripped material please stop misleading those of us who don't have a problem with paying a reasonable price for legal legitimate content. You're downloaded cams may not playback awesomely with the hardware/software combo I've outlined above; but guess what, SA has never been about endorsing illegal downloads... Note: I'm not trying to accuse or point fingers at anyone in particular, I'm just trying to make clear that some of the suggestions I'm seeing on this thread are going to result in less than ideal performance and quality. Anybody who goes with software and sits down to watch an action heavy 1080i scene will quickly understand why hardware deinterlacing and decoding is preferable.
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Jun 20, 2008 20:07
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Crackbone posted:If you're getting your material through legal sources, (ie Bluray discs), the video format on the disc going to be 1080p, so deinterlacing wouldn't be needed. The only thing I can think of that outputs in 1080i is one of the broadcast networks HD feeds. Where else are you going to get a native 1080i signal from that your PC will have to de-interlace? 1080i and 480i are going to cover the majority of broadcast video as well as standards def. DVD. And yes doing 60-24 and other pulldowns is one of the things that is going to be offloaded to the hardware. As far as having trouble getting the acceleration to work, I have read several threads on lots of board and the majority of the problems are people who are trying to get some hacked up or pirate copy of powerdvd OR are trying to get hardware acceleration on some sort of unsupported codec from some torrent downloads. I use all legal legitimately paid for and installed software and it JUST WORKS. anything that supports output via directshow can use the filters and they do exactly what they say they'll do. My config is as close to box stock as it comes. Anybody walking into a store to build an HTPC could buy this hardware and software and install it without fiddling with anything and it'll just do as it's supposed to. dfn_doe fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jun 20, 2008 |
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Jun 20, 2008 23:55
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Crackbone posted:Please quit blaming everything on piracy. It's like claiming any other piece of software works 100% of the time with no problems. Its not that I'm blaming everything on piracy, I'm just pointing out the elephant in the room. Not necessarily in this forum, but some of the other media/htpc forums I read I see the same sort of complaints about having trouble getting accelration working and it quickly becomes apparent through the course of trouble shooting that many people are using cracked, downrev versions of powerdvd and/or the media they are trying to play is of less than legit origins. SA's strict policies against filez tends to encourage people to not come out and say what exactly it is they may be up to when it comes to the specific software and media they are trying to play back. If it is just said up front that alot of that stuff may not work and the standard troubleshooting config might not be helpful will save everyone here alot of time troubleshooting problems that aren't being accurately described. My intention isn't to point fingers, it is to help other like minded people build and operate HTPC systems.
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Jun 21, 2008 07:10
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Martytoof posted:I'm tired of switching my Hauppauge HVR950's coax from antenna to cable all the time. Does anyone know if attaching a splitter in reverse (two inputs, one output) will let me connect both cables to the tuner? Obviously I'd still need to tell the tuner whether it is set up as an ATSC or NTSC tuner, but that is much easier than unscrewing a cable and screwing in another one. That won't work, but there are switch boxes for doing exactly this. I'm curious why you don't just us one of the other tuner cards you have to tune the ntsc cable stuff and keep the 950 dedicated to atsc tuning.
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Jun 28, 2008 03:25
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balistic posted:I have a couple general questions about HDCP, as I've not dealt with it before and it generally scares me. Easy solution is to download the bd/hd-dvd advisor software from cyberlink it includes test for end to end HDCP support as well as confirming whether your hardware is actually up to snuff for software only decoding and/or if your hardware supports hardware acceleration.
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Jul 9, 2008 05:41
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Crackbone posted:There's no way to directly input HD signals from a satellite signal into a PC. Additionally, while you can get HD signals from cable directly into a PC, it requires you to purchase certain retail PCs with a special bios, and an external tuner that uses cablecard technology, which depending on where you live, may or may not be supported by your cable company's tech support. You can watch HD cable if your cable provider transmits and programming in unencrypted QAM. My personal experience with Comcast is that you can actually get a decent number of channels this way, however you won't be able to get any premium tier channels. quote:You can get an internal tuner to watch OTA HD signals (ie Fox, NBC, CBS, etc). quote:You can purchase a HD capture box from Hauppauge that was just released. This allows you to output HD (720p only) from your cable/sat box via component to the capture box, which in turn encodes it in x264 to your PC. However, as of this time it's a bit buggy and Windows Media Center doesn't support its use. The specs on their website say 1080i, which is as good as it gets for TV. Although I'd be surprised if the picture quality on the captures from this card are very good, since it is doing an extra analog>digital conversion.
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Jul 10, 2008 16:34
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Crackbone posted:That's incredibly hit or miss, since what channels are encrypted is totally up to the provider and can change whenever they want. My provider, for instance, only has music channels unencrypted. Hell, some providers even encrypt the OTA channels, which is against FCC rules, but too few people notice/complain for it to matter. Well at the point that you basic cable already in your house and a hdtv with a QAM capable digital tuner built in, it is easy enough to check and see what channels you get without the cable box. Once you have the information you can make the decision whether it is worthwhile. Like I said in my previous post, in my own experience I get quite a few channels. No cost in trying it to find out... quote:It's a stretch to say PQ is going to be bad just because of that. Most of the reviews from people using it on AVS have been positive (at least PQ, not build quality so far). If anything the signal compression cable companies do on the signal before it hits your house does more damage. I've never used it, I'd just be surprised to see if it was really worth the hassle to capture HD this way. I guess if you have premium channels and your provider doesn't have DVR equipment it may make sense. But, as you pointed out, alot of cable HD streams are already compressed and take a big hit to PQ. Saying that the additional PQ hit would be a stretch seems dubious to me, I suppose you'd also advocate re-encoding lossily compressed audio as being not too bad; I guess it comes down to personal preference. But, suppose that comcast receives an mpeg2 master bit identical to what you'd get over ATSC broadcast, they recompress it to mpeg4, which your cable box recieves and decompresses to component analog, which then gets pulled into your electrically noisy computer over standard rca interconnects, then recompressing it to digital again using h.264. I'd want to see some of the captured video personally before endorsing the product to others, and as I said before I'd be surprised if the hit to PQ was not readily apparent. Which isn't me saying it is bad, since I haven't seen it myself, but your comments lead me to believe you haven't seen it either.
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Jul 11, 2008 01:55
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