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Television Media Hardware

ATi HDTV Tuner For The PC Arrives 260

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-pixels-please dept.
Chi-Energy writes "ATi has released their new HDTV Tuner card for the PC today, which allows High Def broadcasts and cable content to be displayed on any PC monitor. It should be is especially impressive on some of the new fast response time flat panels that are on the market today. HotHardware has a full review and showcase of the product here. The good news is, with the supplied antenna, you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!"
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ATi HDTV Tuner For The PC Arrives More

ATi HDTV Tuner For The PC Arrives

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  • Extreme Tech has a review up too (Score:5, Informative)

    by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:10AM (#9495848) Homepage
    FWIW...

    Extreme Tech HDTV review [extremetech.com] (7 out of 10)

    *shrug*

    e.

  • even *BETTER* captures (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:13AM (#9495891) Journal
    1990 - Screen shots
    1995 - VHS capture
    1998 - Digital cable/digital satellite capture
    2000 - DVD capture
    2004 - HDTV capture coming soon to a bittorrent stream near you!!!

  • THey just don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dnadig ( 414126 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:13AM (#9495902)
    It drives me nuts that people keep spending R&D money on Over-the-air tuner cards for HDTV. THere are plenty of these out there, and they all stink.

    What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

    AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels. With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

    GRrrrr.
    • We all know what we want. Now how do we convince the content providers to allow it?
    • With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

      http://www.sciatl.com/customers/Source/4004400.pdf [sciatl.com]

      Time Warner Cable in Milwaukee is now offering this HD DVR, and I believe they offer it elsewhere too. It may not be as nice as a Tivo, but it sure gets the job done.
      • while that is nice in a way, it still doesn't allow us to view it on the computer independant of the cable companies converter box. I think that is one of the bigest draw backs.

        Some people wan't to build a pvr becasue they can. Others want to try and save a dime, while still others might want to include stuff like arcade games with some emulator and have an actuall entertainment box instead of several boxes conected to the television, Others might just want the ability to watch television on thier computer

    • Re:THey just don't get it... (Score:4, Informative)

      by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:21AM (#9495994) Journal
      What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE

      1) Buy this card.
      2) Buy IR mouse [asihome.com].
      3) Watch HDTV from satellite or cable
      4) Profit

      We'll need some good software, first. It should only be a matter of time before Myth or one of the others gets good support for this.
      • Umm.. I don't think you're seeing the whole problem here.

        Step 1: Irrelevant. The card can receive ATSC broadcasts via an antenna, not magically receive HDTV from cable. An MPEG encoder capable of recording HDTV (1920x1080) is *VERY* expensive. No consumer grade card has this capability today.
        Step 2: Why? That would allow you to get IR to a location that the normal remote control can't reach, or allow one device to control another. What do you propose plugging it into, and what problem are you solvi
    • Satellite is totally locked down; don't even think about recording it. Cable is a little better since the FCC forced cable companies to put Firewire ports on cable boxes.

    • You Just Don't Get It (Score:5, Informative)

      by BRock97 ( 17460 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:25AM (#9496043) Homepage
      What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we in the real world actually USE (cable and sattelite)<snip>

      That is what you get. The ATI comes with a tuner that not only supports OTA but also QAM so you can plug your local cable company's line into the card and get a signal. Now, that doesn't get you the encrypted stuff (ESPNHD, HBO), you will need a box for that, but will get you locals. That is the case for Cox Cable here in Omaha, NE.

      AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels.

      What are you talking about? If you compare the same content delivered over the air to that delievered via cable, it is all the same digital signal, not marginal quality. End of story. Now, reception of that signal might not be great, but if you do get a lock of about 60% or greater, it is the same. Again, this is my experience here in Omaha.

      • Re:You Just Don't Get It (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mad Quacker ( 3327 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:45AM (#9496282) Homepage

        That is what you get. The ATI comes with a tuner that not only supports OTA but also QAM so you can plug your local cable company's line into the card and get a signal.

        Not according to ATI, yes the NXT2004 chip does support QAM, but the card does not. The ExtremeTech review explains this.

      • Re:You Just Don't Get It (Score:4, Informative)

        by andykuan ( 522434 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:52AM (#9496364) Homepage
        I still haven't seen anything indicating that the HDTV Wonder will do QAM. AFAIK, the only card out there that does both ATSC and QAM is the DViCO Fusion HDTV III-QAM -- and apparently its software is still crap. Is there some spec out there that explicitly states that the ATI card supports QAM? I've been holding back on purchasing the Fusion card until they get their software straightened out, but I'll sooner drop money on an ATI since I'm certain I can return the card if it stinks (unlike the Fusion).
      • If you compare the same content delivered over the air to that delievered via cable, it is all the same digital signal, not marginal quality

        Er... well... actually...

        The OTA signal may be a better signal than whatever the cable company sends out. Cable companies (and the sat companies) are reknowned for bit filtering to reduce the bitrate of both SD and HD signals. That way they can fit more onto the feed. Depending on how they do it, it may also mean that the source feed from the network was converted to

    • Re:THey just don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:31AM (#9496117) Journal
      Dozens of HDTV channels over satellite? Not if you are on one of the big 2 satellite providers (DirecTV or DishNet). You'll get at most -1- dozen today (actually, with DirecTV I think it's more like a 1/2 dozen right now with plans to double that this year).

      The only way to get -dozens- of HDTV channels over satellite is via VOOM [voom.com] and from all reviews I've seen their channels are almost worthless except for the few that are also on DirecTV. Voom has such a small subscriber base today that I don't have much faith in them making it (plus their satellites are so far down in the southern sky that often people can point their dishes at them).

      I don't have direct experience with Dish other than to know that I dislike their STB hardware so I avoid it. I don't have experience with HDTV over cable because I can't get digital cable where I live (and the analog signal goes over a couple of hundred of miles of repeaters and ghosts worse than OTA NTSC).

      I completely agree with you that we need satellite and cable HDTV cards but there are 2 things that are going to stop you:

      1) The satellite providers have to cooperate with you and they are NOT interested in this. Yes, I know all the arguments we would make to them to allow this but they don't buy them. Hell, go read the TiVo community forums for DirecTV users [tivocommunity.com] and pay attention to the Organize an HMO request [tivocommunity.com] thread for an example of DirecTV not paying attention to customer demand for PC convergence ... and HMO is now -free- on standalone TiVo's.

      2) The Cable companies do not have a unified standard (yet), hence the reason why the HDTiVo only supports satellite or OTA (for now). Until they have a standard not only agreed on but implemented it is way too fractionalized for an HDTV PC option to make sense to companies like ATI.

      That 2nd point is being addressed and once you see the cable manufacturers adopt (I believe it is FCC mandated) an interoperable and compatible standard you probably will see PC options as well as an HDTiVo that handles them.

      You will probably also see a large number of DirecTV/Dish subcribers moving and then see the satellite providers start dumping crap channels for HDTV channels. However I doubt you'll see a general purpose PC option for satellite HDTV viewing. MAYBE an OEMed one that includes the card reader and such but I don't think that the satellite providers are savvy enough to figure out how to make that work in a way that PC adopters would buy in to (it would probably be so crippled and expensive that we'd simply forget about it).
    • I would really, really like two (hell, I'd settle for one) DirectTV satellite decoder(s) on the card.

      Just having over the air HD signals ain't gonna cut it.

      -mb

    • Mac users can do it with a cheap firewire cable... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rascasse ( 719300 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:33AM (#9496149)
      ...no other expensive software required [macosxhints.com]. Another reason why I love my Mac.
    • You are right on the money with your observation. Very little HDTV comes from the cable company in an unencrypted format, so these things are almost strictly OTA solutions.

      What is really needed is a card you can stick in your computer that has a CableCARD slot, so it can be authorized to decrypt the digital cable channels. Anyone heard if something like this is in the works?
      • What is really needed is a card you can stick in your computer that has a CableCARD slot, so it can be authorized to decrypt the digital cable channels. Anyone heard if something like this is in the works?

        It is not in the works because such a card would probably be illegal (see Exhibit B [opencable.com]).

    • Re:THey just don't get it... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chris Carollo ( 251937 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:36AM (#9496177)
      What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.
      It's a bit hacked at the moment, but you can actually get HD signals from your cable box via firewire to your PC. The FCC has mandated that all cable companies that provide HD also provide a cable box that has working firewire outs.I'm able to record the HD transport stream to my laptop and actually watch the HD stream on my laptop screen as well.
      AT BEST, with your HDTV OTA card you will get marginal quality from a handful of HDTV channels. With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR
      Here you're just wrong -- OTA signals are often BETTER than via cable because cable companies can compress their QAM signal as much as they'd like. OTA requires the diginal feed to use the full 19.2mb/s stream, so as long as they're not multicasting you're often getting a better-quality feed.

      Also, most cable boxes use a component (YPrPb) connection whereas computer-based HD OTA tuners use RGB, and RGB is a noticably better signal. So if you're able to actually receive the HD signals (not too hard in my experience), OTA can often look better than cable.

      That said, I do agree that it's nice to finally have a QAM-capable card so that it's easier to actually record content using cable.
    • What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

      What we need is for the cable companies to get off their asses and start carrying more HD channels. All I get from Bright House (Time Warner) is that they are "in negotiations". It would also be nice if networks didn't screw around with the HD viewers like NBC is doi
    • > It drives me nuts that people keep spending R&D money on Over-the-air tuner cards for HDTV. THere are plenty of these out there, and they all stink.

      Hell, I'll settle for ATI giving me something that can pull NTSC OTA. I tried the following experiment a while back.

      Rabbit ears + TV = good picture on most OTA channels.
      Rabbit ears + ATI AIW = nothing.
      Rabbit ears + signal amplifier + ATI AIW = shittier OTA reception than I get with rabbit ears on the TV set.

      And ATI expects me to believe they ca

    • What we NEED, and I mean REALLY NEED, is the ability to get HDTV from sources we int he real world actually USE (cable and sattelite) into our boxes. Right now there is no way to do this without an insanely expensive Component encoder card.

      One of the satellite providers (I think it was DirecTV) had an HDTV receiver that spat out an 8VSB signal on channel 3 or 4 for use with OTA HDTV receivers. For some reason, that give me this odd sense of deja vu... but it would work with this card.

    • What we NEED is people to stop paying to watch television. In my area there are 8 stations available. Just think if the broadcasters used multiple subchannels - I could have 8*6 = 48 shows all for no monthly bill. FOX should provide their news,sports,kids,and regular channels in HDTV all the time. Why don't they? Because people like YOU like to pay to watch TV. They like getting paid by both advertisers and the cable companies. Vote with your wallet.

      Actually, I think this potential abundance of channels is

    • Have you ever actually used or even seen local HDTV?

      First, there are only a few ATSC HDTV tuner cards currently being produced. Some are pretty good, like the MyHD card, and others have some pretty weak software, like the Fusion cards. The MyHD cards use a hardware MPEG decoder, so they are limited to very basic display functions. They can't provide true PVR time shifting functionality. The hope for the ATI card is that it can provide good reliable software, which enable the PVR functions.

      As for the

  • For HDTV n00bs... (Score:5, Informative)

    by darth_MALL ( 657218 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:16AM (#9495945)
    Here's all the dirt on HDTV. [howstuffworks.com] Read and enjoy :)

  • Yay! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TJ_Phazerhacki ( 520002 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:16AM (#9495948) Journal
    I can finally grab the one network in the area with HDTV on my 22 inch monitor, while my 64 inch HDTV sits idle because of the cost prohibitive equipment necessary.

    Put this one under the "Wait till it is damned near free" file.

    HDTV is great, but when are the networks gonna start restructuring and grab ahold, instead of a few premium cable channels and the occasional "First to bring you HDTV - watch the news at 6!" Super bowl is awesome in HDTV, but I watch Speed Vision more than NFL.

    Just like gaming consoles, HDTV lands in territory where the hardware is nifty, but until there's better software, youre screwed. Here's hoping there's light at the end of the tunnel.

    • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:25AM (#9496045) Homepage Journal
      Are you serious? I have basic cable (TWC) for $12/month, plus an extra $7/month for a HD cable box. All of the stations I get with the basic package, I get the HDTV version (if it exists). So, for $19/month total I get NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, Fox (soon), and WB (soon) all in HD. Granted, only the prime time stuff is in HDTV, but every new show is HiDef now (reality crap excluded). In addition, all my sports programming is in HD now (Packer games, Bucks games, Final Four, NBA Finals, NFL playoffs, some Brewer games). So, ina given night I watch around 1 hour of SD programming (local news + a rerun or two) and the rest is HD. Either you need to look into this more, or move to a better city. :)
      • mmm....i'm a wisconsin native living in new york, how i wish i could get HD packer games here!
      • Decent city, heh... Where I am, Adelphia's basic alone cable is $25/mo (that's analog basic, not digital basic). No idea what HDTV costs but I'm willing to bet it's more than $7/mo...

        I think you should consider yourself pretty lucky.
    • Are you saying that your multi-thousand dollar TV sits idle because you can't afford a $300 HDTV set-top-box [google.com]?

      ...or a $30 indoor [google.com] or outdoor antenna?

      That excuse is years out of date.

      If $400 is cost prohibitive, then you shouldn't have such a nice TV. Heck, $400 only buys you 6-9 months of crummy cable TV.

  • Size of HDTV? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spartan_789 ( 790469 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:16AM (#9495949) Journal
    Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious... With the increase in resolution must come MUCH larger file sizes...

    1/2 hour show per DVD?

    • Re:Size of HDTV? (Score:3, Informative)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious.."

      I read 19 megabits/s somewhere...

    • Re:Size of HDTV? (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:27AM (#9496077) Homepage Journal
      It's right around 8GB per hour, which is about 4x the space that SD requires.

    • Re:Size of HDTV? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ObjetDart ( 700355 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:28AM (#9496080)
      Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious... With the increase in resolution must come MUCH larger file sizes...

      Several TV shows in HDTV have been available on BitTorrent for a while now...er, or so I've heard anyway. Encoded with Divx, they take about 350 megs per 1 hour show minus the commercials, and are pretty good quality.

      • Re:Size of HDTV? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by xsecrets ( 560261 )
        I'm sorry, those shows may have been recorded from HDTV input, but there is positively no way that full resolution HDTV content with 5.1 sound can be compressed down to 350 Mb/hour no matter what codec you use.
      • Most HDTV captures (unless you're talking about the raw transport stream ones, which are pretty huge (4-6 gigs)) are scaled down from native HDTV resolution (usually 1280x720) to around half that. 640x368 and 624x352 are some common resolutions.

        Also, most rips nowadays are encoded with XVID, although some people still use DivX.
    • Common rates are 19.4 mbps for HD (although I believe some vod vendors for MSO's trim that to 14 and change mbps). 19.4 * 60 * minutes of program will give you the info. This is assuming that the program is an MPEG2 transport stream. It improves once MPEG4 is used (better compression, although the transport stream is just a modified MPEG2 TS)

  • ..a PCMCIA version of this. It would be great to have this capability while travelling for work.

    Can someone more knowledgeable than me expound of the possibility of a PC-card version? (I know for cable it would require a dongle...but could you get OTA signals with a builtin antenna?)

  • Amazing (Score:4, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:19AM (#9495976) Homepage Journal
    The good news is, with the supplied antenna, you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!

    Getting TV with an antenna? For free? Well, that sure would be nice, but I can't imagine it happening in my lifetime.

  • ..out of the air for free!.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06NO@SPAMemail.com> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:19AM (#9495979)
    you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!

    Unfortunately, due to the new PPFB(Perpetual Profits for Broadcasters) Act of 2004, you can't actually watch any of the programming without paying a weekly license fee and providing a DNA sample to ease future prosecutions.

  • what resolution? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:19AM (#9495983) Homepage
    What resolution would my monitor or projector have to be so that I could watch HDTV at its full resolution without having to downsample? This is more of a HDTV in general question than an ATI-specific one.

  • Print Article Link and some thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:21AM (#9495997)
    Print Article Link [hothardware.com]

    ATI's goal is to offer a complete HDTV solution for an MSRP of $199. The package will include the HDTV Wonder, a Remote Wonder and a yet to be determined antenna. Throw in a potent Multimedia Center 9 and you have the makings for a sweet HDTV experience. To get the full experience of the card, users will need to use it in conjunction with an ATI graphics card to take advantage of such features as ThruView and Video Desktop, but the card will work with other DirectX 9 compatible OEM products otherwise.

    Too bad MythPC's track record for supporting ATI hardware hasn't been the greatest. If your on the windows side of the fence I suggest looking at Media Portal [sourceforge.net]. Its fairly new to the HTPC scene but looks promising and works with just about any card.

    Being a Radeon 7500 All in Wonder user I'm very happy to see the HDTV Wonder as a PCI card. I was sure when I bought my AGP 7500 AIW it was going to be the last card I would need in a very long time.

  • Interesting...... (Score:4, Funny)

    by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:22AM (#9496006)
    Did anyone else catch this part?:

    "you can just grab local HDTV programming right out of the air for free!"

    Just like we've been able to do with HDTV for years now!

    -Nick

  • And as usual... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pivot ( 4465 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:22AM (#9496010)
    - it is crapped by some stupid user interface some marketing guy or even a nerd at ATI though was really cool, but makes the viewer application look like a boombox on steroids.

  • Linux and Antenna (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GameGod0 ( 680382 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:24AM (#9496028)
    Any word on Linux support? (GATOS gonna pick this one up as a project maybe? Probably too early to tell....)

    Anyways, I read somewhere that HDTV antennas are just regular TV antennas (so don't need a "special" HDTV antenna), just thought I'd throw that out at everyone.

  • HDTV Out of the Air (Score:5, Interesting)

    by L3on ( 610722 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:27AM (#9496073) Journal
    Those of you living in major cities can easily do this, check http://www.hdtvpub.com/ for listing on what stations you can recieve. It's recommended to buy an antenna which will only run you about $25 from Radio Shack and you can recieve most of the basic programming in HDTV format for free!
    • AntennaWeb [antennaweb.org] does a great job giving you HDTV reception information. Antennas Direct [antennasdirect.com] has a great selection of antennae (antennas?) to choose from and some useful information on which frequency ranges each antenna is useful for.
    • Without the HDTV tuner, then this antenna is useless. Am I correct? Also, is this a small indoor antenna type (e.g., rabbit ears)?

      I see a lot of TV channels in my city. Awesome. I need to save up for a new video card with integrated HDTV tuner. No, I don't have a big screen TV.

  • HDTV Under Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by b1ng0 ( 7449 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:31AM (#9496120)
    What I'd like to see is an HDTV PCI card that just works under Linux. I know there is pcHDTV, which ATI's model is competing with, but there are no Linux HDTV cards that can do over the air, cable and satellite HDTV. When that comes out I will buy it in a second.

  • Holy marketing department batman! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mad Quacker ( 3327 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:31AM (#9496123) Homepage
    The story and review reads like this is the first HDTV tuner card for the PC - ever. There are already quite a few, and in fact for $199 this is substandard to the Dvico Fusion III Gold QAM, which was released not to long ago.

    This card allows you to intercept QAM modulated HDTV (in addition to 8VSB), which is what you get over cable TV. Regardless of what people say, if you can't literally see the transmitter from your location you are going to need some sort of antenna hardware above and beyond bunny ears, amplified indoor antenna's help - but not that much. Several stations actually protested the 8VSB standard because they understood that very few people were just going to be able to recieve a good signal with just indoor antennas.

    With this card I simply plug into my cable, and most of my local HDTV channels are there at 100% signal. Also for the few stations that come in reliably OTA and I can easily switch inputs via software.

    Also some representatives of this company have said that they are willing to aid in producing linux drivers, although I have been trying to get some specs and have not heard anything back recently :(

    • Regardless of what people say, if you can't literally see the transmitter from your location you are going to need some sort of antenna hardware above and beyond bunny ears...

      Regardless of disregarding what people say, I'm not line-of-sight to any of the four towers broadcasting in the Austin area (I'm probably 10-15 miles from the tower farm) and I can get each of them with between 70-90 signal strength. None of the stations ever break up or have any other reception problems.

      The best advice is to just

    • You wouldn't have a link to a review of Dvico Fusion III Gold QAM, would you?

      Product info on manufacturer's website [dvico.com] is pretty helpful, but I would love to see some independent reviews as well.

      Thanks for the tip, btw.
    • I've been reading up on the user-experience with the F3-QAM on AVS Forum [avsforum.com] and so far it looks like the software supplied with the cards is terrible. How has it been for you? It seems it's also sensitive to the cable provider to which the card is connected. Until I start reading lots of postings from happy Fusion customers, I'm not about to drop 200 bucks on one of their cards.

      I did, however, send a request to newegg to stock the card because I figured I'd might be willing to try the card out through them si

  • Linux (Score:3, Informative)

    by BillyBlaze ( 746775 ) <tomfelker@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:46AM (#9496284)
    As expected, there are no Linux drivers, and it will probably be a while before they can be made. In the meantime, pcHDTV makes a similar card with open source Linux drivers. Unfortunately, that card has no Windows drivers and can only receive broadcast signals.

  • The Antenna you Need (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:53AM (#9496369) Journal
    If you are serious about receiving over-the-air DTV transmissions and don't have an external antenna, you will want this: The Silver Sensor [commlinkstore.com] directional antenna. It is the standard in use by broadcaster labs for in-building reception. You should get a long length of coax so you can point the thing out your window, sometimes you need to get a reflection off of a neighboring building if you are not line-of-sight from the transmitter. Keep poking it around until you get a usable signal.

  • Broadcast flag? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by code shady ( 637051 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:57AM (#9496440) Homepage
    Does anyone know how, or if, this card will handle the FCC Broadcast flag?
  • Cool, they already broadcast HDTV in MPEG2 format. Next step is How to rip the signal?

    The difference here with TV, is that there may be a mean to directly get the broadcasted signal, instead of capturing the resulting pictures.

    That will be time very effective, less power consuming, and this MPEG2 ripped signal could be directly broadcasted through multicast on the internet.

    Thanks to HDTV, we won't need HDTV.

  • From extremetech:

    "SDTV is often painful to watch compared to the superior image quality of DVD movies"

    Um...they're basically the same resolution. 480 compared to 525 (and technically you don't get the full 525). They should probably take a look at that.

    -Nick

  • Is a card with hardware MPEG4 encoding/decoding, HDTV CABLE tuner as well as over-the-air, MythTV support (implying linux support). If any of those things are missing it's really not worth it to buy.
  • "You can't just skip the commercials, thats like stealing TV!" --Homer.
  • "Free software is only free if your time has no value..." and free TV is only free if space in your brain has no value.

  • HTDV vs. Broadband (Score:4, Interesting)

    by upsidedown_duck ( 788782 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @12:22PM (#9496799)
    Last night, PBS had another one of those "digital TV is the future" specials ironically mentioning how long and expensive the upgrade has been for them...but how affordable it will be for us all. Now, some choice quotes: "digital HTDV-capable TVs can be had for as little as $700" (!) or "set-top boxes for analog TVs can be had for as little as $600" (!). They are hoping for 85% household penetration within a few years.

    I am still baffled, somewhat, by the digital TV "revolution." I have seen digital cable and its compression artifacts. My luck with DirecTV has been a bit better, with only dropouts during very heavy rain. Regardless, I do not own a digital TV, no longer have DirecTV (it's $400/year, you know), and now have a regular broadcast antenna. The news available on the WWW is better than most TV news and The News Hour on PBS is better than all cable news, which leaves me wondering why I should ever invest in digital TV at all (missing only The News Hour and a very small number of other shows), when I can bypass all of it in favor of getting a better Internet connection and keep using my VCR/DVD player for rented/purchased movies.

  • Off course there's none, but we may ask.

    As a side note, which card do people recommend to watch HDTV with Linux ?

  • Hardware links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Darth Cider ( 320236 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @12:26PM (#9496859)
    I've been researching chipsets for digital TV. Here are my links to current hardware products:

    STMicroelectronics System on Chip [st.com] (2 [industrialnewsroom.com]) Get Linux here [superhlinux.com]
    ATI Xilleon 220 [ati.com] (Products [ati.com])
    Sigma Designs Digital Media Processors [sigmadesigns.com] (Products [hiddenwires.co.uk])
    IBM PowerPC405 STBxx [ibm.com] (Zarlink [zarlink.com] [2 [linuxdevices.com]], Araneo [araneo.com])
    Texas Instruments DM642 DSP [linuxdevices.com] (i3 Mood Box [i3micro.com] , X-Designs Flikit [xdscorp.com] + Softier MediaLinux [softier.com])
    NEC [necel.com] EMMArchitecture2 [mips.com] (Galaxis [galaxis.de]+ LinuxTV [galaxis.de] , PRISMIQ [prismiq.com] + Linux [prismiq.org])
    Equator Technologies BSP-15 boards [equator.com]
    Via CN400 (Mini-ITX Board) [via.com.tw], PM800 and PM880 (w/ HDTV for Pentium 4) [goldfish.org] , ShowShifter HMN [homemedianetworks.com], Soyo Multimedia Ready Motherboard [extrememhz.com] (with TV Tuner, $129.99)
    Toshiba TX System RISC [linuxdevices.com] (MontaVista Linux [mvista.com])
    Windows chipsets:
    Intel 815 [intel.com] VisionPlus terrestrial box [twinhan.com] (Korean OEM)
    AMD Geode [amd.com] (CoCom) [cocom-ia.com]
    ARM [arm.com] (Samsung [samsung.com], etc. [arm.com])
    Digeo X-Stream [digeo.com] (Paul Allen company)

  • HDTV card buyers guide link (Score:3, Informative)

    by j_dot_bomb ( 560211 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @12:28PM (#9496883)
    http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=207262&highlight=wintvhd

    avsforum is great for home theater pc

    I still dont trust ATI. I just bought a 9000 PRO AIW after some good reviews. All their drivers are WHQL certified now. So at least standard video / multiple out stuff dosent cause crashes. But the Tv-on-demand software causes 100% cpu utilization on a 2ghz p4, and often crashes. I saw a whole forum/poll for snapstream where people were buying the Hauppauge 250 or 350 to replace various ATI AIW cards. Like 90% were very happy with the switch (well they just use the AIW as a video card)

  • Bleeding edge tech? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mudcathi ( 584851 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @12:56PM (#9497246) Journal
    From the article: "Known for their "TV Wonder" and "All-In-Wonder" series multimedia cards, ATI is a true pioneer in the industry, being one of the first to bring TV to the PC."

    That's very interesting, given all those Amiga users who were using genlocks, VideoToasters, and whatnot to manipulate & display TV on their monitors back in 1990. I remember using my $35 garage sale genlock on my $150 Amiga 500 to use a live broadcast TV background for my desktop back before Windows had a desktop background!

  • HDTV isnt worth it yet. Here's why (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:31PM (#9499977)
    Most HDTV broadcasts are nothing more than scaled up versions of standard NTSC footage. (
    m not talking about your HDTV line doubling)

    I'm talking about the taping of actual shows in HDTV.

    Most shows that do film in HDTV... They have 1 HDTV camera at best, while the rest are standard NTSC cameras that have their signal scaled up to meet the HDTV standard res. Then they simply claim it as "HDTV" When it is not. Most shows dont even have the HD cameras or editing equiptment. They simply scale it up before sending out the HDTV signal.

    The cost for HDTV is too much for even major broadcasters to justify with the small number of HDTV viewers.

    DTV's signal has become more and more compressed as they add channels. I recently looked at my fathers DTV signal and thought it looked like Reel Video. It was really bad. Its just so compressed so that they can fit their channels in their limited bandwidth.

    Cablevision here claims Digital IO (100$ a month) is HDTV digital cable. When the truth is less than 10 channels are HD. And again you have the problem of shows simply just SCALING UP existing shows, or even NEW shows, claiming their HDTV when they're not.

    HDTV is not worth it yet. Its over priced and the cable companies are out of their fucking mind price wise.

    • Your description of the hardware situation for TV shows is close but a little deceptive. If a show captures in high-quality (think movie-theater film) analog, then they can create a very high-quality digital master which can then obviously be used as the basis for the eventual 1080i or 720p transmission. As another example, modern DVDs are not being taken directly from film to 480p but instead are going from film to high-definition digital master to 480p. Using high-resolution digital cameras only becom

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