Hi all,

I'm a big newbie with a potentialy unrelated question. So please forgive me if I should not be here. If you could tell me where to go I would appreciate it.

My question:
My cable company (Rogers) has now started offering HDTV in a BIG way in my area. Does anyone know if I can use my PC as a recorder to capture a 1080i signal with Dolby Digital audio? If yes, will there be loss?

Curently the only way under the $20K to record HDTV - without the Dolby digital, just Stereo will be a Dual CPU G4 with a Pinnacle CineWave card based on the Hub3 chip.

You can probably record it - again without the Dolby after down converting it to normal TV resolution and then you will get the quality loss, depend on the down convertion and quality of capture card you are using.


Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

Jesus!

That is a lot more difficult than I anticipated. One question. One would only need to down convert it if they didn't have an HDTV ready set, right?

Wrong. The issue is the capture card. It has to support HDTV input from your cable box output.

Another solution is to get one of the new digital recording SAT/Cable receivers. You can only export to S-Video, but you can playback directly from the reciever (and you get cool live pause features as well).

Yes,
You only need to down convert to view on a normal TV. I am not sure is the SAT/Cable recivers have it built in to use with normal TV's as well.

To capture HD you need a capture device - Card or VCR that can capture HD. Off curse you can down convert and use a normal system, but that will not be HD.

Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

I know there is a card out there for this, but I don't remember the company's name. Now that I think about it, I think Hauppauge has one also. I think playback MUST be on the PC doing the recording. ALso, I think both of them require OTA format. What format is the cable company using?

Look on Dejanews for "record" "HDTV", it's in there somewhere.

I thought that the chip on the ATI All-in-Wonder 8500dv was capable of both capturing and displaying HDTV? Here's a quote from the <A HREF="http://www.ati.com/na/pages/faq/aiw_radeon_8500_faq.html" target="_new">ATI AIW8500dv faq</A>.

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that is Decoding and it actually mean that they have a monster Mpg2 decoder.

To capture HDTV you need a monster Encoder.

Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

Ah, I get it. So it can do HDTV-out but not HDTV-in.

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Knowan likes you. Knowan is your friend. Knowan thinks you're great.

about.
HDTV is like TV but with bigger screan resolution.
When TV is 720X480 or 720X576 HDTV is almost double.
So if you have a Mpg2 HD picture it will require double more then double the processing power to Encode/Decode.

Since the data rate needed to ship a HD picture is also more then double there is a big need to compress the data with Mpg2 the logical compression.
From what I understand - What ATI did was making the Mpg2 decoder good enoght to be able to work with Mpg2 pictures larger then the current DVD standard MP@ML (Main Program @ Main Level) and expended it to the HD ranges.

This can be very helpfull if you have a Video Editing system that work native in Mpg2, uses the display card's decoders for better display and you want to edit HD material.

The word here is NATIVE support for the display card. Curently all systems that I know of are using the Video Capture/edit card for display Via Video Hardeware OverLay to the display card.

I wonder if it can display the HD picture on both monitors....


Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

Pennical does have a HD Tuner card that can capture HD TV signals, to my knowledge, the ATI RAdeon cards (Yes All of Them) can support output, buy need a DT tuner to utilize the conversion. Most of these cards will cost about $400.

If it works for you then don't fix it.

Pinnacle have 3 Tuner devices that I know of.
Studio PCTV, PCI and USB and PCTVpro
None of them can play to the monitor, not to mention Capture HDTV material.

Even Pinnacle's e.Media devision T3K board, that is Pinnacle's the PC product flag ship can't capture HDTV, and it's a $6,000USD card that need a 64Bit PCI slot to sit in it.

Don't mix S-VHS input with HDTV. It's not the same.


Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

I don't think you'll be capturing HD to a PC anytime soon....the technology to do that on regular HD sets is still in 1st generation infancy, its spotty at best, and its $1000+ just to get into the game. Your TV Tuner or TV has to support a Firewire or DV out...its a big mess right now...mostly because alot of the movie studios are refusing to play ball and commit to a standard......they basically don't want people to be ABLE to record, say, a HiDef movie broadcast over the air, because then there is no incentive for that person to buy that movie sinc they'll already have a digitally perfect copy.

Of course, then lets talk about how a true 1080i image is double the resolution of a standard DVD, which is already double of what your average Cable TV signal or VHS tape is capable of....

*sigh*

HighDef is coming...but it ain't here yet....

DVD and VHS are capble for exactly the same when coming to resolution and sampling (4:1:1)

it's just that the artifacting of a DVD well done are better, the picture is saved digital so there is no quality loss with time like VHS tape degredation and the audio is much much better. (again when doen correct)


Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

Did a Google search for HDTV recorder and found lotsa stuff. Here's one.

<A HREF="http://www.cellarcinemas.com/cgi-bin/store/HTPC-HDTV1-R.html" target="_new">http://www.cellarcinemas.com/cgi-bin/store/HTPC-HDTV1-R.html</A>

Nice
I wonder what will be the capture quality and how complicated it will be to edit the video after, but at a HDTV TV tuner it sure look good.

There is also the question of after you captured and edited, where will you output the video to...

Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

The Radeon cards that have the DVI output have the ability to place the image on an HDTV, or place the image on a normal Computer Monitor. The picture should be great, no matter what medium you use. Considering that an external DTV tuner will cost you thousands, it appears that placing the card in your computer is a much cheaper solution than buying the external model.

If it works for you then don't fix it.