Post by Skaggs on Jan 10, 2005 10:00:46 GMT -5
I have a CompUSA gift card burning a hole in my pocket and I have been looking at getting a card for my PC to receive HDTV broadcasts OTA. I would like to have the ability to post HD snapshots on this site.
If you already have a HDTV tuner card for your PC, please let us know if it works well or not.
One thing to consider is that the FCC has mandated that all products sold after July 1, 2005 be able to recognize the broadcast flag. So, if you buy before 7/1/05, you will be grandfathered in and be able to record all digital TV transmissions you are able to receive. The text from the FCC's broadcast flag ruling is posted on the FCC website here. But, here's a summary:
Responding to pressure from Hollywood, the FCC has adopted a rule requiring future digital television (DTV) tuners to include "content protection" (aka DRM) technologies. Starting later this year, all makers of HDTV receivers must build their devices to watch for a broadcast "flag" embedded in programs by copyright holders. When it comes to digital recording, it'll be Hollywood's DRM way or the highway. Want to burn that recording digitally to a DVD to save hard drive space? Sorry, the DRM lock-box won't allow it. How about sending it over your home network to another TV? Not unless you rip out your existing network and replace it with DRMd routers. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting a high definition digital signal, doesn't it?
The good news is this mandate doesn't take effect for another year. We have until July 1, 2005, to buy, build, and sell fully-capable, non-flag-compliant HDTV receivers. Any receivers built now will "remain functional under a flag regime, allowing consumers to continue their use without the need for new or additional equipment." Any devices made this year can be re-sold in the future.
Here's some reviews of the most popular choices:
ATI Brings Digital TV to Your PC
HDTV Wonder snags free high-definition transmissions for budget viewing.
Alan Stafford, PC World
Friday, August 13, 2004
Hesitant to drop thousands on a new television just to get high-definition broadcasts? Who could blame you, what with the ongoing confusion about whether you can get HD, how many channels you can get, and whether you can record it. But here's a stopgap: ATI's HDTV Wonder, a $199 PCI card that brings over-the-air HDTV to your computer.
Besides receiving both analog and free digital TV, the HDTV Wonder has digital video recorder functions, so you can watch, pause, and record these transmissions, and save them to your system's hard drive, to CD, or to DVD. Your PC must have a DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, which will cost at least an additional $150 if you don't already have one.
The HDTV Wonder, released this summer, comes with some extras. Included are a remote control for Media Center-like PCs that operate in the living room; a small HDTV antenna (usually around $40 when sold separately); and a breakout box to import video from an analog camcorder or VCR. Thankfully, almost any PC monitor has sufficient resolution to do HD broadcasts justice.
The antenna helps determine whether you can get over-the-air HD. Broadcasters have been required by the FCC since May 2002 to transmit digital signals in addition to the analog ones they've been pushing since the dawn of television. But digital signals must overcome the same problems as the old analog ones: terrain and distance.
Hands-On HDTV
I tested the HDTV Wonder in two locations: PC World's downtown San Francisco offices and my home in a Bay Area suburb. In both places, when I could receive the HD broadcast, the shows looked fantastic. Shows like Las Vegas and Crossing Jordan had such stunning clarity that you wanted to watch just to marvel at the display.
However, when I tried the HDTV Wonder at my hilly neighborhood home, the device could receive just seven channels--and three were variations of the same NBC affiliate. Three others were Spanish-language stations, and the last was a local independent channel; none of those last four broadcast HD content. I even connected the card to an old UHF antenna on the top of my house--it didn't help.
Even when I could get a strong signal, as reported by an included utility, the video and audio occasionally hesitated, and sometimes only the audio cut out.
I used a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 system with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics card, which should have had plenty of horsepower for the job. However, running the application severely taxed my PC's resources. ATI specifies a 1.3-GHz Celeron as the minimum configuration; based on my experience, I think that's stretching. You'll do better to have more CPU power.
Location Counts
Then I tried the card in our Test Center, which is within eyesight of Sutro Tower, a structure that hosts antennas for most of the city's network television affiliates. A new 3.6-GHz Pentium 4 system with a PCI Express graphics card was the test bed; with the antenna perched on a windowsill, the HDTV Wonder brought in 20 stations--again with some duplicates, but this time the list included most of the major networks. And the application barely strained the PC's resources. The product's effectiveness may vary with your location, especially your proximity to transmissions.
The device has a second RF port, so you can connect a cable-TV input. However, you must shut down the digital TV application and start up a separate one for cable (and no, you can't get HD that way, because the device can't descramble the transmission). The applications worked identically except that, on my PC, the application for analog cable broadcasts switched channels much more quickly and suffered no performance hiccups. But then, the reception didn't make me want to call friends and neighbors over for a party, as the HD ones did.
With either application you can easily record and time-shift broadcasts--and for HD broadcasts, that capability is very rare, even for over-the-air broadcasts. The functions are easy to set up and use.
The most important factors that will determine whether the HDTV Wonder will work for you are where you live and how powerful your PC is. Unfortunately, you won't be able to answer those questions for yourself without actually buying the product. If it turns out you can't watch much HD with the HDTV Wonder, at least you can watch cable TV, even if it isn't quite as wonderful to look at.
pcHDTV (Linux only)
The pcHDTV™ HD-3000 Hi Definition Television Card is the next generation digital television card to be produced specially for the Linux video hobbyist market. Shipped with the open source multimedia player, Xine, the card provides a ATSC stream to the Xine mpeg2 decoder for playback and can be used with MythTV. Priced at only $189.89. Volume discounts start on just 2 cards saving $4.89 ea. and $9.89 on 5 or more cards
The HD-3000 Hi Definition Television PCI Card is an universal PCI 2.2 compliant card. The card receives NTSC and ATSC Signals and converts them to digital streams which are transported across the PCI bus. Display and MPEG2 decoding are done on the host computer in software and displayed on the computers monitor. The pcHDTV Hi Definition PCI card is based on Oren Semiconductor's ATSC receiver chip and Conexant's CX23883 NTSC receiver chip providing excellent HD and SD reception.
Key Features
Cost effective ATSC/NTSC TV reception card
Open source drivers and player
All-software HDTV decoder
Supports all 18 ATSC compliant digital formats
Supports NTSC Analog Television
Upto 4 cards supported in a single system for recording and display of multiple programs.
Compatible with the HD-2000 card.
Digital Video Recording, Time Shifting and Playback
Accelerated HDTV support with nVidia video cards.
Accelerated IDCT and Motion Compensation with GeForce4 Mx cards
Accelerated Motion Compensation with GeForce4 TI cards
Selectable Weave or One Field de-interlacing for interlaced formats
Command line support for station scanning
Command line support for station signal strength
Command line support for recording.
Input/output
One RF TV antenna coaxal reception port
One SVIDEO input port
One composite video and sound port
One stereo connection jack to sound card for analog TV
System Requirements
IntelR PentiumR 1200Mhz or higher
Linux Red Hat Linux 9.0 Fedora core 1 and 2
Sound card.
256 MB RAM or higher
CD ROM Drive
One available PCI slot Currently the HD-3000 is NOT supported in Windows 98T, Windows 2000T or Windows XPT however Windows drivers are include for those wishing to experiment with the card in Microsoft Windows.
Card Specifications
2, 4, 8 and 16-VSB capable hardware, Currently only 8-VSB is supported.
4" high by 5" wide profile
19.4Mbps 8-VSB (ATSC) transfer rate
The product includes source code for xine-hd and modified xine player for
the HD-3000 and the HD-3000 modified V4L video driver both under the GPL.
More reviews are available here, but I haven't had the time to read & post them yet.
If you already have a HDTV tuner card for your PC, please let us know if it works well or not.
One thing to consider is that the FCC has mandated that all products sold after July 1, 2005 be able to recognize the broadcast flag. So, if you buy before 7/1/05, you will be grandfathered in and be able to record all digital TV transmissions you are able to receive. The text from the FCC's broadcast flag ruling is posted on the FCC website here. But, here's a summary:
Responding to pressure from Hollywood, the FCC has adopted a rule requiring future digital television (DTV) tuners to include "content protection" (aka DRM) technologies. Starting later this year, all makers of HDTV receivers must build their devices to watch for a broadcast "flag" embedded in programs by copyright holders. When it comes to digital recording, it'll be Hollywood's DRM way or the highway. Want to burn that recording digitally to a DVD to save hard drive space? Sorry, the DRM lock-box won't allow it. How about sending it over your home network to another TV? Not unless you rip out your existing network and replace it with DRMd routers. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting a high definition digital signal, doesn't it?
The good news is this mandate doesn't take effect for another year. We have until July 1, 2005, to buy, build, and sell fully-capable, non-flag-compliant HDTV receivers. Any receivers built now will "remain functional under a flag regime, allowing consumers to continue their use without the need for new or additional equipment." Any devices made this year can be re-sold in the future.
Here's some reviews of the most popular choices:
ATI Brings Digital TV to Your PC
HDTV Wonder snags free high-definition transmissions for budget viewing.
Alan Stafford, PC World
Friday, August 13, 2004
Hesitant to drop thousands on a new television just to get high-definition broadcasts? Who could blame you, what with the ongoing confusion about whether you can get HD, how many channels you can get, and whether you can record it. But here's a stopgap: ATI's HDTV Wonder, a $199 PCI card that brings over-the-air HDTV to your computer.
Besides receiving both analog and free digital TV, the HDTV Wonder has digital video recorder functions, so you can watch, pause, and record these transmissions, and save them to your system's hard drive, to CD, or to DVD. Your PC must have a DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, which will cost at least an additional $150 if you don't already have one.
The HDTV Wonder, released this summer, comes with some extras. Included are a remote control for Media Center-like PCs that operate in the living room; a small HDTV antenna (usually around $40 when sold separately); and a breakout box to import video from an analog camcorder or VCR. Thankfully, almost any PC monitor has sufficient resolution to do HD broadcasts justice.
The antenna helps determine whether you can get over-the-air HD. Broadcasters have been required by the FCC since May 2002 to transmit digital signals in addition to the analog ones they've been pushing since the dawn of television. But digital signals must overcome the same problems as the old analog ones: terrain and distance.
Hands-On HDTV
I tested the HDTV Wonder in two locations: PC World's downtown San Francisco offices and my home in a Bay Area suburb. In both places, when I could receive the HD broadcast, the shows looked fantastic. Shows like Las Vegas and Crossing Jordan had such stunning clarity that you wanted to watch just to marvel at the display.
However, when I tried the HDTV Wonder at my hilly neighborhood home, the device could receive just seven channels--and three were variations of the same NBC affiliate. Three others were Spanish-language stations, and the last was a local independent channel; none of those last four broadcast HD content. I even connected the card to an old UHF antenna on the top of my house--it didn't help.
Even when I could get a strong signal, as reported by an included utility, the video and audio occasionally hesitated, and sometimes only the audio cut out.
I used a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 system with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics card, which should have had plenty of horsepower for the job. However, running the application severely taxed my PC's resources. ATI specifies a 1.3-GHz Celeron as the minimum configuration; based on my experience, I think that's stretching. You'll do better to have more CPU power.
Location Counts
Then I tried the card in our Test Center, which is within eyesight of Sutro Tower, a structure that hosts antennas for most of the city's network television affiliates. A new 3.6-GHz Pentium 4 system with a PCI Express graphics card was the test bed; with the antenna perched on a windowsill, the HDTV Wonder brought in 20 stations--again with some duplicates, but this time the list included most of the major networks. And the application barely strained the PC's resources. The product's effectiveness may vary with your location, especially your proximity to transmissions.
The device has a second RF port, so you can connect a cable-TV input. However, you must shut down the digital TV application and start up a separate one for cable (and no, you can't get HD that way, because the device can't descramble the transmission). The applications worked identically except that, on my PC, the application for analog cable broadcasts switched channels much more quickly and suffered no performance hiccups. But then, the reception didn't make me want to call friends and neighbors over for a party, as the HD ones did.
With either application you can easily record and time-shift broadcasts--and for HD broadcasts, that capability is very rare, even for over-the-air broadcasts. The functions are easy to set up and use.
The most important factors that will determine whether the HDTV Wonder will work for you are where you live and how powerful your PC is. Unfortunately, you won't be able to answer those questions for yourself without actually buying the product. If it turns out you can't watch much HD with the HDTV Wonder, at least you can watch cable TV, even if it isn't quite as wonderful to look at.
pcHDTV (Linux only)
The pcHDTV™ HD-3000 Hi Definition Television Card is the next generation digital television card to be produced specially for the Linux video hobbyist market. Shipped with the open source multimedia player, Xine, the card provides a ATSC stream to the Xine mpeg2 decoder for playback and can be used with MythTV. Priced at only $189.89. Volume discounts start on just 2 cards saving $4.89 ea. and $9.89 on 5 or more cards
The HD-3000 Hi Definition Television PCI Card is an universal PCI 2.2 compliant card. The card receives NTSC and ATSC Signals and converts them to digital streams which are transported across the PCI bus. Display and MPEG2 decoding are done on the host computer in software and displayed on the computers monitor. The pcHDTV Hi Definition PCI card is based on Oren Semiconductor's ATSC receiver chip and Conexant's CX23883 NTSC receiver chip providing excellent HD and SD reception.
Key Features
Cost effective ATSC/NTSC TV reception card
Open source drivers and player
All-software HDTV decoder
Supports all 18 ATSC compliant digital formats
Supports NTSC Analog Television
Upto 4 cards supported in a single system for recording and display of multiple programs.
Compatible with the HD-2000 card.
Digital Video Recording, Time Shifting and Playback
Accelerated HDTV support with nVidia video cards.
Accelerated IDCT and Motion Compensation with GeForce4 Mx cards
Accelerated Motion Compensation with GeForce4 TI cards
Selectable Weave or One Field de-interlacing for interlaced formats
Command line support for station scanning
Command line support for station signal strength
Command line support for recording.
Input/output
One RF TV antenna coaxal reception port
One SVIDEO input port
One composite video and sound port
One stereo connection jack to sound card for analog TV
System Requirements
IntelR PentiumR 1200Mhz or higher
Linux Red Hat Linux 9.0 Fedora core 1 and 2
Sound card.
256 MB RAM or higher
CD ROM Drive
One available PCI slot Currently the HD-3000 is NOT supported in Windows 98T, Windows 2000T or Windows XPT however Windows drivers are include for those wishing to experiment with the card in Microsoft Windows.
Card Specifications
2, 4, 8 and 16-VSB capable hardware, Currently only 8-VSB is supported.
4" high by 5" wide profile
19.4Mbps 8-VSB (ATSC) transfer rate
The product includes source code for xine-hd and modified xine player for
the HD-3000 and the HD-3000 modified V4L video driver both under the GPL.
More reviews are available here, but I haven't had the time to read & post them yet.