ATI Announces HDTV Wonder

[wetdagger]

Thought this might interest some of you. I wonder if it will have a hardware encoder or not.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...94&newsLang=en

wd

[justinault]

"ATI is simply unrivaled in the analog PC TV space," said Godfrey Cheng, Director of Marketing, Multimedia Products, ATI Technologies Inc.

Um, ya, that's why PVR-250's are jumping off the shelves everywhere and BTV and other similar apps are growing in popularity, I'm sure of it!

[Brett]

Originally posted by wetdagger
Thought this might interest some of you. I wonder if it will have a hardware encoder or not.

Not to pick fun at you or anything, but why exactly would need to encode a digital stream?

-Brett

[wetdagger]

I'm sorry, kind of don't get how encoding works. So I guess the signal would not have to be encoded, huh?

Do you think this would be a good pickup for a BTV setup?

wd

[dfisk]

Well, you don't need an encoder, since the HDTV transport stream is already compressed in MPEG2. However, since the bit rate amounts to around 8GB/hour, you might want hardware support of re-encoding to a lower rate, but I wouldn't bet on it being there.

Dave

[wetdagger]

Originally posted by dfisk
Well, you don't need an encoder, since the HDTV transport stream is already compressed in MPEG2. However, since the bit rate amounts to around 8GB/hour, you might want hardware support of re-encoding to a lower rate, but I wouldn't bet on it being there.

Dave

Thanks Dave, I was kind of worried that the rate would amount to a high data size. I guess for HDTV it would be alright, but for analog streams, I would hope that this would have a hardware encoder.

hehe, I guess that's where the hardware encoder would be needed RadioActive.

wd

[crush157]

Originally posted by dfisk
However, since the bit rate amounts to around 8GB/hour, you might want hardware support of re-encoding to a lower rate, but I wouldn't bet on it being there.

Dave

Thats where programs like DVDShrink come in. It can reduce the size to be more acceptable.

[Brett]

Personally if I were going to buy a digital tuner card, I would want that takes a digital cable signal, and has an onboard WMV or DIVX transcoder, so that the final output would be rather good quality but a managable size as well. With that setup you could have either compressed versions of your shows @ 0% cpu or pure digital mpegs of your shows. Plus you would not need to hassle with ugly STB.

-Brett

[wetdagger]

I agree, I would hope that the card would be able to do some compressing on the fly. I wouldn't want it to be a separate process.

wd

[noodleNT]

without having to purchase an expensive TV that could cost more than $2,000

DAMNIT!!!

I just bought one!!!!

Hehe.... I don't see ATI replacing this new Sony Aquos any time soon.

[Cayars]

Originally posted by wetdagger
I agree, I would hope that the card would be able to do some compressing on the fly. I wouldn't want it to be a separate process.

wd

Not me. I don't see the point in doing this. If you want to transcode the HDTV signal down to something smaller you might as well not even bother with HD in the first place. The easiest upgrade to take advantage of HD is another 250GB drive.

Problem solved.

[wetdagger]

I think for archival puposes, even a 250 GB drive would get eaten up quickly. For shows that I don't really care about that come in HDTV but I would liked recorded, that would be a costly price (8GB/hour). For shows I like, yeah, definately leave the stream alone and have a large drive.

Has anyone used Hauppauge's HDTV tuner?

wd

[SHS]

The low as in round 8GB per hour but it depend on the Video bitrate which they can be as low 12MBit/sec to high 22MBit/sec it really depend on broadcaster.
Sorry but program like DVDShrink will not work in this case if want work with stand alone DVD player which can take up 9.8MBit/sec at most unless it new HDTV stand alone DVD player but then you need get at less DVD-9 disc in order fit one hour other then that you need re-encode it.
I don't think we see anything coming in tell late 2005 to 2007 time frame.
Let not for get that dran Broadcaster Flag that going happing soon as July/2005 get here.

[Eric3a]

HDTV is still way too much in its infancy for me to bother. Honestly I don't see much wrong with the quality of the pic I have now that I would spend any significant amount of money to get HD.

Plus it's confusing as hell (all those silly abbreviations 780i???).

Confusing and expensive: I won't be an early adopter of this tech.

My bet is by the time HDTV makes sense for the masses CPU power and HDD will have grown enough to take care of it with a run of the mill computer. "Another 250GB" won't be expensive then. Might even be a small drive.

There is so little content that I like on TV (hence me handpicking it with BTV's help) and even less good content in HDTV that It's going to take a while to filter down to what I like.
Plus what's the point of watching an old WWI documentary in HDTV?

At some point, barring FCC silly rules in the USA or equivalent in other countries, HDTV can make sense and then will logically integrate with BTV type programs.

Meanwhile, my hopes are that Snapstream won't put too much effort too early in HDTV... Are they even thinking about it?

The second mouse gets the cheese
Eric

[Brett]

I agree with Eric, I don't have a problem with my current picture, and feel bullied by the FCC to upgrading. Why they care so much is beyond me...its easy to use televisions today: plug in the coax and wola! you have cable. If the FCC had its way not a single television in my house will work without a ugly STB controlling it, which I think is absolutely ridiculous. Personally I just do not see that deadline of I think 2006 having an effect at all, you can't make perfectly working technology obsolete like the FCC wishes it could do.

Perhaps this is wrong, like Eric said its extremely confusing, and if I am wrong by all means point it out.

-Brett