Beyond TV with Satellite HDTV

[arthur-b]

Here is a quick question - will Beyond TV work with a HDTV signal. I really like how this software has worked so far with my standard cable. However I recently purchased a BIG screen (57") tv and standard TV doesn't really look as good as it could. I am considering getting a HDTV signal - probably satellite (more channels / options). I am just curious if Beyond TV is compatible with this format and if so what new hardware would I require in the PC. My current configuration is a P4 - 2.1GHz, 80 GB HD, 512 Meg Ram, Hauppauge 350 (input), Radeon 9200 (output to TV - Svideo), Toshiba 57HX84.

If Beyond TV isn't currently able to deal with this HDTV signal - is it going to be implemented soon - HDTV is where it is at from what I can SEE. Is there any form of serial connection that could drive the satellite receiver instead of an IR mimic of original remote?


Arthur

[jkoon]

At the current time BTV does not support any HDTV tuners.

[btvbuddy]

I read somewhere that the plan is to release blue-ray HD standalone recorders so users can record the HDTV signals. The HD recorders are going to be very expensive and the media is very expensive (think it's 20 or 30GB media) Good luck setting this up!

[RobertH]

unfortunatly since most satelite / cable providers only output HD channels using Component (PrPbY) or DVI your almost SOL because I have yet to see an HD capture card that can capture from either source, and doing so from component is only capturing an analog signal so that would require some BEEFY hardware to do it. Capture from DVI on the other hand is digital but would require a good deal of disk space for capture. But still your limited because all the current HD tuner devices only offer OTA antenna broadcast or simple non-encrypted QAM support, most cable providers however have all their QAM channels encrypted to prevent cable theft.

Now once settop receivers start to have firewire output for captureing to DVHS / settop DVD / BlueRay recorders that will end up being a different story because you can simply sample from the firewire interface with drivers, but then you end up dealing with the lovely broadcast flag and the broadcasters telling you what you can and cant record. Dont you just love DRM.

[devwild]

The motorola HD boxes provided by comcast support firewire output, which has been used successfully on both macs and PCs for capturing the .ts transport stream directly, which can be played back with VLC. Since it's just writing an mpeg stream, it isn't a strain on your computer.

It would be great to see some basic support for this type of capture in BTV (it's actually behaving like a DVHS device, so that is what the support would be for). Unlikely, but I know I would make use of it . It would even cause me to seriously considering ordering a premium channel from comcast, because I could make HD recordings of movies and enjoy them at lesiure -- better than renting DVDs!

The problem is of course that eventually these transport streams are going to be encoded...

dev*