HDTV & HTPC's, ABCDEFG

Greetings, fellow like-minded individuals who are game enthusiasts and therefore usually electronics geeks in general. I realize that this is Gamers With Jobs, but I figure people in here dig on other electronic toys as well and this is the "Everything Else" forum.

What harkens from the near horizon? Why, HDTV, of course! The promised holy grail of digital entertainment, the Next Big Thing(TM)! Being the quasi- "Early-Adopter" that I am, I naturally want to acquire this new technology as soon as possible.

Currently, I am an avid user of ReplayTV, and like most anyone who owns a PVR, I am hooked on it. But, soft! Such glorious technology is incompatible with the 16x9, 1080i goodness that is an HD broadcast. And so you see my dilemma. Basically, Get HDTV = Lose ReplayTV.

Luckily, I'm a computer dork. And the whole Home Theater PC (HTPC) movement is hitting quite a stride. New designer cases like ones produced by Shuttle and MSI, coupled with faster, cheaper, and better components allow for a powerful PC as the central hub to the home entertainment center. HDTV video capture cards are popping up, and PC-based PVR software companies like SageTV Promise HDTV support in the near future.

I'd like to see what people here think/know about HD HTPC's (I'll call them HDPC's... clever, eh?), and discuss what I've seen in an attempt to gather enough knowledge to make a successful implementation myself.

If you have no interest in this, read no further. Sorry for wasting your time, a dollar is in the mail.

The major hurdle I see coming is this:
Current HD capture cards contain their own tuner module, which is only capable of receiving a compressed over-the-air (OTA) signal, and saving that capture to the HDD before outputting to the video device. Swell. My problem is, I plan on subscribing to DirecTV's HD package and bypassing the OTA signals entirely. After all, that's the future; who watches their current standard-definition programs on an antenna anymore? Anyway, these cards don't seem cabable of receiving an uncompressed, tv-ready signal (such as one from DirecTV or a HD Cable box) and storing that stream on an HDD. Does anyone know much about this? I've been reading a lot on AVSForum of course, but there's so much information there and so many acronyms that it boggles the mind of a noob like me.

OK, done for now; anyone care to comment?

Finding a prebuilt HTPC is the way to go if you want HDTV. If there is no HDTV involved, MythTV is the best. It will do all of Tivo''s features, and commercial skipping and there are addons to convert to other file formats such as DivX in avi or a VCD file. It also plays DVDs and will soon decrypt and convert them to whatever file type you want. An emulator frontend, music player, generic video player which will play any file format mplayer supports (everything), onscreen weather module, and a slideshow/image viewer.

So that''s all I really know about HTPCs, simply because my interest is to have my own box and control what goes on/off it and use all the features an HTPC can do. Of course, HDTV is coming on Linux, but it''ll take a while, for MythTV anyway. I think at this point it''s just best to stick with a prebuilt system that has HDTV support.

Have you looked into Tivo? I was talking to a friend the other day and he said Tivo works with HDTV.

I''ve definitely done my research on MythTV, and I''ve been kinda scared of it for a couple reasons:
[list]
[*]It runs on linux and requires linux-compatible hardware.
[*]I''m scared of linux because I don''t know doo-doo about it.
[*]It''s open-source freeware, and its development cycle is slower than its commercial counterparts. Therefore, HDTV support is farther off.
[/list:u:16daa23337]

Products like Snapstream and Sage seem to be worth the (small) price to me.

"Ulairi" wrote:

Have you looked into Tivo? I was talking to a friend the other day and he said Tivo works with HDTV.

I have looked into DirecTiVo especially, but have a couple problems with that as well. First, TiVo *will* support HDTV; I don''t think it does yet. Definitely not in the DirecTiVo combo. Also, TiVo is nice and all but gives little control to the end user --no backing up files to CD/DVD, etc. Also, I''d like to escape monthly service fees of $12.00 when Sage, Snapstream, MythTV and others provide that all for free.

Pyro, when you said ""Finding a prebuilt HTPC is the way to go if you want HDTV,"" what did you mean? You mean like TiVo?

Tivo cannot offer HD yet, but with the penetration it has in the DirecTV market I don''t think it will be long. If you don''t want to the $13 a month fee, you can buy a lifetime subscription for like $250. That plus the cost of the Tivo is still less than a HTPC. As far as the CD/DVD backup thing, I''ve never really needed it, but you could always run the output to one of the DVD burner set-tops that Philips/Panasonic/etc... offer.

"baggachipz" wrote:

I''ve definitely done my research on MythTV, and I''ve been kinda scared of it for a couple reasons:
[list]
[*]It runs on linux and requires linux-compatible hardware.
[*]I''m scared of linux because I don''t know doo-doo about it.
[*]It''s open-source freeware, and its development cycle is slower than its commercial counterparts. Therefore, HDTV support is farther off.
[/list:u:159e125fe8]

Hey cool a list thing, I didn''t know you could do that.

At any rate I agree with the second one, if you don''t know Linux you can still run a MythTV box but it''s not to the point where it will do everything you want it to without some linux knowledge. They seem bound and determined to get it there though, bundling in things like LIRC (remote controls) and allowing everything to be run through a GUI. Right now you can probably install Red Hat, download and double click to install MythTV and be good to go. You can''t setup things like remote controls, commercial skipping or background conversion of files that way though.

The first is suprisingly not much of a concern, almost every non-HDTV capture card out there works in linux, even the ones with MPEG2 encoding in hardware. Almost all of them use the exact same chipset so it''s no problem.

I''d have to disagree on the third, however. Most commercial HTPCs have been in development for at least a couple of years. MythTV started development almost exactly a year ago and now has stable features that are cutting edge in almost any other PVR. It also has several features Tivo and Replay just can''t do such as converting to standard formats and NES,SNES and Mame emulator frontends. MythTV has developed more quickly than almost any software project I have ever seen and it''s really rather amazing. OSS software really tends to develop about as fast as commercial software, but the difference is you see it happen with OSS while with commercial software they just don''t let you see it for two years then go ""Oh hey, here''s the complete program"".

The HDTV support isn''t really a problem with MythTV anyway, but with the HDTV card companies releasing drivers or specs for the cards, which I think the maker of the HDTV chipsets are keeping them from doing. The reason there is no HDTV support on Linux is a political thing, probably having to do with the media conglomorates trying to enforce copy protection on HDTV, such as not allowing manufacturers to bypass the copy protection flag that is voulantary on HDTV broadcasts. The card manufacturers had to sign an NDA just to be allowed to use the HDTV chipset.

Pyro, when you said ""Finding a prebuilt HTPC is the way to go if you want HDTV,"" what did you mean? You mean like TiVo?

Yes, because of what I said about HDTV drivers above, your best bet right now is just getting something off the shelf that is guaranteed to be HDTV compatible. It may not have all the features you want, but it will work which is more than I can say for any Linux or Windows based PVR trying to use HDTV right now.

GAH, ""Copy Protection"" is ruining everything good about the digital age. I wanna make my own HD PVR, and I want it now! Waaaahhh! This whole concept seems so easy in theory, but then again, Communism works in theory...

"baggachipz" wrote:

GAH, ""Copy Protection"" is ruining everything good about the digital age. I wanna make my own HD PVR, and I want it now! Waaaahhh! This whole concept seems so easy in theory, but then again, Communism works in theory...

While I agree with you, really it''s not copy protection''s fault. Copy protection is perfectly enforced copyright. It''s the same thing though, sounds fine in theory but when you start practicing it you begin to see major problems with the whole thing. I wish they''d just leave us the f*ck alone and let us run our own goddamn culture instead of trying to control the whole thing. Ah I''ll stop now I can rant about copyright and copy protection all night.