Sorry to thread jack but...
The Hauppauge HD PVR looks awesome! But it seams as though they really could care less about Mac OS X
dumb product idea given the sheer notion of video editing and someone instantly pictures glowing apples and bad ass silver Mac Pro workstations...From what I gathered you have to pay for third party software...I just want to know if this is realistic to rely on third party software. Video/TV capture has been a nightmare for me...if I can get some cheapo card working its usually terrible quality and craps out sooner than later. 1080i is fine for me...you can always deinterlace or just use 720p. It seams to have a SPDIF connector which sounds nice, does it encode dolby pro logic at least? I'd kill for 6 channel discrete but I don't think SPDIF has the right protocols for that.
It's strange that sometimes I'll grab it off newsgroup and it's 1080p or at least advertised as such but my provider says no one is providing 1080p only 1080i.
No one is broadcasting 1080p over terrestrial satelite or cable services except for very limited channels usually for movies on demand. TV providers really beat the bit rate to hell to get it to fit down the "tube" enough and if they went to 1080p they would either have to make more bandwidth (so launching more sate lights, giving everyone new boxes, etc.) or compress 1080p to the already terribly low rates for 720p. Believe me, compressing 1080p is really nasty no matter what. Unless everyone magically grows fiberoptic backhaul I really don't see an advantage to 1080p over cable/dish. I'm content with my TV's 720p/1080i....in fact I usually watch 720p over 1080i if I'm watching dish. I do think, however, that they should broadcast 1080p for special events like the Superbowl, presidential addresses, etc. I have a lossless copy of the last Super Bowl in 720p....first time I ever bitched and moaned about resolution being to low!