Apple HDTV Tuner?

[GregA]

Thanks for the input. I tried hooking up the display directly, as the receiver has DVI out. Unfortunately in this case, the display is an Apple Cinema (previous version with plastic frame) and I think it's not possible to use it as a TV (same reason why it can't be used as a screen with a Xbox?).

I ended up ordering the AlchemyTV DVR PCI card. Haven't installed it yet, but hopefully it will work decently.

I don't have info on the old Apple Cinema display, or on your receiver... so I'm not the person to ask.

I still see no reason why it wouldn't work if you have DVI out - may need to fine tune some settings. However, this thread here is pretty old so this is probably not the place to ask. Best to start a new question, or ask on the Apple support forums perhaps? Good luck!

 

[csimon2]

Well, for one, unless he is using a ADC to DVI converter box, its not physically possible to connect the receiver to a previous gen Apple Cinema Display. Second, the quality should be very good on viewing and capturing. Because the signal of Dish Network doesn't get nearly as filtered and routed as a local cable company's, there is already a lot less noise in the image. And with less noise, connecting to the receiver with SVideo should be very nice. You should get some good detail and definition with the setup, much more so than if you use the composite input. Obviously, the signal won't be as good as the original or if you had a Component analog input device, but it should certainly suffice.

 

[madforrit]

Well, for one, unless he is using a ADC to DVI converter box, its not physically possible to connect the receiver to a previous gen Apple Cinema Display. Second, the quality should be very good on viewing and capturing. Because the signal of Dish Network doesn't get nearly as filtered and routed as a local cable company's, there is already a lot less noise in the image. And with less noise, connecting to the receiver with SVideo should be very nice. You should get some good detail and definition with the setup, much more so than if you use the composite input. Obviously, the signal won't be as good as the original or if you had a Component analog input device, but it should certainly suffice.

I do have an ADC to DVI box, but when connected, nothing gets output to the display and the power button just blinks three times occasionally. I was guessing this was the same reason people have mentioned you can't use these displays as screens when outputting a NTSC signal (e.g. when connecting a gaming console via DVI).
Will update when I get the card installed! Thanks for your comments everyone.

 

[RealDeal]

Hear Samsung kit great

Check out Sears. I got a really nice Samsung TX-P3064W on sale for $720. Ask them when it goes on sale again to give you a call. It comes with DVI input.

checking reviews - the Samsung 15"/ 17" flatscreens great bang- per- buck (for my Mini).

Will keep eye's peeled- thx-

 

[GFLPraxis]

There are about four different HDTV tuner cards for the PC, but none avalible for the Mac.

Unfortunately, since the PCI buses of most PCs can't handle the full uncompressed HDTV sugnal, it has to output it through the card, using the video card as a pass through and the output is only VGA so you have to buy a $400 adapter to get it to work with an Apple display.

On a lighter note, the HDTV cards for the PC compress the signal using hardware down tp 19.2MB/s so it fits nicely into the bandwith of FW400 with plenty of room to spare in FW800.

But Apple has PCI-X. So what if the PC's can't handle the uncompressed HDTV signal? Sucks to be them.

 

[weldon]

But Apple has PCI-X. So what if the PC's can't handle the uncompressed HDTV signal? Sucks to be them.

Nobody can handle uncompressed HDTV on consumer equipment. Uncompressed ATSC is huge, something like 1.5 Gigabits/sec.

There's a lot of misinformation in the post you quoted. HDTV cards don't compress the signal - they are essentially tuners that allow you to receive the already compressed signal that is being sent over the air with ATSC or over cable with QAM. Once the signal is decompressed, it's too big to move over PCI. The cards work by decompressing and sending the analog or digital uncompressed data over a high-bandwidth/high-speed connection like component cables on the analog side or DVI/HDMI on the digital side.

 

[csimon2]

Note that HDTV and HD are different. HDTV is currently just MPEG-2 HD at 1080i and 720p. Almost any computer of the last three years can at least capture a HDTV signal as it is only about 19-26mbps/sec (2.375-3.25MB/sec). This is less than DV25's data rate BTW (3.4MB/s). But HD uncompressed, which is different and has nothing to do with TV broadcast rates, can be 1080i, 1080p, or 720p, and the rates of uncompressed can be anywhere from 130-180MB/sec. Obviously, it would take quite a disk array to successfully capture this without dropping frames.

 

[rikers_mailbox]

Note that HDTV and HD are different. HDTV is currently just MPEG-2 HD at 1080i and 720p. Almost any computer of the last three years can at least capture a HDTV signal as it is only about 19-26mbps/sec (2.375-3.25MB/sec). This is less than DV25's data rate BTW (3.4MB/s). But HD uncompressed, which is different and has nothing to do with TV broadcast rates, can be 1080i, 1080p, or 720p, and the rates of uncompressed can be anywhere from 130-180MB/sec. Obviously, it would take quite a disk array to successfully capture this without dropping frames.

How does H.264 fit into all of this? Does it allow for the capture of near-HD quality video at a fraction of the bit rate?

It seems Apple is making a big deal out of Tiger and H.264. . is there something up their sleeve?

 

[gopher]

How does H.264 fit into all of this? Does it allow for the capture of near-HD quality video at a fraction of the bit rate?

It seems Apple is making a big deal out of Tiger and H.264. . is there something up their sleeve?

Yes it is Steve Jobs announcement at Macworld San Francisco 2005. "2005 will be the year of HD." H.264 provides real as HD video quality over Quicktime streaming. Quicktime 7, which will be part of Tiger will offer H.264 as a standard, and the new iChat will have it too in Tiger.

 

[rikers_mailbox]

Yes it is Steve Jobs announcement at Macworld San Francisco 2005. "2005 will be the year of HD." H.264 provides real as HD video quality over Quicktime streaming. Quicktime 7, which will be part of Tiger will offer H.264 as a standard, and the new iChat will have it too in Tiger.

hmm. . makes me wonder what they'll do with the tight integration of H.264. Perhaps there is truth in HD receiver/recorder rumors?

 

[weldon]

How does H.264 fit into all of this? Does it allow for the capture of near-HD quality video at a fraction of the bit rate?

It seems Apple is making a big deal out of Tiger and H.264. . is there something up their sleeve?

It really doesn't mean anything for HD capture because we don't have consumer cards capable of analog HD capture. Digital sources, either broadcast or packaged media, are already compressed. Broadcast HD is already compressed MPEG-2 at anywhere from 9 to 15Mbps. Reencoding to MPEG-4 AVC could save space by keeping similar quality at a lower bitrate, but this will introduce transcoding artifacts. This is similar to what happens if you take a 192kbps MP3 and reencode to 128kbps AAC. Not a good idea.

Packaged media is going to be 12-15Mbps VC-1 or H.264 (MPEG-4) and this is also compressed so no need to "capture" to H.264 on your Mac.

The reason that H.264 is a big deal on Tiger is threefold...

1) The more efficient codec allows for better videoconferencing at similar or lower bitrates. This requires more CPU to encode and decode, but Macs are fast enough to handle it now.

2) H.264 AVC HP is one of the two mandatory codecs for HD packaged media (eg, HD-DVD and Blu-ray). Strong support for H.264 decoding could (in theory) make the Mac a great platform to playback HD media. We still need VC-1 though to make sure those Blu-Ray drives in future Macs (based on my speculation that Apple joined the Blu-Ray association to include drives in Macs) will play all HD media.

3) H.264 support in Tiger means that future versions of iMovie, FCP Express, FCP, etc. should have strong support for fast encoding of movies into a high-def format that can be burned to a Blu-ray disc for playback in any Blu-ray HD set-top player. In essence, this makes the Mac a great platform to create HD content targeted at either HD-DVD or Blu-ray.

 

[DavidCar]

PCI Cards for HD Signal

On the subject of PCI Cards for HD Video, this just came up on MacWorld:

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/15/tempox/index.php

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata8.html

"Astonishing sustained read/write performance numbers in excess of 545 MB/s are possible—that’s more than enough to capture and process uncompressed 10-bit High Definition video!"

 

[weldon]

Well, technically this is just a drive controller that's fast enough to move HD video files around for editing, etc. It doesn't solve the problem of getting uncompressed analog video into a format on the computer that you can playback and/or edit. HD capture is still a pro-level application and prices start around $2000 for a 10-bit capture card. You need gobs of storage because computers aren't fast enough to do real-time encoding yet. So you need to capture the uncompressed video to disk first and then edit/encode.

 

[csimon2]

HD capture is still a pro-level application and prices start around $2000 for a 10-bit capture card. You need gobs of storage because computers aren't fast enough to do real-time encoding yet. So you need to capture the uncompressed video to disk first and then edit/encode.

Actually, you can get an HD capture card for around $600. I have a DeckLink HD PCI card, and it works brilliantly. As far as real-time encoding, it is possible to do this. You can easily transcode from HDCAM to DVCPRO HD or Photo-JPEG with the cards. And there are real-time HD MPEG-2 encoders as well. But if you're suggesting there is no way to encode real-time from HD to more compressed formats such as MPEG-4, DivX, or SV3, then that is correct.

 

[weldon]

Actually, you can get an HD capture card for around $600. I have a DeckLink HD PCI card, and it works brilliantly. As far as real-time encoding, it is possible to do this. You can easily transcode from HDCAM to DVCPRO HD or Photo-JPEG with the cards. And there are real-time HD MPEG-2 encoders as well. But if you're suggesting there is no way to encode real-time from HD to more compressed formats such as MPEG-4, DivX, or SV3, then that is correct.

Yes, but I was specifically talking about analog HD capture because the original context was about recording HD broadcasts in a PVR (consumer) application. I was pointing out that if you need to capture ATSC, it's already compressed. If you want to capture the analog HD output from a STB you need some pro-level gear to do that.

You have the Decklink HD card which works over SDI. The Blackmagic analog-sdi converter (Decklink multibridge) costs $1500-$2000 on top of the SDI capture card. A WVHS deck costs $3500-$5000 new. I'm sure there are some other solutions out there, but I don't know of a way to take analog HD over component cables and get it into your computer for less than $2000.

 

[csimon2]

If you can easily capture broadcast ATSC digitally over firewire (as with a EyeTV 500 or Moto DCT-6412) for less than $350, why in the world would you want to capture it as analog uncompressed? There would be absolutely no benefits to this, other than maybe saving you the conversion time of going from MPEG-2 to Uncompresed to edit with. But I doubt anyone would find spending a couple of thousand dollars worth it. Because it certainly wouldn't make the video quality any better than the original MPEG-2.

 

[weldon]

If you can easily capture broadcast ATSC digitally over firewire (as with a EyeTV 500 or Moto DCT-6412) for less than $350, why in the world would you want to capture it as analog uncompressed?

Exactly my point. If you review the thread from where I jumped in, the question was "How does H.264 fit into all of this? Does it allow for the capture of near-HD quality video at a fraction of the bit rate?" My response is that you don't need H.264 for consumer HD capture because all the HD that you can get is already compressed. In the interest of further discussion, I then allowed for the scenario where you might want to capture analog HD from a STB that only has analog. But now this is no longer a consumer application because capturing analog HD is intensive and therefore expensive.

As I mentioned earlier, H.264 does have applications for iMovie HD and FCP where you want to encode from HDV, HDCAM, uncompressed HD, etc. But this process is separate from HD capture.

 

[clsoto]

There is a HDTV tuner for the Mac

There are about four different HDTV tuner cards for the PC, but none avalible for the Mac.

Unfortunately, since the PCI buses of most PCs can't handle the full uncompressed HDTV sugnal, it has to output it through the card, using the video card as a pass through and the output is only VGA so you have to buy a $400 adapter to get it to work with an Apple display.

On a lighter note, the HDTV cards for the PC compress the signal using hardware down tp 19.2MB/s so it fits nicely into the bandwith of FW400 with plenty of room to spare in FW800.

Hi,

There is a HDTV tuner for the Mac. I use my "Elgato EyeTV 400 FireWire DVB-T Digital Terrestial TV Tuner400" all the time and I can watch HDTV stations (Sydney, Australia) on my iMac and Powerbook.

I am assuming you are in the US and if you go to www.elgato.com I'm sure they have a TV tuner for the Mac that can be used in the US.

Cheers,
clsoto

 

[DavidCar]

There has been discussion on this thread earlier of the ElGato 500 which works for HDTV in the USA, particularly with respect to when the ElGato 500 is going to respect the broadcast flag.

But another question I had on the more recent subject: What is the output of a consumer HD video camera? Firewire 800? (I thought after my post regarding high speed PCI cards for moving HD to disk drives that it wasn't exactly related to the original question of video capture.)

 

[csimon2]

David, HDV is currently the only really affordable "consumer" HD format. It transfers to disk the information through a Firewire 400 port, as its recorded datarate is well within FW400 specifications. HDV, while it still looks great, is recorded to tape heavily compressed.

And, just as an FYI, DVCPRO HD, which is much less compressed than HDV, but costs thousands more, also uses Firewire 400.

 

[mkoesel]

With the EyeTV 200, while I don't get HDTV, I get the more important MPEG-2 encoding on the box instead of on my computer.​

I guess this is the correct way of stating this. The basic difference between EyeTV 200 and 500, is that the EyeTV 200 takes an analog cable or OTA signal and encodes it through hardware via its encoder. The 500 on-the-other-hand, has an HD tuner that tunes into HD signals and transmits them to your machine without needing to encode first.

Pardon me csimon2 for quoting such an old post, but I think it makes a good segue into a question I'd like to pose.

What about a theoretical "EyeTV 600" that would do the following:

Take in an digital TV signal (either OTA ATSC or QAM) and re-encode it into MPEG4 Part 10 (H.264) and then trasmits them to your machine via firewire just like the EyeTV 500 does.

My reason for wanting such a device are twofold:

1) Apple's direction for HD video appears to be all H.264 starting with Tiger. Having the HDTV hardware encode to this format would allow editinging of the video with most future apple software, without having to re-encode it (which as I understand would be an extremely timeconsuming task -- on the order of a hours per recorded hour of HDTV).

2) Perhaps apple will support decoding of H.264 in hardware (via Radeon) for thrid parties. My understanding (according to ElGato's FAQ) is that Apple will not release the hardware specs (or APIs) necessary to leverage the ATI hardware for MPEG2 decoding. They use this in their own DVD Player application, but no other application has (or can). Perhaps part of their hesitance is that they wish to protect their investment in QuickTime 7 and H.264. So this device might be better accepted by apple. Now I have know deep knowledge of the ATI hardware found in Macs so I don't know how suitable it is for the task of decoding H.264. But I thought it might be a possibility.

What do you think. A good idea or a bad one?

 

[csimon2]

What about a theoretical "EyeTV 600" that would do the following:
Take in an digital TV signal (either OTA ATSC or QAM) and re-encode it into MPEG4 Part 10 (H.264) and then trasmits them to your machine via firewire just like the EyeTV 500 does.

While that does indeed sound nice, I really doubt it will happen any time soon. What you're basically talking about is a small hardware AVC encoder box, and they just aren't affordable at this time. The reason for the MPEG2 encoding on the 200 is the relative cheapness of the MPEG2 hardware encoder chips these days. And the cost of the current 500 can be attributed to the cost of an ATSC tuner, which still haven't dropped that much in price. Add a hardware AVC encoder, and you're talking about the cost of a mac mini or emac. Also, other than time saved for transcoding, there wouldn't be much benefit in having a box that encoded HD MPEG2 content to AVC. Picture quality won't be any better, and HD AVC has the same system requirements of HD MPEG2, maybe even moreso. Currently, you can transcode 720p HD MPEG2 into a QT editable format at about 3:1. 1080i is about 5 or 6:1. I imagine that once QT 7 is released, and AVC is optimized for it, that software transcoding time will be similar. And that isn't too bad IMO.

 

[kiwi_the_iwik]

What about reports that the new iMac may have a 23" HD monitor, and therefore perhaps a built-in TV tuner and D/A converter?

I'm only postulating this because I noticed the eyeTV 200 has dropped in price on the UK Apple web site by £35 - a substantial reduction. It may well be that Elgato won't be able to compete with the new G5 iMac and have decided to pull that model.

Also, many of the posts here have been talking about the speculation of the link between a 23" monitor and a TV tuner. Since a member of the new iMac line is rumoured to have a 23" monitor, maybe this may be the way things will progress...

 

[FrancisSawyer]

What "uncompressed" HD are people talking about?

ATSC "HD" comes in at a piss-poor 19 megabits per second MAXIMUM, folks. Any modern computer can handle that. Even a Mac. Of course, calling it HD is a fraud.

Also: "Second, the quality should be very good on viewing and capturing. Because the signal of Dish Network doesn't get nearly as filtered and routed as a local cable company's, there is already a lot less noise in the image."

Not so. The signal is digital; it either makes it there or it doesn't. If it's crappy, you'll get obvious freeze-ups and blocking. But you won't get more or less "noise" in the image.

I don't know about Dish Network, but Comcast digital cable is somewhat better than DirecTV in terms of crappy MPEG-2 artifacts. They're both bad pictures, no question. But DirecTV is terrible.

It's great how all these vendors are laughing at the ignorance of the public with their "digital quality" marketing. Notice how they never even claim the picture is "good"? They won't even use the word. Check it out.

 

[csimon2]

ATSC "HD" comes in at a piss-poor 19 megabits per second MAXIMUM, folks. Any modern computer can handle that. Even a Mac. Of course, calling it HD is a fraud.

Have you actually seen HD programming? Maybe your provider does a bad job relaying the signal, but from what I have been watching for the past year, I don't see how anyone could call it "piss-poor". Is it anywhere near uncompressed HD? Obviously not. But what do expect? Let me restate that, what do you reasonably expect? And, as far as any modern computer being able to handle HD signals, if by modern, you mean any computer in the last year or two, then you are correct. Any mac from the G3 on can handle capture of a HDTV signal. But, as far as playback, that is a whole other beast. 1080i MPEG-2 at full resolution playback (ie, not scaled down to fit your low-res monitor) is very processor intensive when there isn't a dedicated hardware decoder present. On the mac, minimum specs would be a Dual 1.25 G4 with 1.5GB RAM.

I don't know about Dish Network, but Comcast digital cable is somewhat better than DirecTV in terms of crappy MPEG-2 artifacts. They're both bad pictures, no question. But DirecTV is terrible.

Dish Network, IMO, has the best digital picture of all the major services. I say this, not as a current DN subsriber either, but I used to subscribe, and was way more satified with it than I have been with DirecTV and local digital cable services since then.