HDTV On Your PC - ATi's HDTV Wonder

Spinnerbait writes "ATi is getting their new High Def capable HDTV Wonder ready for release soon and there is a preview of the card over at HotHardware. It will be an add-in PCI card that will be bundled with their All In Wonder cards initially and eventually be sold as a stand alone product. High Def on a nice 23" Flat Panel... time to drool."

Pixel for Pixel

[MrHatken]

Will you be able to see pixel for pixel high res?

It seems to me...

[SisyphusShrugged]

It seems to me that this shouldnt be to difficult, technically speaking, considering the 1080 pixel resolution is well within that normally supported on a PC monitor.

I cant wait to get Hi-Def on my TV, have seen it before and it is the ultimate in geek-drool fest! ....mmmmm...Hi-Def TV....yummy!

What are the capabilities of the card?

[mocm]

Unfortunately there is not much information of what the card can do.
Does it have an MPEG hardware decoder for HDTV, or is it only a tuner and demodulator?
Does it have TV out or can it only display on the monitor?
If the card is only a tuner and demodulator with PCI bridge then it's no big deal. The CPU will have to do all the decoding, maybe with a little help from the graphics card. You can do that with a lot of DVB-S,C,T cards already. With a 60Euro card you could already watch the Superbowl in HDTV, of course you needed a fast CPU.

What about Linux?

[fldvm]

High Def on a nice 23" Flat Panel...

Sure if you want to run windows...

I want My HD MythTV...

Linux w/o New ATI card Windows with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it doesn't work with linux, then I don't give a shit one way or the other.

And like most of the All-in-Wonder cards, I doubt half the features will work correctly if at all.

Otherwise I would give up my ancient geforce2 card in a second, but for right now I have no reason to. My 19 inch monitor with my ATI wonder VE tv capture card works great for me right now.

Oh, BTW I use the Nintendo Game cube via the composite input on my ATI card. If you want to play games and get a useable picture get a decent program, like TVTIME. Most tv capture programs for windows that I've seen in stores looks like crap on a monitor, get something that does anti-aliasing properly. Thank god for Free software.

What we really need

[nonmaskable]

isn't this...it's a hdtv input card that can take component inputs.

Most HDTV uptake will come from HDTV over cable, with the decoding/descrambling done by the cable company box, which produces component outputs.

Then our MythTV boxes will be able to record HDTV!

Re:Misconception?

[Anonymous Coward]

1080i may not be within the capabilities of most monitors, but it certainly is no big deal for most graphics cards. I can decode and output 1080i via an ATI Radeon 9000, which is so low end that you can't even buy one anymore. My 21" monitor displays this resolution quite nicely, btw. I think HDTV is mostly a marketing ploy now, especially when it comes from ATI, because ATI's whole Radeon family was/is famous for having iDCT support way before it became "HDTV support". Don't throw out your working graphics card to get a HDTV enabled card. A cheap DVB card, a low end Radeon (no SE though) and a 1GHz (1.4GHz to be on the safe side) processor is enough to enjoy HDTV. The most expensive part is the display (Apple Cinema 23" *drool*)

Re:Component inputs?

[dirty]

No there isn't. There might be some delay that can be measured in milliseconds, but it's nothing a human can detect. I've been doing this for years. Up until about 6 months ago I didn't own a TV and used my computer for TV and my PS2.

This company has cards that support it.

[psoriac]

Couldn't find it earlier, but see also this page: http://www.twinhan.com/visiontv.htm for existing TV tuner cards that support hdtv including support for cable, satellite, and scrambled sources.

Unfortunately, these don't do 3d like the ATI. =)

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is for the united states markets.

In europe you have good broadcasting standards. you have DVB-t, DVB-c, DVB-s. For satalite, terrestrial broadcasing and cable connections.

In the united states all we have is a hodgepodge of slightly differing mpeg encoding scemes used by different digital tv providers.

Why?

Because each and every company knows that it can make more money off of a ignorant public by MAKING SURE THAT ONLY THEIR HARDWARE WORKS WITH THEIR BROADCASTS.

Bunch of FUCKING ASSHOLES WHO SHOULD DIE.

No way or no how is my money EVER going to a digital cable provider. Analog all the way. I don't give a shit if I can only get 75 channels.

HDTV standard is only picking up steam nowaday because in a few years everybody who broadcasts via air waves will be required to use the same HDTV standard set out by the FCC.

Anyways, I wish I lived in the country. If you want best quality possible anywere in the world you need those big 8 foot hillbilly satalite dishes.

Pure analog signal with some digital stuff you have to subscribe to and use special equipment. But this way your using the same signals that your cable company uses.

Think about it. Take it from a satalite, get best quality possible, completely free, or damn cheap (except for the hardware).

Take it from a cable provider or those small digital satalite provider, you get second rate re-broadcasts of the original signal with mpeg compression on it even.

Now if you don't pay for the inferior quality signal your doing something illegal. Don't pay for the superior original broadcast signal you are perfectly legal (as long as you don't descramble encoded channels without a subscription (like HBO and such)).

Remember people threatened with lawsuites for buying card readers that COULD be used for pirating digital subscriber satalite signals, when the original signals DTS uses' are perfectly FREE to use. (or again with subscription to descramble scambled stations, which for the most part is still cheaper then paying for it thru cable companies or DTS-like companies. With a 3000-4000 dollar initial hardware investment.)

There is something seriously fucked up with american broadcast medium and this situation only exists because people are kept ignorant of the technology.

Why is this news?

[AGTiny]

There have been PCI HDTV cards for years that receive OTA HD. Even a cheap one [pchdtv.com] that only works in Linux!

Re:What we really need

[Anonymous Coward]

You wish. As someone already noted, 1080i equals 120MB/s raw. No consumer computer can even accept this kind of stream into the system, let alone do any processing on it in real time. 720p is half that, so unless you have a really powerful machine, that too means no go.

specs vs reality

[h2odragon]

have you tried pushing your monitor that hard? Best i can make an (admitedly slightly older) G500 21" do is 2000x1500 @ 77Hz; any higher and the pixels distort. What your graphics card can drive it at, without strange effects, is a different question as well: with a matrox g400 i use 10px fonts and stare at this screen all day long; with a nvidia card 12px fonts and 1600x1200 made my eyes melt.

Subject?

[Anonymous Coward]

On a 23" panel? Pfbt.

I prefer to watch the 13 HD channels I get via Time Warner on a 64" Pioneer Elite.

And UT2k4 is pretty awesome on it too!

Re:Pixel for Pixel

[dnoyeb]

If I'm not mistaken, TV broadcases are not in the typical monitor proportions. That means no. But perhaps ATi understands this and has a nice interpolator on board.

In any event, contraty to the OPs position, I do not drool over 23" of TV viewing pleasure...

What's so great about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this card better than something like Hauppauge's WinTV-HD [hauppauge.com]? At least the Hauppauge has component outputs standard. I'm guessing it's the price as the Hauppauge isn't cheap. BTW, there's a few more HDTV cards available at places like The Digital Connection [digitalconnection.com].

Re:ATi TV cards are soon to become useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Nadda,

MY mpeg encoder for our HD Transmitter is set to filter the broadcast flag. We don't retransmit that garbage!

Fair use in full effect.

Re:HOWTO?

[bigman2003]

I did something similar (xbox through a projector) and on any game that was reasonable fast moving, I would get dizzy.

If the image fills most of your field of vision, the movement on screen will trick your brain into thinking it is actually happening. Without the corresponding movement in your body, things can get very weird.

I ended up having to shrink the image, and moving back. The cinematic Halo experience was not for me.

It ended up being a lot like seeing the 'rollercoaster' IMAX. That made me sick too...

Digital cable reception possible?

[mmmbeer]

There are already a number of cards available which can receive ATSC HDTV broadcasts (which require an additional antenna) in addition to analog cable and broadcast. The nice step up here is the use of their own NXT2004 chip, which provides a QAM demodulator.

I've been looking for years now for a tuner card which will allow me to watch Time Warner's Digital Cable here in Tampa. Step one is getting a demodulator which can sync to the QAM-256 signal. Tne next big hurdle is determining if my cable provider uses a proprietary mechanism on top of that to encapsulate their streams. There are no standards here as far as I can find, just commonly used implementations.

A cable comes into my apartment with 50+ digital channels, including the networks in HDTV. I've got a cable box that decodes it without having to put up an aerial... why can't I have a card in my computer that does the same thing? This card could end up being just another useless ATSC tuner card.

Re:Misconception?

[Anonymous Coward]

> My monitor (a Sony 21" GDM-F520) can do 2048x1536 @ 85Hz, and has a .22mm aperture grill no less.

That's very nice for you, but most typical PC monitors (and PCs for that matter) will not play 1080i at full res.

pchdtv card

[sdibb]

Nobody's probably going to see this since I posted it so late, but this was brought up at our last LUG meeting -- it's a PCI HD TV card made especially for Linux. All the drivers are open-source, etc, etc. Check it out: http://www.pchdtv.com/ [pchdtv.com]

Waiting for a PC based HD recording system

[sdo1]

Although I was psyched about the pending release of High Definition TiVo [slashdot.org], I must say that at a kilo-buck, it's a bit too expensive to be able to record the (limited) HD content that's out there. I already have a standard DirecTV/TiVo system along with a separate High Definition DirecTV/terresterial receiver.

I'm thinking the best solution for my "need to record HD" dilema might be to just get a HD capable PC. I know there are solutions out there now, but the ATI board might be a cost effective way to go. I realize that the only way I'm going to record DirecTV HD content is with the HD-TiVo, but to be honest the best content (save for Sunday Night Football) comes in over the air.

Plus, I like the idea of having a PC in my living room entertainment center. If I want to use the computer out there now, I have to drag out my laptop. The Gateway media center PC line [gateway.com] has me interested. Not so much because of the media center aspect of it, but because they've designed it to look like the other components in a home theater rack. I've gone the DIY route before and the a) the thing still looked like a PC and b) the video recording technology wasn't quite there yet, and c) it was getting exceedingly expensive to make it quiet enough for the living room. A media center PC married up with an HD receiver card might get me where I want to go...

Though chances are I'll just cave and buy the HD-TiVo...

-S

Re:What about Linux?

[LazyBoy]

I want it too. But OTA and non-scrambled cable isn't good enough. I want something that can control my (next) HD cable box.

We need HD firewire support for MythTV. Supposedly, firewire output from cable boxes has been mandated for 4/1/04.

Re:Digital cable reception possible?

[papasui]

Digital cable boxes are authorized by the MSO. So even if you have one or manage to get a pc card that can work with it you still need to get them to enter it into their system. Pretty unlikely.

Re:Digital cable reception possible?

[Wesley Felter]

I've got a cable box that decodes it without having to put up an aerial... why can't I have a card in my computer that does the same thing?

Because your computer doesn't have enough DRM.

Re:specs vs reality

[Anonymous Coward]

All RGB monitors use three guns. The difference between Trinitron and Diamondtron tubes is the pattern of subpixels. Trinitron uses vertical threads as aperture grill, resulting in side-by-side RGB sub-pixels. Diamondtron subpixels are arranged triagonally and the beams are separated by a shadow mask with corresponding holes.

All in Wonder, great card, PVR sucks

[Yo Grark]

And before you go about telling me about myHTPC there is one serious thing lacking

"SEASON PASS"

Why can't I find a decent PVR software that lets me use my All in Wonder, and has a season pass feature?

IS THIS TOO MUCH TO ASK????

Oh and if anyone has suggestions, PLEASE let me know what else is out there, SageTV, MyHTPC, TVHolic all have been tested and were not ready for prime time.

Please help!

Yo Grark

There's one thing....

[Anonymous Coward]

The HDTV Wonder is the first computer PVR device that can tune/record Digital Cable (QAM 64 & 256). Even supports the interactive menu stuff..

Re:HOWTO?

[PoisonousPhat]

Ah, a fellow "simulator sickness" sufferer. At least you don't get nauseous from FPS games like CounterStrike, like I do.

If the image fills most of your field of vision, the movement on screen will trick your brain into thinking it is actually happening. Without the corresponding movement in your body, things can get very weird.

This could be why the more expensive simulators, like flight training simulators or entertainment simulators like "Star Tours" are equipped with all those hydraulics to make the physical motion sync with the visual motion. Well, that, and to make it really "realistic". Read more about simulator sickness: Simulator Sickness [siggraph.org]