HDMI Input Card

[pcuoco]

Check this out:
http://blackmagic-design.com/product...ity/techspecs/

A new HDMI input card released at IBC today. It's designed for video editing, but with separate set-top box control it may be an new way of getting HD video into the HTPC. At $250 it won't really break the bank either...

I'm no programmer but would this be feasible using the UNE program?

[dbfresh23]

Absolutely no mention of HDCP compliance so I doubt it would work for capturing from a STB.

[MeInMaui]

Yup, agree with dbfresh. If this thing was HDCP compliant, it would undermine the whole point of the secured connection by allowing copies to be made. Also, even if you could use hdmi to get HD into the computer, it is an uncompressed stream. The disk space requirements would be astronomical.

Aloha,
Mike

[SHS]

I wouldn't waste my time on this any way if all read there no hardware Encoder it only support YUV or well know AVI so I hope you got one h@ll system back it up your going need for realtime capture beside this was only for HDMI cameras.

[samgreco]

This card is intended for video editors working with HDV cameras. For that purpose, it's absolutely great.

For PVR, not a chance.

They know their market

[Mark SS]

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

Throw a pile of money at your storage and we could be recording SkyHD on our HTPCs!

* merged *

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Absolutely no mention of HDCP compliance so I doubt it would work for capturing from a STB.

There are already HDCP strippers on the market so that part isn't a problem. The monster storage and encoding requirements on the other hand are a bit more involved

[briands]

The DeckLink HD Extreme is more pricey, but with the breakout cable, it has component inputs.

[lobosrul]

I saw this card mentioned on avs forum yesterday and was going to mention it here, but it looks like someone beat me too it.

I'd be very interested to see if this works with SageTV. Remember the board (or software with it), can compress the stream some. The major problem lies in HDCP. However I saw an adapter than can convert Component and Audio feeds to HDMI, cheapest I saw it was $180.

So $250 + $180 is slightly cheaper than Nextcomwirelss conversions, plus going this route gives you flexibility, if you wanted to switch to cable, or maybe USDTV (if they ever get a decent lineup). However you would also need some sort of tuner control.

[stanger89]

But the R5000 gives you perfect captures, with full DD sound (if applicable).

[lobosrul]

Something i just realized:

While one cannot, cheaply, convert component to hdmi directly, there are cheap component to dvi adapters, AND dvi to hdmi adapters (i actualy have one that came with a dvd player).

I guess I can use my sound card for audio (can I?).

Im going to buy one of these cards when theyre out in October. If it doesnt work out I can always sell it on ebay, and probably lose just a few bucks.

I will of course report back if it works or not.

[briands]

Keep in mind there are 3 versions of DVI.

DVI-i includes connection for both analog component and Digital DVI/HDMI
DVI-a is just the analog component portion of this connection
DVI-d is the digital DVI/HDMI
The cheap component to DVI are typically DVI-A (analog) which is really just a connection adapter while the DVI to HDMI are DVI-D (or DVI-I) which is a cable adapter for the digital connections.

In short, this will not work (unfortunately).

[lobosrul]

I think briands is right about the cheap converters.

However this: http://www.thetwistergroup.com/store...4291&source=fr does what I think it does. It will take analog in (either rgb or component) and output to HDMI. However thats the cheapest ive seen it, $165.

[Watter]

Daily Tech Article
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4130

Press Release
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/pre...asp?pressID=88

Product Page
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

If I'm understanding this correctly, this essentially allows you to capture the digital stream straight from the HDMI connection. If this could be integrated as a SageTV capture device, we would finally have a decent way to get all of the HD channels from our set top boxes into Sage. Of course, once HDCP is in wide use, this will no longer be a viable option, but that isn't likely to be for at least a year or more. Even Blu Ray and HD-DVD have backed off HDCP for now until more folks have HDCP compatible hi def TVs.

I had to drop Sage over a year ago because OTA HD support just wasn't enough for me. Every time I use my stupid Scientific Atlanta DVR from the cable company I wince. It's just that painful. I would LOVE to come back to Sage

EDIT: After some more reading, it looks like this won't be a viable option. It appears that the signal sent over the HDMI cable is uncompressed video and that would requires ridiculously large amounts of disk space to store. That makes sense of course, once you think about it.

* merged *

[Lucas]

This just caught my eye.....

Being able to capture HDMI data, I suppose without HDCP, is heaven for STB owners....

Too good to be true?

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

and

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34318

* merged *

[shish]

Originally Posted by Watter

EDIT: After some more reading, it looks like this won't be a viable option. It appears that the signal sent over the HDMI cable is uncompressed video and that would requires ridiculously large amounts of disk space to store. That makes sense of course, once you think about it.

* merged *

Actually this could easily be a viable option. I do a lot of video compression/ingest/editing software at work and this card is pretty awesome at the price they're selling it. All someone would need to do is to also buy a PCI-Express MPEG2 encoder (should be out very soon if not already and price should be comparable to current cards) and then someone needs to write code to use DMAs to encode the video. Here's what I mean, the HDMI capture card writes frames directly to memory over the PCIe bus, the MPEG2 encoding card reads the frames directly from memory as they come available, finally frames are written from the MPEG2 encoder to the hard drive. One catch is that the MPEG2 hardware encoder would need to support HD resolutions, but I dont think thats as big of a problem as it used to be.

[lobosrul]

Shish, why not just use a software encoder? That already what I do for OTA HD. When you have a fast dual core cpu it seems a waste to buy more hardware.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Shish, why not just use a software encoder?

Because we don't have 10GHz processors.

That already what I do for OTA HD.

No they don't, OTA just captures the already compressed MPEG-2 bitstream. There's no encoding done on capture.

When you have a fast dual core cpu it seems a waste to buy more hardware.

Encoding HD, generally you don't break out of single digit framerates, even with high-powered dual-core machines.

[lobosrul]

Bah yeah i forgot ATSC is already encoded.

But I can do a fast MPEG-4 encode at around 15 fps (with an HD source). So surely MPEG-2 could be done at real time right?

Edit:

The Blackmagic Design Intensity card has HDMI-inputs that allow you to capture uncompressed video from cameras or cable boxes or other devices with HDMI-out. The Intensity also features a range of compression modes that allow you to capture lower quality video if your system can't handle editing at high resolution.

The question is, will any of those be compatible with SageTV as a capture device?

[stanger89]

Well, you need to encode at 2x that speed to be realtime, I'm not sure you could do MPEG-2 2x as fast as MPEG-4.

Plus, consider that your CPU is maxed out during that and you can't do anything else. Any little hickup will hose the recording, just as with all software encoding.

Heck, software encoding of SD is still a bad idea in general.