HDTV support - which cards are likely?

[JJarmoc]

I don't want to buy a HD card unless I know it would be fully supported in the future by Sage, but I can't provide feedback to Sage on HD playback unless I buy a HD card that may or may not be supported.

This is my situation exactly. I'd love to test Sage's ability to playback HD, but without having an HD card, I have no way of capturing a stream. I'd be willing to buy a card if there was some indication which one was being researched (which is really why I started this thread back in April asking which cards are likely to be supported). If I buy a card now, I risk getting one which will never have Sage support. By waiting, I'm unable to help test. It's something of a catch 22.

If there were some direction, I'd jump at the opprotunity to provide all the feedback I could. Even if something were said along the lines of 'We're in early stages of developing support for X. It may or may not end up being a feasible solution, but we're going to work on it until we encounter some un-workable obstacle.' If such a statement were made, I'd buy X. I'd test X. I'd give feedback on how sage works with X and stream captured using it. Even with the understanding that full support my never come, I'd be willing and happy to do all this. If I had even the slightest assurance that any particular card, I don't care which one, was being investigated I'd do everything I can to help.

As it stands, it seems you're relying on the userbase to be unpaid testers, and not even telling us which cards are likely to end up in the build. I don't mind the unpaid tester part, we're a demanding group so it stands to reason that we help out in the development as much as possible. However, I obviously don't want to shell out significant money on hardware for the purpose of testing without knowing if it will ever be even considered for support.

I've tried looking around online for some downloadable HDTV streams to playback in sage, but due to copyright issues finding them is not an easy task. If Sage could provide some sort of approved sample stream, I'd be willing to download it and let you know how it works on my system. Maybe you could get HDNet or someone to let you distribute their demo loop for testing purposes?

I hope this post doesn't come across as crass or demanding. I appreciate the hard work you guys have done so far, but we've been fed nuggets of hope for HD support for months now. We've been asked to test, and we've been given no information as to which cards are likely to be supported in return. All I ask for is a little information. It's understandable and honorable that you wouldn't want to make promises too soon, but I think most of us can distinguish promises from early information about possible future direction. And I know that lots of people would be willing to help, but it's a give and take, and we've got to be given at least some information in order to be able to help out at all.

So, I'll cut to the chase and throw this out there - Dan, who is the one manufacturer you've been working with? If there's any likelihood of sage support of their capture card, I'll buy one today and post feedback about Sage's playback of their HD streams the day I have the card in my hands.

[rotaryracer]

YEAH! What he said!

I'm buying parts for the HTPC today. I'll be placing an order with Digital Connection for a few things and have added and removed the MIT MyHD-120 from my shopping cart countless times. That card seems to be the most stable and usable (although AccessDTV has quite a few supporters), but I'd hate to spend close to $400 (with DVI daughterboard) only to find out it's not the direction Sage is heading.

Dan/Jeff, the good news is that there's alot of people making HTPC decisions based on your product and H/W support alone. That's a testament to what you've produced so far and what we think you're capable of.

Of course, that also happens to be the bad news, since we're all eagerly awaiting the first morsel of info on HDTV!

You guys may be under NDA with the HD card manufacturer, but it might be worthwhile to send this message by your contact - if you can release who you're testing/in discussions with, there will probably be a SIGNIFICANT upswing in their HD card sales!

Thanks again guys....

Jason

[JJarmoc]

I hadn't thought of the NDA possibility.. would an NDA cover the disclosure that the NDA exists? I'd be happy with a simple 'We're under NDA with <manufacturer X>' to base a purchase decision on.

[gregmo]

That would be a pretty severe NDA. Not being able to even admit you have an NDA.

Why would a card manufacturer even care if people knew they were supporting their card anyway?

[Narflex]

NDAs where you can't admit you're under them are actually somewhat common. You just don't hear about them that much for obvious reasons.

[gregmo]

Hmm. Didn't know that. I was under a absurdly restrictive non-compete once (actually illegal in my state) but they didn't include that restriction.

Anway, I'm buying a HD card today and would like to know which card Sage TV will most likely work well with in the near future.

[JJarmoc]

I think I'm starting to see where the problem lies.

I still want information though, but I guess we're stuck waiting for the time being.. *sigh* Let's just hope we get some hard facts about Sage HD support before TiVo or ReplayTV support HD.

If sage gets beat to the punch, I'll have some serious thinking to do.. The way it stands now, I'll likely jump on the first HD PVR implementation I can find, not necessarily the best one.

[StylinLP]

I raise my hand up to! I need to know which HDTV tuner card may be supported in the furture because like the others here I am about to buy a HDTV tuner card this week.

[rotaryracer]

Well, I popped for HTPC parts today. Of course, the most important part - ANY kind of TV tuner - was left off for now. If we get direction on HD, then I'll head back to Digital Connection and snag a HD tuner card. If not, then I may grab 1 or 2 PVR-250s. I'm trying to avoid making hardware changes once it's up and running - "she who must be obeyed" will not be pleased if she gets all set up running it and then I go and "break" it!

Thanks guys - keep on coding!

[JJarmoc]

Well, you could get a haupagge tuner for the time being. I've got one, and my thinking is that when Sage does support HD tuners, it'll probably continue it's model of supporting multiple tuners of different models with different guides.

My idea is to set the HD tuner with the highest preference, and a guide that only includes stations which broadcast HD, then keep a SD tuner (or two) on hand to record everything else. We'll see if it'll work that way, but my thinking is that this would let me record HD whenever it's available, but fall back to SD if the HD tuner is in use, or the show isn't broadcast in HD.

[rotaryracer]

Unfortunately, all the indecision on my part is going to cost me at least $40 (single tuner) and maybe $80 (multituner). I didn't pop for the PVR250s when Circuit City had 'em on sale, so the cheapest I can find them for now is $139 at, ironically enough, Sage!

I got too hooked on the hi-def feed at Circuit City on the XBR910 and I'm really going to miss not going that route. I'm half tempted to snag a HD card and eBay it if Sage won't support it in the future, but I guess for now I'll keep myself content with DVDs at 1080i and SDTV....

[alexzogh]

Any possibility you could release the sage / hipix beta software to the long-suffering hipix community?

While most of my beta testing experience has been with consumer products, I'd be glad to help.

[edmc]

Harry Lee @ DViCo was gracious enough to respond to my query about the plans for the rumored QAM-capable version of their HDTV Tuner Card. He reports that mass production of the card will be ready sometime next month (October'03) and that testing has been underway in the USA for 2 weeks already.

[Narflex]

alexzogh,

What software are you referring to that I release?

There was some experimental work done with the HiPix card. This was done through the "Network Encoding" feature of SageTV. What I did was write a TCP/IP proxy server that translates SageTV's network encoding commands into the ones the HiPix application understands through its own TCP/IP server. We were somewhat successful with it. I'll happily share the source for the proxy server (written in Java of course) if anyone's interested.

Mark (one of our admins) can comment more on this too, he did all the testing with me.

The current release of SageTV should be capable of playing back files recorded with the HiPix or other HDTV cards. And the network encoding architecture supports timeshifting (so you can pause live tv and all that other good stuff).

And I don't have a HiPix card so am unable to test this.

[alexzogh]

Narflex,

that's exactly what I was talking about!

There is still a large group of dedicated hipix hackers on avsforums. Pointed in the right direction, we could do some great things. The last three versions of the hipix software were written by avsforum members (including the TCP/IP server).

Alex

[Narflex]

Here's the source and the compiled Java class.

To run it, go to DOS, cd into the directory where you extracted this, and type:
java HiPixProxyServer

Then setup the HiPix as a network encoder in Sage (directions on our website). Also have the HiPix app running.

Then in SageTV it should then control the HiPix card to some degree. There's still a few little things to be worked out, but the only one that was a real problem was the file naming technique I believe. The HiPix TCP/IP server doesn't use the filename you give it, it makes that a directory and puts the file in there. Sage doesn't want a directory, it just wants a single file.

[alexzogh]

Wow, you are fast!

Should be too difficult to get the old hipix gang to force filename recognition. I'll post the info on AVSforum to see if I can get a group together - if not, I know enough java to get the project started.

BTW, this is enough to get me to buy the program! I guess I'll be your latest happy customer.

Alex

[rotaryracer]

Whoa....that's quick! Jeff, here's the thread at AVS - looks like you made the HiPix guys happy today!

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=298468

Now, about that Fusion/MyHD/AccessDTV code.....

[rfutscher]

What will be the cost of the Bundle and when will it be avalable?

SageTV and the SageTV Client v1.4 Software plus Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR-250 PCI TV analog Tuner Card plus FusionHDTV III Digital 8VSB/QAM Tuner card.


If I also want to control the Creative video blaster and HiPix cards in my other computer from both my computers would I need a different combination of software?

[rotaryracer]

FYI, for those that have the newest SageTV up and running (that supports HDTV playback), here is a website to download sample *.tp files recorded with a Fusion II. Bring your translator.....

http://www.dvico.co.kr/Download/d_fusionhdtvdemo.asp

I ran the demo on my AMD 2500+ with 1GB of RAM and a 9200SE - picture quality is AMAZING on my PC monitor, however, one of the clips (bshi01.tp) has a weird horizontal judder at the top of the letterbox. If anyone pulls these down, can you let me know if you see it as well? Both of the other 2 clips I d/l'ed played fine.

Anyway, test away and report back to Narflex!