Newbie HD question

[Rubble]

Hi,

I am hoping that someone may be able to offer me some advice. Here is my situation:

I will shortly be moving in to my girlfriend's apartment. She has a brand new 32 inch Samsung LCD HDTV. I am currently a TiVo member, but I can't see paying $800 plus $13/month for their Series 3 box. My friend suggested that I should try gbpvr.

Currently my girlfriend has a simple wall to tv (no converter box) cable connection, but we are going to upgrade to either DirecTV or HD cable. Therefore, I am in the enviable position of choosing the best components from wall to tv to make my HD experience as nice as possible.

Any advice on Cable vs. DirecTV, The best (somewhat inexpensive) PC and HD tuner card, OS and software, and anything else I am not thinking of would be greatly appreciated. Here are the accepted inputs to the new TV.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

[daphatty]

The current HD recording offerings for Windows based PCs are quite limited. GBPVR only supports OTA (Over-the-air) HD signals. Cable and Satellite are way beyond anything a Windows PC can currently handle without ALOT of money and effort (at least here in the US it is.)

Honestly, you would be better off buying the series 3 tivo.

[wtg]

You don't mention where you live and what cable company you might have. I have a HD DVR that my cable company (Insight) provided and it's ok. The picture is great, it works flawlessly and has dual tuners, which is pretty darn good for the $13/month it costs me.

Gbpvr has a much better interface and is much more flexible. I wish I had an option to use it for my HD content but honestly, the cable companies DVR isn't bad.

[Rubble]

The current HD recording offerings for Windows based PCs are quite limited. GBPVR only supports OTA (Over-the-air) HD signals. Cable and Satellite are way beyond anything a Windows PC can currently handle without ALOT of money and effort (at least here in the US it is.)

daphatty, are there any future plans for GBPVR to support non-OTA HD signals? If so, are we talking months or years? I really like the extensibility of GBPVR, and would have no problem with seeing the non-OTA HD channels capturing as SD as long as I know that there is a light at the end of the HD tunnel for GBPVR.

You don't mention where you live and what cable company you might have.

WTG, I live in Washington, DC and currently have RCN cable. I believe that Comcast is also an option. Or I can go the DirecTV route if that is prudent.

Thanks for the advice.

[sub]

daphatty, are there any future plans for GBPVR to support non-OTA HD signals? If so, are we talking months or years?

Its not really a GB-PVR problem. Its a short coming of the Microsoft APIs. Pretty much all Windows PVR apps are in the same boat. I expect they'll resolve it sometime in the next year.

[mrothwell]

I don't have GB-PVR installed yet, but looking into it.

I have the following: PVR-150 mce that will control a Directv box. I will be installing 1 or 2 HD cards to pick up OTA HD signals. I also have a MVP box that I would like to use as a client. If I record a program in HD, am I limited to just the HDTV connected to the server? or can I stream a SD signal to the MVP in the bedroom?

[wtg]

Rubble,

Hopefully there are some others in your area that can give you their experiences with HD dvrs from RCN and Comcast.

Adding to what sub said, I don't think there's much of a hardware option currently for US users. HD content from either cable or directtv requires de-scrambling and therefore either an stb or cable card. There isn't yet a capture card that supports a cablecard (I know ATI is showing one that's not yet released - others I don't know) and I don't know of a capture card that takes external input of an HD signal. The Hauppauge cards only take composite or s-video input, both incapable of carrying a HD signal. So while my cablebox can output component or HDMI HD signals, I don't know of any card that can capture it.

My guess is new HD cards will come out about the time Vista ships and that Vista will be required, due to a revised API that sub refers to. I'm hoping that the updated API doesn't require DRM, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm betting the cable companies and content providers are lobbying hard for it.

[zed]

... I also have a MVP box that I would like to use as a client. If I record a program in HD, am I limited to just the HDTV connected to the server? or can I stream a SD signal to the MVP in the bedroom?

I believe you'll only be able to watch HD recordings on your computer or on an attached HDTV. The MVP will not play them unless you can down-convert them to 'normal' SD first. I don't know of any way to do that but there may be a way (if so I'd be interested). I suppose you could also watch them on an HDTV attached to a GB-PVR client machine or on its monitor.

What I did was get an HDTV tuner that down-converts and feed its s-video output into one of my 150MCE capture cards. Then you can watch the recordings over the MVP or on an SDTV. It's not HD anymore but the quality still beats the hell out of the normal SD cable sig. It still only works for OTA, tho...