US HD questions

[nitrogen_widget]

I am thinking of getting an HD card.
I don't have an HDTV yet so this would be mostly for dabling.

Does anyone use an ATSC tuner card with GBPVR on a Standard Definition TV?

Can you scale the picture down to fit standard 720x480 so you essentially just have a letterboxed picture while watching TV?

Am I wasting my time wanting to do this?
And will I still need mondo horsepower to do this?

[Braklet]

Does anyone use an ATSC tuner card with GBPVR on a Standard Definition TV?

Can you scale the picture down to fit standard 720x480 so you essentially just have a letterboxed picture while watching TV?

I have done this. SD digital channels display fine. HD channels show up in raw anamorphic shape (squished in at the sides).

I have a nVidia-based video card so I use F7 to toggle through the display modes to get it working correctly.

If you have the right video card and MPEG decoder, a lot of the processing may happen on the GPU, saving your CPU for other things.

It works hunky dory on my system. Doesn't really have anything to do with GB-PVR though, it is mostly your decoder.

[zed]

I use an ATSC OTA tuner box that down-converts to 480i analog. I feed it into a PVR150 card's svideo input. Works fine and still looks really good...much better than analog cable or analog OTA. You can find the tuner boxes for about the same price as an HDTV capture card.

[fla]

I use an ATSC OTA tuner box that down-converts to 480i analog. I feed it into a PVR150 card's svideo input

Sounds very interesting especially since I have no free pci slots. Can you change channels with the PVR-150's remote and the IR blaster and schedule and record stuff normally? Can you or others share the exact make/model? I'm in Canada so it should be the same as in the US. Thanks for any tips.

[-stattik-]

Can you scale the picture down to fit standard 720x480 so you essentially just have a letterboxed picture while watching TV?

Scaling isn't a problem as long as you have the power to play it back. I don't so I transcode the file to a more manageable size. The quality of a transcoded HD recording is far superior to any SD recording.

[David]

I replay most of my video through a DSM-320 UPnP media player. TVersity transcodes HD files on the fly for me now. Mostly it works pretty well.

David

[zed]

Sounds very interesting especially since I have no free pci slots. Can you change channels with the PVR-150's remote and the IR blaster and schedule and record stuff normally? Can you or others share the exact make/model? I'm in Canada so it should be the same as in the US. Thanks for any tips.

I have an RCA ATSC-11 HDTV tuner. Got it on eBay for about $100. It will receive all the ATSC formats and down-convert to 480i and outputs via svideo or DVI. It will also output up to 1080i so it can be used to drive a HD monitor. It handles only ATSC OTA, it won't handle cable, digital or analog. There's an ATSC-12 that kind of does both (digital OTA and analog OTA or cable but not digital cable). Even down-converted the picture quality blows the socks off regular cable or OTA. And I can watch the recordings over an MVP on a regular TV.

I use a Microsoft MCE 2005 IR blaster to change the channels. It works fine with either HIP or native GB blaster drivers. There is a little gotcha, tho. The ATSC-11's remote will directly select only the 'base' channel, i.e. the X.1. For example, our local channel 8 has an 8.1 and 8.2 and 8.3. To select it with the remote you press 8 and it goes to 8.1. To go the 8.2 you then have to press Channel Up...there's no way (that I've gfound) to got directly to 8.2 or 8.3. GB will send only a channel number so for me it will select only the X.1. This works out OK for me but YMMV, depending on your local channel configuration.

There are othe similar boxes, Samsung makes one, and their channel changing schemes are probably different. Ebay might be a good place to check.

Anyway, it's another approach that works well for me. You don't get real HDTV recordings but they're pretty good. And I don't have an HDTV anyway...

Hope this helps...

[fla]

I also don't have an HDTV so your testimony is right what I needed. Thanks for the detailed info zed. Much appreciated.