HD PVR cards???

[SFX Group]

Have any manufactures made any HD Hardware encoder cards as yet?? (or USB2 cards, i assuming it will need to be USB2 due to the amount of data it needs to shunt once encrypted).

[prouton]

HD signals are already in digital (compressed) format, it's only the analog signals that need to be compressed (and therefore need hardware compression support to work in GBPVR).

[stefan]

If I'm not misinformed, the hauppauge-nova-t-usb2 can record the UK dvb-t HD signals (lots of abbreviations in one sentence ). I'd guess the pvr-t-500 can too.

[stefan]

But I also think you need a kick-ass computer to be able to play the file.

[SFX Group]

HD signals are already in digital (compressed) format, it's only the analog signals that need to be compressed (and therefore need hardware compression support to work in GBPVR).

Not to over think this, to record on GBPVR the signals (which are anolog as its Compostite or S-Video) need to be compressed (turned to MPG format) and the best way is with a hardware encoder.

So as all 5 Hauppauge hardware encoders seem to only do "PAL 720x576 pixels" this is no where near HD size, so the question was when is someone going to bring out a hardware encoder that will encode a higher resolution to take advantage of the better resolution?

[SFX Group]

If I'm not misinformed, the hauppauge-nova-t-usb2 can record the UK dvb-t HD signals (lots of abbreviations in one sentence ). I'd guess the pvr-t-500 can too.

All are software encoders, will only use hardware, hence why i put PVR as these are normally hardware (well at least for Hauppauge it is).

However not seen the PVR-T-500???

[stefan]

However not seen the PVR-T-500???

Sorry, I meant nova-t-500 :o

I think I've misunderstood you. When I read your last posts, I get the feeling that you want to use a HD set top box, and record HD material from it. I don't think there are any capture devices that can do that. The nova-t series can record the HD material directly, without an STB, if I have understood things right. I don't have access to an HD transmitter myself, so I can't test this. But I'm fairly sure I've read that other (UK based) users on this forum have succeeded.

[SFX Group]

I did wonder that, i'm suprised there isnt a HD PVR card as yet!!!

[b00sfuk]

Interesting, I've been thinking about this. To be clear we need to differentiate between aerial & satellite HD.
In the UK we only currently have HD broadcast via satellite and you need a HD STB to receive this (e.g. Sky HD). I believe these boxes have a s-video out (or RGB SCART) so you can record in SD to a current PVR card but not in HD (as above I dont know if a future HD PVR card solves this). A Satellite PC card is not really an option as most channels are encrypted and require decoder card(s).
I believe that the BBC will sometime start HD broadcasts via digital aerials. I guess in this case that unencrypted channels can be recorded using a current card such at the Nova-t-500 as it just another compressed MPEG4 stream - anybody confirm this?

All a bit of mess eh?

[carpeVideo]

You guys are slightly confused -
First conversion and compression are different.

GBPVR schedules recordings of digital files, therefore if the source is analog - (S-video, composite, or analog signal) it needs to be converted to digital and encoded with a compression scheme. This is where hardware conversion and compression is helpful but not fully necessary since software compression can work just fine with many of today's processors.

HDTV and digital are not the same but broadcast HD is digital. If the signal is broadcast digitally no conversion and encoding is needed so no hardware or software encoder is needed. The only processing needed is that which it takes to write the already digital signal to your hard disk. (Playing them is a different matter entirely).

If you get what was an HD signal from s-video its been converted from digital to analog (with a loss of quality )to s-video - this signal would need to be reconverted and encoded to digital to record/save but it would no longer be HD and the encoding would take the same processing power as any other analog signal.

Its possible to have an analog signal that is HDTV (edit: it said composite here I meant the 3 cable component (from a STB for example) and there are cards that do that but they border on professional stuff so they are expensive.

For North America, ATSC broadcasts are digital and recordable as are some cable digital broadcasts. For elsewhere its similar - either way non-encrypted digital (including HD) only require a tuner card to save them - no digital conversion and encoding is necessary.