Impending Doom within 18 months

[grocer]

I have GB-PVR set up and running quite nicely right now with a PVR-150, P4 2.4gh, 1 gig ram, it's own 100 gig hard drive, and an Nvida FX5200 running on my desktop with WinXP Pro SP2. If I replace the PVR-150 with an HVR-1600, how much grief am I in for? Should I plan a whole system upgrade? I do know that as I don't have cable or satellite, this whole setup will quit working 2/17/2009 when the FCC shuts off all analog broadcasts and currently I can't buy a whole house converter box (indeed, any converter box) to put between the antenna and the co-ax currently feeding the PVR-150.

What has been the GB-PVR community's experiences with OTA DTV tuners?

[Deusxmachina]

Nothing to worry about. You'll need a big hard drive to store HDTV if you don't watch shows or convert them right away, possibly a faster processor or just a video card that has good video acceleration to make up for it to play HD smoothly, the tuner card(s), and possibly a different antenna. So basically an entirely new setup? Maybe. But technology a year from now will be even faster and cheaper than it is now.

Go to apple.com and watch some HD movie trailers. The Greatest Game Ever Played and The Transporter 2 trailers are good ones. If your current computer can play those smoothly in their 1080p glory, then you shouldn't have much trouble with OTA HD unless maybe using some hardcore deinterlacing or other post-processing or trying to comskip in real-time, etc.

To get every advantage, download the trailers if possible and watch them with VLC player since that uses less cpu than Quicktime player or pretty much anything else. I'm thinking your computer will be fine as long as you're single-tasking. Unlike analog OTA, the problem with HD OTA isn't recording the files, it's playing the files.

If you currently get good analog reception, I wouldn't be in any big rush to switch over unless you want the HD shows. Digital (non-HD) is nice, but a good analog signal is still a great, arguably better, picture. Most people only think analog is crap because they base their opinion on their analog cable instead of a good antenna receiving an OTA analog signal.

[toomanyhandles]

I have GB-PVR set up and running quite nicely right now with a PVR-150, P4 2.4gh, 1 gig ram, it's own 100 gig hard drive, and an Nvida FX5200 running on my desktop with WinXP Pro SP2. If I replace the PVR-150 with an HVR-1600, how much grief am I in for? Should I plan a whole system upgrade? I do know that as I don't have cable or satellite, this whole setup will quit working 2/17/2009 when the FCC shuts off all analog broadcasts and currently I can't buy a whole house converter box (indeed, any converter box) to put between the antenna and the co-ax currently feeding the PVR-150.

What has been the GB-PVR community's experiences with OTA DTV tuners?

I read a news story a week or so ago, the FCC mandated cable companies in the USA to provide analog signals until 2012.

Here's one writeup:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...-2012.html

But I read the 1600 is doing fine and that plus an IR-blaster should handle cable boxes just fine.

[bgowland]

Digital (non-HD) is nice, but a good analog signal is still a great, arguably better, picture.

Out of curiousity (and not wanting to hijack the thread), I was wondering what the standard definition digital OTA specification is in the US. Here in the UK we have 576i as our standard definition digital and the pictures are great (IMO). In saying that, with the right aerial and living in a good reception area, the analogue broadcast doesn't seem much different.

Cheers,
Brian

[JimF]

The standard definition digital signal is 480i in the U.S. The high def signals are either 720p or 1080i. We have all three of them over the air, and also on cable in most cases. The difference is in the modulation schemes, with 8vsb being used over the air, and QAM on cable.

[bgowland]

The standard definition digital signal is 480i in the U.S. The high def signals are either 720p or 1080i.

Thanks - as I said, just curious.

I would say to grocer though that a P4 2.4G proc. with 1GB of ram is the same spec. as I run and the UK 576i broadcasts record effortlessly and playback fine.

Cheers,
Brian

[grocer]

Thanks for the input...I found this page that walks through testing 720p and 1080p. It chokes on 1080p but 720p looks great.

Yes, I'm aware of the extension on analog cable but I'm already to the point of needing another tuner (1 card and five channels are already causing headaches between myself and my family i.e. wife and four daughters). It was okay when they thought I was just weird for wanting a PVR but once they saw it and how smooth GB-PVR worked...well...the software is probably too good in that regard (a joke). But I digress, as far as I can tell, if I can record everything in 720p, I should be in good shape. So is the HVR-1600 a good choice?

Or are there better cards out there for the money?

(Remember, I'm looking at two cards here and I found HVR-1600s for $99 from TigerDirect, so that $200 for either two cards or a dual tuner digital...I could care less about the analog cable tuners but it's nice to know they're there with the HVR-1600).

[Deusxmachina]

Here in the UK we have 576i as our standard definition digital and the pictures are great (IMO). In saying that, with the right aerial and living in a good reception area, the analogue broadcast doesn't seem much different.

There are plenty of internet discussions about how many people can barely tell the difference between 576 and 720p. I'd say there's an obvious difference, but it's only obvious when viewing the two side-by-side.

OTA analog NTSC (480i) is lesser than both, but, yeah, if the person has a clear signal, it can look very good. On a clear day with my rooftop antenna, OTA analog NTSC can look pretty much like a DVD. Most people don't have reception that good and then say how horrible analog is.

Grocer, that 1600 has been on sale at Circuit City twice in the past month or so for $60 after rebate. You'd need multiple addresses to get more than one rebate at a time, I guess. And, really, that's a pretty good deal considering the typical good digital card that doesn't have the Hauppage name on it (is that a good or bad thing? lol) is going to be about $40 unless you can catch a heck of a deal on them, and that 1600 does have the option of Qam for cable if that need ever arose. TigerDirect is not high on a lot of people's places to buy list, especially if rebates are included. I'd keep an eye on the Circuit City ads.

If your computer chokes on 1080i/p, you could theoretically transcode programs from those channels into 720p to watch, but then that takes cpu power, too, and you wouldn't be able to watch them in real-time. You can't on-the-fly record a 1080i show in 720p. The card takes the signal and dumps it to the drive as-is. GBPVR has some options for recording quality, but they are only for analog.

"I think we're going to need a bigger boat."

At the worst, you can just keep all your current stuff and then upgrade the motherboard and cpu for around $150. Could do it for more like $100, but when adding in deinterlacing, transcoding, real-time comskip, etc, I wouldn't want to go with less than a low-end Core2Duo or similar unless the parts are dirt-cheap.

And having a 120gig drive in my HTPC, I'll be the first to say 120gigs doesn't go very far. When an HD show is around 10gigs per hour and an SD show is 5, it adds up quick.

edit: while your computer may choke on the 1080p sample files you've tried, it's possible they won't choke on 1080i if you watch them with one of the lesser deinterlacing methods or if your TV can do the deinterlacing. The low-cpu-usage methods can lose a lot of resolution, but it's still based on an HD source and would still look good.

Just have to get a digital card and see what happens.