Plans for HDTV..?

[barkers123]

I'd like to understand a little more about HD on GBPVR. Mostly my question is about HD-DVD/Blu Ray playback, since I'm in the UK where HD is just Sky or cable. So...

- Can GBPVR playback HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disks today (with some tweaking/plugins)..?
- Will GBPVR+XP be capable of this, or will it need all the new Vista media foundation stuff..? (and if so, will GBPVR be moving to Vista only..?)
- What sort of video card/processing requirements are likely to be needed to support the horsepower/DRM..?
- Any ideas on handling broadcast HD, or will all the nasty content protection mean this is going to be an end to home-build PVR fun..?

It could be a while before I start work building my HD system - I don't think my current PC is going to hack it but I think it could help people if they are planning a new system build now.

Apologies if this is answered elsewhere...

[sub]

Plans for HDTV..?

GB-PVR is pretty good on the HDTV front, and is able to live tv and record/playback both highdef MPEG2 as used in US/Oz, or highdef MPEG4/h.264 which is starting to appear in a lot of other countries (HD trials by BBC, Sweden, France, New Zealand, Estonia etc).

Mostly my question is about HD-DVD/Blu Ray playback...

Unlike directshow today which provided nice interchangable components for playback of DVDs etc, Microsoft has specified applications should use Media Foundation for BluRay/HD-DVD (primarily to give the DRM and secure display path stuff). Some early player components are semi based on directshow, but unfortunately not usable from a simple graph so cant be used in GB-PVR.

Its unlikely you'll be able to put a BluRay/HD-DVD disk in the drive and play it from inside GB-PVR in the near future. The closest you can probably get is ripping the movie to the hard disk (tools like AnyDVD HD etc), then playing it from their with the appropriate directshow filters installed. This will let you watch the movie, but no menus.

[barkers123]

Thanks... just as a bit of a wild question to any UK users out there...

Has anyone tried receiving Sky digital transmission (HD or otherwise) into GBPVR..? Several of the channels are available as free-to-air transmission and I'm sure I have read somewhere that you can get them using a dish and a DVB-S decoder card.

I understand that Channel 4 and ITV are going to start broadcasting in HD early next year. Not sure if I am enough of a hacker to try it but I do have an old Sky dish in the garage...

[philg]

I have used GBPVR to record from a standard Sky digibox for over a year. Hauppauge PVR 150 conected via a SCART to composite adaptor. The digibox was controled via the PVR 150 IR tx but now I use a serial Redeye device which gives me more control options. Not tried recording in HD.

[gkreis]

I just bought my HDTV and I was hoping to see a discussion of your question about the future of building your own PVR. I am reading very poor reviews of the content provider's DVRs and they don't have the flexibility of a PC, but I was hoping to see some folks share their configurations and strategies.

My PC is an overclocked AMD-XP 2200+ and it can handle SD just fine for playback (though now with the HDTV I am seeing the dreaded interlace lines). So if there is a future in it, I'll build a dual processor box and get to it.

[jksmurf]

GB-PVR is pretty good on the HDTV front, and is able to live tv and record/playback both highdef MPEG2 as used in US/Oz, or highdef MPEG4/h.264 which is starting to appear in a lot of other countries (HD trials by BBC, Sweden, France, New Zealand, Estonia etc).

The DMB-T I spoke about in the other thread will also do HD, they are rolling that out end Dec 07, so lets hope we can add Hong Kong (China) to that list soon :-)

[sub]

To be honest, I suspect you'll be waiting a while for Microsoft to add DMB-T tuning to the BDA spec. Knowing them they'll add it in about four years and it'll only be available on the successor to Vista

Lets just hope that any DMB-T device manufacturers make BDA drivers that just appear to be a DVB-T device or something similar. Thats probably the best hope for getting support in a timely fashion.