ATSC capture/streaming card for PC?

Hello fellow HDTV/DTV enthusiasts.

I'm currently in the process of evaluating my homebrew DVR options and
would like to record my OTA programming. I know that there are quite
a few ATSC capture cards out there for this purpose. While capturing
this digital signal requires little horsepower (just write bits to
disk), I don't currently have a PC capable of decoding the ATSC
signals for display on my HD TV.

What I was wondering is, since ATSC is just a digital signal stream
and since my TV already has the hardware capable of decoding this
stream, is there anything out there that just lets me stream this
digital signal back from disk, through my RG6 to my ATSC tuner on my
TV? To me, the obvious benefits of this would be that a fairly
"mature" PC (older machine like a P3 perhaps) could be used
successfully as a DVR.

I've done some Googling on this but haven't really come up with
anything useful (other than multi-thousand dollar hardware meant for
professional broadcasters).

Any insight into this is appreciated in advance.

Thanks!

VBOX Cat's Eye 3560 ATSC Terrestrial HDTV Receiver, USB-A-3560

Requires a USB 2 port and Windows. Core Duo processor and SATA 3GB recommended
for glitch free recording. An older PC can't hack it, there is too much data to
process per second. I have used this with beyondtv for 1.5 years with great
results. Beyondtv includes a program listing feature that is indispensable.


Any insight into this is appreciated in advance.

Thanks!

On Jan 21, 4:02 pm, root wrote:
VBOX Cat's Eye 3560 ATSC Terrestrial HDTV Receiver, USB-A-3560

Requires a USB 2 port and Windows. Core Duo processor and SATA 3GB recommended
for glitch free recording. An older PC can't hack it, there is too much data to
process per second. I have used this with beyondtv for 1.5 years with great
results. Beyondtv includes a program listing feature that is indispensable.

Any insight into this is appreciated in advance.

Thanks!

I took a look at this card and it appears to be the same type of card
that is widely available (not the type of card I'm searching for).
As I mentioned, I am looking for a card that does no decoding (which
would require a powerful machine) but rather moves ATSC bits to disk
and then out through another RG6 connector at a later point in time,
to the Antenna port of my HD set. I'm starting to get the impression
that no such device exists... yet.

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:57:33 -0800, AggieSawDust wrote:

What I was wondering is, since ATSC is just a digital signal stream and
since my TV already has the hardware capable of decoding this stream, is
there anything out there that just lets me stream this digital signal
back from disk, through my RG6 to my ATSC tuner on my TV? To me, the
obvious benefits of this would be that a fairly "mature" PC (older
machine like a P3 perhaps) could be used successfully as a DVR.

You can buy ATSC transmitters, but it would be much cheaper just to
upgrade your PC with a new MB/ram/video and PSU (if needed). By todays
standards it doesn't take much to display HD. I'm always upgrading mine
and selling the older parts. About to replace a socket 754 A64 3200+ with
a newer dual core MB and cpu. I don't know why I do this other than the
stuff is cheaper than dirt these days. Before I put the A64 3200+ in it,
it had a sempron 2800+ that worked fine too. The new board has onboard
video I'll use, so I'll sell the the old MB/ram/video card either locally
or on ebay for whatever I can get for it, which probably won't be more
than $60 if that. There's all kind of deals on ebay for this older but
perfectly capable cpu gear.
I wouldn't recommend this, but I've diplayed HD using a Duron 1600
clocked down to 1200MHz using XvMC (in FX200 vid card) in mythtv. And the
Duron 1600 clocked at 2GHz worked without XvMC, so you can get by with a
slower type cpu if you have to. But today, you shouldn't have to.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:02:50 -0700, root wrote:

VBOX Cat's Eye 3560 ATSC Terrestrial HDTV Receiver, USB-A-3560

Requires a USB 2 port and Windows. Core Duo processor and SATA 3GB
recommended for glitch free recording. An older PC can't hack it, there
is too much data to process per second. I have used this with beyondtv
for 1.5 years with great results. Beyondtv includes a program listing
feature that is indispensable.

He wants to transmit ATSC over rf, not receive it. To receive it he can
use an old Air2PC PCI card that cost about $25. I've got 6 of them and
they work fine. And for recording, they'd probably work on an old 486.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

On Jan 21, 10:57*am, AggieSawDust wrote:
Hello fellow HDTV/DTV enthusiasts.

I'm currently in the process of evaluating my homebrew DVR options
and
would like to record my OTA programming. *I know that there are
quite
a few ATSC capture cards out there for this purpose. *While
capturing
this digital signal requires little horsepower (just write bits to
disk), I don't currently have a PC capable of decoding the ATSC
signals for display on my HD TV.

What I was wondering is, since ATSC is just a digital signal stream
and since my TV already has the hardware capable of decoding this
stream, is there anything out there that just lets me stream this
digital signal back from disk, through my RG6 to my ATSC tuner on
my
TV? *To me, the obvious benefits of this would be that a fairly
"mature" PC (older machine like a P3 perhaps) could be used
successfully as a DVR.

I've done some Googling on this but haven't really come up with
anything useful (other than multi-thousand dollar hardware meant
for
professional broadcasters).

Any insight into this is appreciated in advance.

Thanks!

Cheaper way to do this and you likely have most of what you need
already. PCs don't cost any serious money anymore, at least for what
you need for HDTV. I started with a Sempron 2500 3 years ago with a
160 gig drive (you want WAY more than that), an ATI 9200 video card
and an ATI HDTV Wonder tuner card and 512 megs of RAM and a DVD DL
drive. That machine has morphed into an Athlon XP 3200 with an ATI
9600XT video card, 1 gig RAM and a 500 gig disc. The RF remote control
makes the PC very closely resemble a TV. Does it screw up now and
then? Yes, but not very often - maybe 2-3% of the time if that. I make
more mistakes by forgetting to turn it on though the main TV PC now
has a timer start at 7:30 M-TH and noon Fridays so even that is much
less

Meanwhile the other 2 computers also got HDTV Wonder boards and a few
hours a week all 3 are happily recording OTA HD. The vanilla network
router runs HD content across the LAN to any of the other PCs though
only one has the 50" DLP as a 'monitor'. Bulk storage is done with USB
drives. I have 3 500 gig units, a 320 and a 160 and yes, you can play
HD content directly off a USB drive with no problems. An hour show
shrinks to 42:30 after removing the commercials and the file size
varies from 5.5 down to 2.3 gigs for the 42 minutes meaning a 500 gig
drive holds around 100 1 hour shows for $110 and of course is re-
usable.

I wouldn't bother with an ATSC modulator but is has been discussed in
the last year so you can check it out.

GG

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:42:51 -0800, AggieSawDust wrote:

As I mentioned, I am looking for a card that does no decoding (which
would require a powerful machine) but rather moves ATSC bits to disk and
then out through another RG6 connector at a later point in time, to the
Antenna port of my HD set. I'm starting to get the impression that no
such device exists... yet.

Yes, they've been around for some time. But you really don't want one.
Search the web and you can find them. But I doubt you can afford one.

1 - 10 of about 20,900 for 8vsb modulator

http://www.advanceddigital.ca/products/dvb/tvb590.php

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

Yes, they've been around for some time. But you really don't want one.
Search the web and you can find them. But I doubt you can afford one.

1 - 10 of about 20,900 for 8vsb modulator

http://www.advanceddigital.ca/products/dvb/tvb590.php


Thanks for all the responses. I was already thinking that new PC
hardware will definitely be the most economical way to go. However,
this could also turn into a fun project. The way I look at this, the
incoming signal is already correctly modulated. If all I'm doing is
writing that modulated stream of bits to disk, I could output that
same, unmodified, signal stream at a later time (time shifted) through
an RG6 connection. I wouldn't need to purchase modulating hardware
(since the signal is already modulated right?), just something that I
could pass that same digital stream out through to get to my TV.

Anyway, thanks again for the input.

AggieSawDust wrote (in part):

Thanks for all the responses. I was already thinking that new PC
hardware will definitely be the most economical way to go. However,
this could also turn into a fun project. The way I look at this, the
incoming signal is already correctly modulated.

Incoming to the RF input on the tuner, yes.

If all I'm doing is
writing that modulated stream of bits to disk, I could output that
same, unmodified, signal stream at a later time (time shifted) through
an RG6 connection. I wouldn't need to purchase modulating hardware
(since the signal is already modulated right?), just something that I
could pass that same digital stream out through to get to my TV.

But that isn't what you're doing. The tuner demodulates the signal
before passing it to the computer. What you save to the hard drive is
not modulated, nor could it be. It is still encoded to the MPEG-2
compression format (for broadcast and cable) but the modulation (8VSB
for broadcast, QAM for cable) is stripped off.

Normally the bitstream is decoded to uncompressed digital before
sending it to the display via a DVI or HDMI connection, or
additionally converted to analog for a component connection. That is
often done by software on the computer, perhaps with hardware help
from the video card, and that requires a fairly fast computer and/or
recent video card. An alternative that works very well on older,
slower computers is a tuner with it's own decoder and an output
independent of the computer's video system. The MyHD MDP-130 does
this, but it's nearing the end of its support cycle, and it doesn't
play well with some newer computers or operating systems. Windows XP
on a single-core 800 MHz or faster processor is ideal. You could
probably get away with an even slower processor.

A few displays, notably from Toshiba, have had IEEE-1394 ports
intended to connect to D-VHS recorders. There is software to make a
computer emulate D-VHS and send the still-encoded bitstream to the
display, which then does the decoding.

Another possibility is a separate box such as the TVIX HD Network
Media Player which can accept bitstreams in various encoding formats
over Ethernet from a computer and decode them to HDMI or component.
I've had no experience with them (though I'm tempted) and don't
suggest that TVIX is the best choice, just the one I thought of first.

The only consumer-oriented ATSC modulator I've ever heard of worked
only with a now-obsolete model of Dish Network receiver. For more
discussion of that and other ATSC modulators, including a link to a
company (DVEO) selling modulators on PCI cards, go he
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=851974

I couldn't find prices anywhere on DVEO's site. Guess they figure
that if you have to ask, . . .

Del Mibbler

On Jan 22, 9:55*am, AggieSawDust wrote:
Yes, they've been around for some time. But you really don't want one.
Search the web and you can find them. But I doubt you can afford one.

1 - 10 of about 20,900 for 8vsb modulator

http://www.advanceddigital.ca/products/dvb/tvb590.php

Thanks for all the responses. *I was already thinking that new PC
hardware will definitely be the most economical way to go. *However,
this could also turn into a fun project. *The way I look at this, the
incoming signal is already correctly modulated. *If all I'm doing is
writing that modulated stream of bits to disk, I could output that
same, unmodified, signal stream at a later time (time shifted) through
an RG6 connection. *I wouldn't need to purchase modulating hardware
(since the signal is already modulated right?), just something that I
could pass that same digital stream out through to get to my TV.

Anyway, thanks again for the input.

The incoming ATSC signal rides on a UHF carrier frequency which the
tuner removes and the computer never sees. The MPEG2 data stream saved
to disk is at baseband, not UHF, and the TV's antenna input can't use
it unless it's modulated back onto an RF carrier frequency. The TV's
other inputs (HDMI, S-Video, component, etc) are closer to what the
computer handles.

I put together a minimal cheap HD system from an old 2.2GHz Dell
Dimension 2400 and a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR950 USB tuner. It will record
and play back HDTV on the 15" monitor and has a pause mode with the
delayed playback function you asked for. It isn't a -good- system but
it does work, most of the time.

Jim Wilkins