Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 22:45:46 -0700 From: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> Cc: Tim Pozar <pozar@lns.com>, freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hauppage WinTV-D Digital TV receiver Message-ID: <20000203224546.A58186@panzer.kdm.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002040002300.23833-100000@picnic.mat.net>; from chuckr@picnic.mat.net on Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 12:04:14AM -0500 References: <20000203092757.A67002@lns.com> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002040002300.23833-100000@picnic.mat.net>
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On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 00:04:14 -0500, Chuck Robey wrote: > On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Tim Pozar wrote: > > > http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/html/wintv-d.pdf > > > > Anyone have any experience with this card? I thought instead of > > getting the regular card I would try this one as we have HDTV in > > this area now. > > Don't miss the fact that while it does decode from 480i format to 1080i > format, it bring it down to 480i format. In other words, you won't be > able to tell it's any better quality. Personally, I think the real McCoy > (real HDTV rendered without bit loss) may be in the future, and I don't > want to buy this half measure. The other question is, what chipset does it use, and are there programming specs? The main chip in there has a heat sink on top in the picture, so you can't tell what it is. I agree that it would be better to have full resolution HD. Of course it can't be done (using the method the Brooktree chips use, and the method that this Hauppauge board uses) with 32 bit 33MHz PCI. It would take up a significant fraction of the available bandwidth with 64 bit 33MHz PCI. It becomes more of a possibility with 64 bit 66MHz PCI, though. (1920 * 1080 * 24bpp = 6.2MB/frame, * 30 frames/sec = 187MB/sec) FWIW, professional uncompressed HD runs over 1.5Gbps serial digital links. There are only a couple of ways that I can think of that you could do HD on most PCs out there today: (i.e. PCs with just 32 bit 33MHz PCI) - Have a tuner board that sends the ATSC MPEG stream over the PCI bus to the graphics board, which would also need an integrated MPEG decompression chip. - Put the tuner and MPEG decompressor on the graphics board. Then there's the fact that most monitors don't have the horizontal resolution to fit 1920 pixels. So you'd have to downconvert it somewhat anyway to fit it in a window. (Interestingly enough, you can display HD on a standard monitor with coax inputs -- most decent monitors have the bandwidth to do it.) Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@kdm.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-multimedia" in the body of the message
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