[mythtv-users] Beginner Question

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Mon Dec 20 20:19:33 UTC 2004


On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 10:54:32AM -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> 
> Again, AFAIK, there is no consumer-level HD analog capture solution.  
> You can't capture HD over composite or S-Video, and a component video 
> capture card would cost > $USD 1000.  So, *theoretically*, yes, an HD 

These cards are also meant for the camera capture market, I think.
As you note, they are capture, not compression.

For us, it would be far simpler to capture DVI, which is already digital,
and for which decoder chips are available.   DVI can be thought of, at 1080i
as 1.5 gigabits (24 bit colour) from 3 500mbit streams.  Decoding that is
well within the realm of cheap hardware if you make enough of them.


It is, as noted, compression that is the killer.  You can't write 1.5
gibabits except to a striped array of several drives.


Though as I noted in another message, I see it as possible that a cheap
card could downsample the 1080i signal to perhaps 1280 x 540 (almost all
the res of most HDTVs sold today) and then do some basic compression
and if we can get it down to something more like 100 megabits, then you
have a shot at recording it -- for immediate post-compression of course.


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