[mythtv-users] Re: Crazy idea for cheap HDTV tuner card

[Cory Papenfuss]

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Michael T. Dean wrote:

> Jason Gabriele wrote:
>
>> maybe im not understanding you right but would it be cheap at all if
>> you needed 150GB/hour? i mean you would have to buy another drive(s) to
>> do any recording at all unless you just watched live tv with it.
>> wouldnt buying a new hard drive cost as much as an HDTV decoder card?
>> 
> It may not be that cheap (now), but in 349 days, it might be the only option 
> available for Linux* ( http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/ ).  In other words, 
> it definitely sounds like a good idea to work on now--before there are any 
> DMCA implications that might dissuade people from performing the work.

 	The more I read about the broadcast flag ruling, the more I realize 
that it's a futile effort.  Sure, for off-the-shelf settop boxes, recorders, 
etc, it'll do the same thing that Macrovision for VHS did.  It prevented 
the average user from copying recordings, but didn't prevent determined folks
from doing it.  There will be a plethora of imported products and hacks to 
commercial products, but my favorite is the grass-roots one software radio.

 	The ruling is getting awfully close to the engineering of the whole 
mess.  The thing is, anyone equipped with an RF tuner and a ADC can demodulate 
any type of signal they want (see gnuradio).  All they're regulating is the 
types of digital outputs the demodulator can have.  The demodulator can be 
done with a COTS demod chip like (pcHDTV's OREN), since even flag-adhering 
products must have the real stream available somehow.  It can also be done with 
FPGA hardware, or offline (currently slowly) like I suggested in my original 
post on this.

 	I'm still thinking that the gnuradio is the right direction for this. 
Market the product as a "high-performance" FM radio receiver (that happens to 
have a 40MHz ADC and fast FPGA on board)... upgrade the firmware and presto.

>
> Besides, as CPU technology progresses, systems will eventually be able to 
> receive, process, and encode the signal real-time.  After all, it wasn't that 
> many years ago that real-time MPEG-4 encoding of DVD-quality video wasn't 
> possible...
>

 	Sure... that's why I thought it was a nifty idea to begin with.  It may 
not be feasible right now to do anything close to real-time demodulation on a 
COTS PC, but programmable hardware definately can.  It'll be an interesting 
ride to see where all this goes.

-Cory