[mythtv-users] HDTV over S-video?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/29/2006 07:23 PM, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Mon, 29 May 2006 16:32:16 -0400
> Matt Pilet wrote:
>
>   
>> I too looked into S-video for HD. Unfortunately S-video can only carry a 
>> max of 576i (on average 480i). I own two PVR 150s and had high hopes for 
>> my Mythtv box. These hopes were shattered when I purchased a fantastic 
>> 50" Samsung DLP and my cable provider, Charter Communications, provided 
>> me with a new HD DVR with Firewire, S-video, HDMI, RGB Component Video, 
>> etc... Had I stuck with a regular TV, I probably wouldn't mind too much 
>> but Mythtv cannot come close to my cable provider's DVR in picture 
>> quality. OK, I should clarify myself a little here... Under the current 
>> available hardware Mythtv cannot provide the same quality as Cable co 
>> DVRs. It makes me very angry that we all pay a lot of money for 
>> cable/satellite but we're forced into using their hardware for the 
>> majority of HD content out there. I purchased a firewire card thinking 
>> that I could use it only to find that Charter uses 5c encryption on all 
>> non-analog channels - can't someone crack this for illegitimate use ;) 
>> It's not like we're trying to "steal" free cable, we are PAYING a 
>> premium for it. The cable box should decrypt it and pass it on the 
>> whatever device we're smart enough to throw together. I think a 
>> "loophole" would be to build a card that has RGB component inputs. I 
>> haven't been able to find any such card yet.
>>     
>
>
> something like this card looks like the right hardware for the job (if
> it had a driver of course)
>
> http://www.fi-llc.com/boards/Products/AccuStream170.php
>
> Until you click the "Press Here for information on how to order the AccuStream 170" and discover the price is $2995.00 !!

And you'll be one of the first on your block to buy a couple of cases of 
the new 750GB HDD's since you won't be able to encode the streams to 
MPEG-2 in real-time, you'll have to dump them to disk uncompressed and 
work your way through encoding later.

And, even at $3K, it only does 1600x1200 at 30fps.  720p60 (one of the two 
dominant HDTV formats in the US) is 1280x720 at 60fps.  1080i60 (the other 
dominant format) is 1920x1080 at 30fps (with 60 fields/second).

So, I guess even $3K won't buy you the right hardware for the job.

Mike