[mythtv-users] A card that really needs drivers

[Brian Wood]

On Feb 10, 2007, at 9:46 PM, Alex Halovanic wrote:

> This was discussed a few months ago in the Knoppmyth mailing list.  It
> seems that it will only record non-protected HDCP-compliant content,
> which will probably amount to only your local HD programming, which we
> can already usually get over firewire from cable boxes.  Secondly,
> this is *uncompressed* HD video (which is what a real digital video
> editor would use); so we're talking something like 80 gB for a one
> hour show.  While I'd love to buy some more hard drives, I'm not sure
> I could justify the massive array needed to use one of these for tv.
>
> On 2/10/07, Dan Ritter <dsr-myth at tao.merseine.nu> wrote:
>> http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/
>>
>> HDMI input and output, 1080I and 720P, on a PCI-E 1x card for
>> $250.
>>

It might also be able to grab the output of some satellite receivers,  
hard to say as there's not a lot of tech info on that site.

But your 80GB for one hour is optimistic, according to their own site:

"10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr."

and if you want 1080p:

"10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 60i = 237 per/sec, or 834 GB per/hr."

Better start looking at some hard drives, and not IDE ones either :-)

This might be practical for putting together 2 or 3 minute clips,  
with perhaps 15-20 minutes of footage to start with, but it's not  
practical for a media storage system.

Of course you could try and compress the full-bandwidth video with  
your CPU, if oyu could manage to capture it you could compress slower  
than real time, but all of a sudden quad-core starts to make sense.

Reminds me of where the SD Avid systems were 10 - 12 years ago, when  
you'd go have lunch while the system did its thing :-)

Still, it is interesting, and we will no doubt see more and better  
things soon.