[mythtv-users] Direct HD encoding from component....

[David Brieck Jr.]

On Jan 11, 2008 12:41 AM, Chris White <chris at ballisticcats.com> wrote:
> It's coming folks:
>
> "Hauppauge Digital, Inc."..."demonstrated at CES 2008 for the first
> time their 'HD PVR', a USB personal video recorder which can record
> high definition TV video into H.264 in real time."
>
> "The connections to the set top boxes are made via component cables,
> also referred to as 'YPrPb' or the red/blue/green connectors on HD set
> top boxes."
>
> "The HD PVR will be available in Q1 2008, with a suggested retail
> price of $249."
>
> http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080110006038&newsLang=en
>
> Let me just say, yay!
>
> Now how long for a driver ;)
>
>

Found this forum post with additional info:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=974452

Well, someone finally did it. A card that can do realtime hardware
encoding of an HD signal over component analog video. At CES,
Hauppauge is demoing a card that takes advantage of the analog hole
using a hardware x264 encoder that looks quite good.

The hauppauge box was quite interesting. USB connected, it has an
analog component encoder that can encode 720p, 1080i, and yes, 1080p
content in an H.264 format at data rates of 5 to 25 Mbps. This allows
for pretty good quality, though not as good as an R5000. The HD-DVD
disk player output they were encoding looked very good at 9 mbps.

The h.264 profile they are using is blue ray compatible, so a codec
that can playback BR content should be able to play this back too.
They also can take in SPDIF for multichannel audio recording, which is
synced in software to the video. It's fresh out of the engineering
lab, but they claim it will be in production and distribution in a
couple months for $250.

A friend of mine said a bunch of companies are working on this same
type of product, some farther along actually, and so we will likely
see a number of such products soon. The BOM for such a card is likely
sub $50, so the $250 price is high and is likely to come down soon
after there is more competition.

This is an ideal card to capture HD video from a cable or DBS STB over
it's component analog outputs. It appears from comments made on the
Sage forums by Sage staff that they have already been talking to
Hauppauge about this card and will have support for it in Sage TV
soon. Sage already supports x264 playback with a Cyberlink or other
codec, and the HD extender handles x264 playback fine as well, so this
is a great fit for SageTV.

While it's not as good as a R5000-HD which captures the raw digital
bitstream, this will be a good mainstream product that should be very
popular.