HD cable / digital cable

[kg6ejp]

I currently have COX communications digital cable coming into my house.  They give free upgrades to HD cable if you rent their box. Will the standard LinuxMCE need the HD-cable box to get hd programming or is that all handled in the core/md?

I am still drawing up the plan for my house and have not decided to "home brew" or go simple with a fire engine.

[tkmedia]

If you want premium channels HBO Show Time etc you will need a cable box (anything encrypted).

A HDHomeRun connected to your lan and the cable from your cable provider will get you HD Clear QAM Channels for free NBC CBS ABC PBS etc. The best part (No CableHD subsription required)

Also the HDHomerun has two ports and one can be connected to an OTA antenna Also Free Stations. All in Glorius HD.

[Matthew]

I currently have COX communications digital cable coming into my house.  They give free upgrades to HD cable if you rent their box. Will the standard LinuxMCE need the HD-cable box to get hd programming or is that all handled in the core/md?

I am still drawing up the plan for my house and have not decided to "home brew" or go simple with a fire engine.

AFAICT, LMCE with an HD capture card will use the unencrypted (free) channels on your incoming HD cable service. If you want LMCE to do anything with the encrypted channels, you have to pay for them to be unencrypted by your HD cable box (or get a free package, if that's what they're offering when you rent their box), but (again, AFAICT) LMCE can't input the decrypted channels - it can only control the cablebox, changing channels on its way directly from your cablebox to your TV. That's what HDMI is all about.

But maybe I'm wrong - maybe if your cablebox has a digital (video) out that's not HDMI, like Firewire, maybe LMCE can get the decrypted HD channels direct from the cablebox, and then LMCE can send it to your TV (via MD and a HD video card). Along the way it could record it. But I haven't seen anyone say that can be done in this forum. Anyone?

[ddamron]

Iaye Karumba!

Matthew, do you know of ANY well priced HD CAPTURE CARDS? 

Didn't think so.

If you STB has a DIGITAL out (like Firewire, USB2, or Ethernet.. and possibly a HD connection)
then you stand a chance of capturing HD.  If your cablebox does NOT have these ports, you best option AT THIS TIME is capturing using a standard capture card which will give you SD quality, not HD.
Encrypted signals MAY be restricted on digital ports.

HTH

Dan

[blackoper]

well I do.. the intensity pro not hardware based though.. it needs a linux driver, but it could be functional if you had a fast enough processor and some storage for it

[Matthew]

well I do.. the intensity pro not hardware based though.. it needs a linux driver, but it could be functional if you had a fast enough processor and some storage for it

Whoa - that device has an HDMI-in port, which I've never seen on the market before. They also sell a basic version of the Intensity, which doesn't have the analog outs of the Pro, but costs only $233. I don't know what you mean by "not hardware based". And what would the processor have to do, other than transfer the captured video to storage?

What I wonder is whether that device could be used to wrap regular data inside the HDMI encoding, for a 10.2Gbps output stream between PCs (instead of a 10-Gb ethernet). One-way, and perverse, but if the card can turn around HDMI over its host's PCI-e, and the host's CPU is fast enough, it could be an interesting hack (ethernet over HDMI, a hacker's answer to HDMI over ethernet).

Update: I just got email from the retailer: no Linux drivers. Which (probably) limits its hackability. But maybe whoever in this community got I think Via to do something special for LMCE could talk Black Magic into a Linux driver. It does seem to be the only "hdmi capture" card out there. But there is a Mac driver, so a Linux driver might be only a "corporate policy" away. Especially if some of the people talking in this community about modifying the openchrome drivers for UI2 could work on getting this device working. I'd buy them a card if they did.

[hari]

Whoa - that device has an HDMI-in port, which I've never seen on the market before.

there are many HD frame grabbers with HDMI-in ports. Your problem will be the HDCP. Of course there are devices to strip it but they may be illegal to use.
There are also HD-SDI mods for some STB's. You grab the signal before decoding. SDI-HD in cards are available relatively cheap. Better for your cpu, too. You don't have to reencode the signal.

What I wonder is whether that device could be used to wrap regular data inside the HDMI encoding, for a 10.2Gbps output stream between PCs (instead of a 10-Gb ethernet). One-way, and perverse, ...

that tdms over rj45 crap is of course two way. Examples of usage are CEC and DDC.
You would only have point to point without switching equipment

[Matthew]

Whoa - that device has an HDMI-in port, which I've never seen on the market before.

there are many HD frame grabbers with HDMI-in ports.

Are there any others with Linux drivers?

Your problem will be the HDCP. Of course there are devices to strip it but they may be illegal to use.
There are also HD-SDI mods for some STB's. You grab the signal before decoding. SDI-HD in cards are available relatively cheap. Better for your cpu, too. You don't have to reencode the signal.

If the captured (and stored) data is encrypted with HDCP, does it matter if it's just being retrieved later as a blob and sent to the card's HDMI out? The TV will receive the data properly HDCP encoded, right? If the intermediary step that the card introduces is just storage, and no operations on the data within the stream, then wouldn't that suffice?

What I wonder is whether that device could be used to wrap regular data inside the HDMI encoding, for a 10.2Gbps output stream between PCs (instead of a 10-Gb ethernet). One-way, and perverse, ...

that tdms over rj45 crap is of course two way. Examples of usage are CEC and DDC.
You would only have point to point without switching equipment

Well, I'm talking about the inverse: 10.2Gbps (minus encapsulation overhead) arbitrary data streamed over the HDMI cable. It's not entirely useless, because ie. the PS3 has HDMI output, which is by far the fastest IO (and #2 in speed SATA has only a single port, so probably unavailable, followed by Gb-e, probably already in use, followed by demultiplexing over multiple 480Mbps USB ports, probably hard to sync...). The HDMI output might be only one way, but it's the only IO that can keep up with the Cell processor's raw speed. Not a video app, but a way to use the PS3 as a Cell data generator, maybe recrunching a large dataset prestored on harddrive against a new, smaller dataset that changes lots of values, sent as a new snapshot to a PC over "HDMI" for further manipulation at slower speeds. Quite a kluge, but a $500 PS3 (plus $225 "HDMI capture" card) would do that specific job at something like 1/10th the cost of a "real" computer, like a $7500 Cell blade workstation. And there are certainly valuable apps that work that way.

[hari]

If the captured (and stored) data is encrypted with HDCP, does it matter if it's just being retrieved later as a blob and sent to the card's HDMI out? The TV will receive the data properly HDCP encoded, right? If the intermediary step that the card introduces is just storage, and no operations on the data within the stream, then wouldn't that suffice?

they key's won't match. HDCP does a handshake every few seconds. If you want to attack HDCP you should collect many device keys But that's another discussion. A consumer will probably get a HDCP "stripper" from some company like Gefen.

Well, I'm talking about the inverse:

i did get that from your last post. If you take the effort to implement ethernet or ip over tdms you could define proper time slots. But as i said it will not scale without switching equipment so i think it is not worth the effort. And for the ps3: i don't think you will get easy bit level access to the tdms interface over the graphic card.

best regards,
Hari

[danielk]

Hauppauge just announced an HD capture card:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080110006038&newsLang=en

Price is only about $250. The speculation is that they are using HD camcorder chips with the appropriate silicon glue. Earlier cards for professional video editing were all in the $1,000 to $10,000 range and consequently no one developed the appropriate drivers for them.

Hauppauge's captures the unencrypted analog HD out available all currently shipping set top boxes, blue-ray players, etc.

Supposedly it will be shipped this quarter, a friend of mine at CES said they had a prototype already so a shipment this quarter or the next is not out of the question.

[PeteK]

Now just watch how quickly the providers try to shut the 'analog hole.'  

[Matthew]

Well, I'm talking about the inverse:

i did get that from your last post. If you take the effort to implement ethernet or ip over tdms you could define proper time slots. But as i said it will not scale without switching equipment so i think it is not worth the effort. And for the ps3: i don't think you will get easy bit level access to the tdms interface over the graphic card.

Maybe I'm being too specific (and inaccurate) by saying "ethernet over HDMI", which would indeed call for some switching. Really what's interesting about a PC HDMI-in is the possibility of wrapping any generic data in HDMI to get it out of the PS3 intact at close to 10Gbps. Ethernet is probably wrong because its packet overhead (and other routing features) would be wasted on a P2P synchronous circuit. Maybe something like FireWire, or just something small enough to just keep the blast of data organized as it flies into the receiving end.

I agree that the RSX TDMS interface is probably locked out by the Hypervisor. But anyone crazy enough to try this stunt could implement TDMS in the Cell, too. However, since Toshiba has now hinted that Cell PCs (maybe with x86, too) are probably coming out this year, the PS3 won't have the compellingly unique price:performance offer that could justify such a coding effort.

[tkmedia]

Hauppauge just announced an HD capture card:
 

So I am hearing we will be able to capture encrypted HD from our cable box if we connect our cable box to this device??

Forgive me if this is obvious

I am little slow sometimes

[Matthew]

Hauppauge just announced an HD capture card:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080110006038&newsLang=en

Price is only about $250. The speculation is that they are using HD camcorder chips with the appropriate silicon glue. Earlier cards for professional video editing were all in the $1,000 to $10,000 range and consequently no one developed the appropriate drivers for them.

Hauppauge's captures the unencrypted analog HD out available all currently shipping set top boxes, blue-ray players, etc.

Supposedly it will be shipped this quarter, a friend of mine at CES said they had a prototype already so a shipment this quarter or the next is not out of the question.

That's Component capture of HD. But is it really HD? This segment made me skeptical:

In addition to high definition ISO standard H.264 recordings, the Hauppauge HD PVR can also create AVCHD recordings, which is the format used on Blu-ray high definition players. As part of the software applications which will be shipped with Hauppauge’s HD encoder, a DVD burning application will be provided which can take AVCHD formatted recordings and burn them onto a conventional DVD disc. These discs can then be played in Blu-ray DVD players. About 2 hours of Blu-ray HD content can be recorded on a 4.7 GByte DVD disk.

I don't think 2h of Blu-Ray HD will fit on a 4.7GB DVD, or Sony wouldn't bother introducing the BD. Which indicates some downsampling less than 1080p/60. Unless I'm missing something...

[colinjones]

Its (AVCHD) a Handycam format - whilst it supports 1080p, when recording to DVD, the standard's bit rate is supposed to be 18Mbps, but apparently most handycams record at considerably lower bit rates. Either way, it can still be 1080p, just that the codec is running at a lower bit rate which means the compression quality is lower. Even at the full 18Mbps, the quality isn't going to be anywhere near a BD which uses a similar codec (both are H264) but at much higher bit rates - I think at least twice that...