High Definition TV tuner card?

[mahsah]

Anyone know of a TV-tuner card that can tune into/capture High-def (or even standard def) digital signals captured in the US? Would I need a specific antenna to go with it or anything?

[Turtleggjp]

I use DVICO's Fusion HDTV cards:

http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/Products/

I've mainly used it with unencrypted cable (QAM) but it does work with antenna too. I'm stuck with cable though since I live in a canyon and can't get good reception. Software can be a little quirky, but as long as it works it works well! I'd suggest grabbing the latest drivers off their website though. This is a tuner only, and does not hardware accelerate by itself, but if you have a good enough video card (DXVA) you should have no trouble with playback. If you do need a hardware boost, you might consider the MyHD cards from another company. Can't vouch for them though...

Matt.

P.S. OMG! My Fusion card now comes in PCI Express x1 too!

http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/eng/Products/fusion5express.aspx

[ilovejedd]

I have an ATI HDTV Wonder PCI Card which captures free off-the-air HD broadcasts. An antenna came with the capture card but it's not very good so you might want to buy a separate one depending on your location. Antenna's good enough for me since I live close enough to KTLA-CW station and get around 80% signal.

So far so good. Thankfully, I didn't get any of the headaches I've read about regarding driver installation. The ATI MultiMedia Center software is an extreme bloatware, and I never use it to watch. Instead, I downloaded and use WatchHDTV (http://watchhdtv.net/). It's a very small program which doesn't consume too much system resources. WatchHDTV also works with several other HDTV capture cards.

[CWR03]

I've seen the ATI HDTV Wonder kit at a store, but within a week of its release every single one on the shelf had been marked "purchased and returned." There are still two on their shelf that have been there for more than a year.

[mahsah]

Thanks for the suggestions, but are all ATSC the over the air broadcasts in mpeg-2? Or are they compressed in this way by the capture card? If the capture card does the compression, is there such a thing as a h264 encoder card? Or would I have to capture the video in mpeg-2 and encode later?

Also, I have an antenna on my roof that I use for regular broatcasts; can I use this for HD/DTV ones too?

[Turtleggjp]

Thanks for the suggestions, but are all ATSC the over the air broadcasts in mpeg-2? Or are they compressed in this way by the capture card? If the capture card does the compression, is there such a thing as a h264 encoder card? Or would I have to capture the video in mpeg-2 and encode later?

I believe most of the stations here in the US still use MPEG2, though I have heard some people discussing HDTV channels in H.264/AVC format. It could be that other countries (such as the UK) have already converted to H.264/AVC instead of MPEG2, but either way, the encoding is done prior to broadcasting, and you tuner card will not do any encoding. This makes recording a breeze, since all it has to do is write the stream it has tuned to your hard disk. From there, you can process it down to the format of your choice (which can be a challenge in itself).

Also, I have an antenna on my roof that I use for regular broatcasts; can I use this for HD/DTV ones too?

Yes, there are no special HDTV antennas. You may need to make sure your antenna can receive UHF, but that's the only special requirement you should have to worry about.

[mahsah]

Sweet! Thanks.

[Turtleggjp]

...but either way, the encoding is done prior to broadcasting...

On that note, who does do the encoding anyway? Let's say for example when SNL airs on NBC. Is it encoded at the NBC studio in New York, and then that encoded stream is sent out everywhere? Or do they send out the show in some other format, and all the different local NBC stations encode it themselves? If that is the case, then what about the NBC-HD channel I get from my cable company vs. the one that is broadcast over the air?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Most broadcast DTV has been through several encoding phases, and they're usually hardware (1 pass) CBR MPEG-2 Encoders - for transport across satellite transponders or microwave links...

You never know for sure, but it's not generally the best possible quality!

[Turtleggjp]

I figured as much. My NBC-HD channel used to be pretty lousy in that it would get really blocky at times. It has been doing better lately, but I guess I was wondering if I might get better results by pulling it off the air instead of through the cable company, or if the two streams would be identical in terms of the MPEG2 encoding.

[mahsah]

Yeah, I certainly doubt they are using anything other then CBR Mpeg 2 encoding (which still looks better then regular TV).

I, however, pine for the day when I see an NBC tech guy trying to ask in doom9 about how to get x264 to work at high bitrates and mux into a transport stream :)