Hollywood+ Filter/SDK Petition?

[Lord Sandwich]

Hollywood+/DXR3 owners: what are your thoughts on a petition to get Sigma Designs to release DirectShow filters and/or an SDK for the Hollywood Plus?

It seems to me that the H+ has a lot of other potential uses outside of what the current software allows. Some of my ideas are:


FAST MPEG-2 seeking within video editing suites
Faster MPEG-2 frameserving/transcoding
Smooth 50-60 fps interlaced video output, even with non-MPEG-2 files
More stable W2K/XP tweaked drivers
General TV-out (aka DivXPlus)


And of course, the ability to watch MPEG-2 video on a monitor without the stupid pass-through cable. :-)

Comments anyone? Note that this is all just plain conjecture, and I wouldn't know how to code anything even if they personally handed me all their source. :D

[macdaddy]

What about the person who wrote the hprender filter? Is that filter's source code available? The directshow resize filters facilitated this process as well...

[Lord Sandwich]

Never heard of of hprender. Does it work well?

[Emp3r0r]

this topic has always made me scratch my head and wonder why sigma designs doesn't have more people working on their driver dev team. Seems they have never released a non-beta version of the H+ driver. I just came to the conclusion that they are stupid and not a decent company.

[Lord Sandwich]

Good hardware, though. :) I suppose the Netstream filters could somehow be hacked to work with the H+, since a few people have supposedly gotten it to work by messing with various driver installs.

[macdaddy]

Sorry about the lag in answering the question, LS. I didn't see that this thread had any action on it...

You can read about the hprender filter here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13976&highlight=hprender). There is also a directshow bicubic resize filter that works, too (link (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13578&highlight=bicubic+directshow+filter))...

I agree, the hardware is top-notch. I hope this new Xcard follows along the same path (hardware superiority). Again, it is only worthwhile for NTSC sets. There are better options for HDTV output. I don't have the money-yet-for a display device like that, so the Xcard is what I am looking for. Hopefully we will be able to access the directshow filters, with graphedit/zoomplayer. I also we have the option to pass ac3out via the installed soundcard (as opposed to only using the sigma card's S/PDIFout jack)...

I think some of the developers might lurk around these forums, so maybe they will respond directly. The thing is scheduled to ship at the end of the month (hopefully my case will be painted by then)...
_____

Edit: I forgot to mention support for LCD displays (like this (http://www.matrixorbital.com/products/blc2041.htm) one)...

[Emp3r0r]

@macdaddy: If you get the x-card, or actually figure out more about it, let us know.

[macdaddy]

I've already pre-ordered it. When it arrives, and I can check it out, I will let you know (Sigma says it will ship on the 28th of this month)...

[Emp3r0r]

great, now I have that and sonique 2 to look forward to.