Wha...... what///// you mean to tell me there is a video “commodity”, a mere “thing" that exists everywhere but which you can't get recorded on DVD?!?!? WTF! Arrgh! The hurt! The pain!! Yes pain! I am stricken. Is this yet another subversive political ploy? Is it that Rove guy again? Can no one do anything, anything at all to stop this progressive decay of humanity!?!??

Okay really, I poked around on the web. Now before I get into this, in my blissful ignorance I thought that HDTV further along than it is. A while ago I was looking for a HT Tivo and thought that perhaps they were just late comers to a vast step up in resolution. They are Tivo, after all and struggling to survive. But really they are on track with the industry.

So Google has some top articles and says that Motorola, Samsung, Sharp and, I'm sure almost everyone make HD TV recorder and players. In the computer world, Mac in OS X also has record and play capability for HD TV. Other than Mac, the HD recorders are akin to a next generation VHS recorder, complete with new tape format, or they exist as hard drive based.Hard drive is mighty fine but functionally difficult to impossible to really maintain a collection with.

But what of cinema-movies-the antiquated term feature films? I thought you could buy/rent all the latest movies not only in letterbox format, but also in HD? WTF why no media for this? Is the whole rental business gonna die in favor of on demand? What of the, er, T&A industries? No HD money shots in the future?

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

If you like component wait until you see a display with a DVI or HDCP interconnect. Keeping a digital signal from a DVD or HDTV source all digital up to your display will really knock you out. Anytime you convert from digital to analog and back you lose detail. This is a factor with Digital based display technology like DLP or LCD. The side affect is that if the source is flawed you will see every detail. Sometimes the conversion to and from analog will make the image warmer, but you are actually losing detail.

DVD at the source is non-HD. There are DVD players that upconvert the standard def resolution to Hi-Def. These players actually output a hi-res digital signal at 1080 or similar rate. The software to do this is what separates the good from the bad.

I would suggest checking out avsforum.com (the mercedesshop of the a/v world).

Unless you're willing to pony up some big bucks on real video processing equiptment, these 1080 upconverted images are not really all that impressive. Even worse if you're running DLP, as it's inherent weaknesses are thrust directly into the forefront. I haven't seen the new DLP chipset that came out this month as it was supposed to remedy these issues from previous models.

This upconverting is to HD what Dolby Pro Logic is to true 5.1 (or 6.1, 7.1, etc).

Also, the DVI hookup is THE way to go on a good HD source. Very cool stuff.

EDIT- just found a great link for you to check out:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=423609

Yes, the All In Wonder card is capable of recording TV. It was one of the primary reasons for buying the card. I have pretty much reduced an entire rack of A/V equipment down to three components, the PC, TV, and receiver.

That is the good. ATI's software however, has not worked as advertised. I've had major quality issues with video, despite using the DVD quality setting (MPEG), and have had issues with a known 4GB size barrier for movies. Something has gotten corrupted a couple of months ago as well, making the DVD player no longer play sound. The same problem has also transferred to anything recorded with the PVR software.

I do have the latest drivers, that were released just weeks ago, but have yet to get them installed. It takes a while to get stuff set up, and requires a second, regular monitor to be hooked up during the process.

Due to these issues, and ATI's blatant customer be damned support system, I cannot recommend it to anyone. ATI's phone support is a pay by the minute 900 number, even for brand new customers with products under warranty. Your only other recourse is through email, in which all you get is their tin can reply of looking up your issue in the FAQs, and are issued a case number for your email. When you respond that you've already done this, they ignore the reply, and never respond further to case numbers.

If the competition would come out with something that would give this card, and its features a run for the money, I'd rip this thing out in a millisecond.

4GB is the absolute RAM limit for 16-bit addressing. Not much can be done there until the technology starts using the 32-bit methodology, which is only now being offered to server manufacturers. So it's a couple of years down the road...

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2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
2001 CLK430 Cabriolet (80K) - Wife's car
2005 BMW 645CI (138K) - My daily driver
2016 Mustang (32K) - Daughter's car

Phaedrusrus,

thanks for the links. I will check it out when I get a little time. Until then, have you, or anyone else seen a media on the horizon that will play HD resolution. Any hints as to which what the industry is gonna go?

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Thanks for the tip! I remember looking at what i'm pretty sure is the All In Wonder about a year or 2 ago, thinking of using it and a PC instead of a Tivo, but we went with the Tivo. Funny because you'd think this a natural outgrowth of the PC industry. Yet while Mac has at least part of the problem worked out well enough, the PC world lags.....

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Good one! Even though i knew of the 4 GB limit, i wouldn't have put that as the reason for this problem.

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Precisely. Linux users don't have this issue with their multimedia systems.

I'll bite. Are there any? Also why would you need that much RAM? Why couldn't you just dump some to disk after a few seconds. I guess a better q might be what is the data rate of video or HD video for that matter?

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

My neighbour has been toying with the Linux systems. I don't know much about them, just that this 4GB barrier does not exist on the Linux based programs.

I'm not sure what the deal is with the winblows 4GB issues. It's actually not a memory issue. The multimedia box I use, only has a half gig of memory. The problem is storage. In MPEG format, the DVD quality compression has issues with this barrier as you approach the 2 hour timeframe. If the compression is lower for whatever reason, this time limit drops. The software will appear to continue to appear to becompiling the movie, only to have a bad file when it's done. To date, I've only gotten one movie to successfully compile to MPEG format with the ATI software. That one is Quigley Down Under. One of my goals, was to convert all of my DVD's to MPEG format, same as I did with all of my audio CD's. This way, playing a movie was simply a matter of picking the title from the list. Ultimately, the plans were to have a second multimedia system in the bedroom. Then all music and video would be universally available in both locations. It would have also opened the ability to be able to watch one program in one room, while recording something else in the other - something that is not exactly doable on one system with a satellite receiver.

I've tried some third party software that stored the movies in such a way as to work around this problem, but the video quality was appalling, and wouldn't go totally full screen.

Try this one: http://www.amazon.com/review/R241T4077I5UE9/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R241T4077I5UE9

Wow, three and a half years later . . .