New Hauppauge HD hardware encoder demoed at CES - Page 5

Sounds very different.

HDHomerun doesn't record component, and this product doesn't have QAM tuner.

Although now that I'm re-reading...
"-- Component input and support for HD video source (1080i, 720p,
480p/576p) played back in the native 16:9 aspect ratio on the client
display"

... I'm unclear if it actually records component in HD or if it records it only at 480p (or 480i). I suspect it's the latter as they say plays back in 16:9 but don't explicitly say in HD playback. Sounds like this may be typical (deceitful) marketing-speak.

it uses MPEG2 D1 which is SD....

The current version uses D1 and was available long before that press release. It sounds like they are releasing a new version that will do full HD. I guess we just have to wait to find out

The new HD version needs 6CH digital audio support too. No mention of audio capabilities in the PR...

Good point. I didn't catch that.

Word from the Snapstream forums is still ~April for delivery.

http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/show...t=43609&page=4

I doubt I'd order before any user reviews, but am sure there are plenty of early adopters out there.

why is everyone here so hyped on sage. beyond imo offers a much better solution that is much more highly customizable than sage. sage offers a nice in the box solution but not substantial hooks for devs to hook in and customize it... plus user customization through simple xml and the web admin interface editing... lets not forget beyond tv link.... much more convenient and less costly than an extender. and the idea that SS is focussing too much on their enterprise product is bogs. their newest release (in RC1 stage) has many new features that improve the usefulness of the product and extend its capability.... and its only a minor release... my bet is v 5.0 will include BM and BTV in one app, which would in fact make it the ultimate HTPC solution

Wow. I totally disagree. Sage not customizable?

-Robert

More customizeable than changing any aspect of the UI to your desires or creating a whole new UI from the ground up?

Does Beyond have extenders? Network encoders? Placeshifter? Integrated media library?


http://www.sage.tv/studio.html


Sage supports themes (in addition to wholy custom UIs), there's a webserver plugin.


SageTV Client and SageTV Placeshifter for those who want to us a PC as a client.

i find sage's interface clunky and unnecessary.... too much bloat for lacking function. does sage have the universal decoder support of BTV? or the extensive plugin library?? I tried sage for the 15 day trial.... gave it up after 3 days.... was just curious what it was like compared to beyond. it just simply was not as intuitive.... and as far as extenders etc goes, thats fine, but thats taking the product in a different direction. beyond is more aimed at the technical pc market, those who want to customize and understand their pvr, as well as have excelent functionality...... sage is aimed at an HTPC enthusiast market.... just two different markets i guess, but not as powerful as BTV. I have yet to find a tuner that does not have a near perfect solution in beyond, while sage has many unsupported devices (as i'm aware, there is no firewire recording solution.. no apple tv, ipod compat, etc)

That's a valid opinion that you're entitled to.


You mean being able to use any Dshow MPEG decoder? Yes.


it has an extensive customization library yes, I cannot compare it to BTV because I'm not familiar with BTV's plugins.


That's fair, but that hardly qualifies you to make such sweeping comments like above, comments that are clearly inaccurate (eg "not customizeable", "no PC client"). Oh, and it's a 21 day trial now.


Sage is going in both directions, it's was (to my knowledge) the first program to have a PC client, has an internet-capable client. Sage currently has the widest breadth of client/extender/server options of any solution out there: Linux/Mac/Windows/WHS servers/clients (two Windows clients) two hardware extenders.


I'm not sure how you get that, Sage has about the most powerful PVR engine out there (maybe BTV's is comparable), and it's completely customizable to do anything you want. Really, I have no idea what you're saying there.


I categorically disagree with that.


Sage supports firewire tuning, network encoders*, ATSC, QAM, DVB-* tuning. Sage supports transcoding to MPEG-4 (not sure there's a specific iPod profile, but you could make one I'm sure).

*network encoders are a big deal because they allow integration of lots of capture devices not seen elsewhere:
R5000 boxes
Blackmagic Intensity
DVB (MyTheatre/DVBDream/etc)

Look, I have no problem with BTV, I don't run it, I don't like it personally, others don't like SageTV, that's fine, but I don't think any of the information you've posted about Sage is even close to correct.

If you want to start a new thread to discuss Sage feel free.

no thats alright.... i understand your points. i just feel as though BTV doesn't get as much credit as is due

...and now, back to our regularly scheduled programming (joined in progress).

A sample produced by the device is available on the net now. You can find some of the details (as well as a link to one of the download locations) in this thread:

http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/...ry/042812.html

Thanks for the link, the file sample played flawlessly on my Popcorn Hour A-100.

Interesting.... great link.

I was able to play the clip. A strange choice to sample video quality from. The first few seconds with Natalie appear to be high-quality HDTV but the rest looks to be low-quality film archive.

Still, if this thing is to be judged by the first few seconds, it's looking real good. I'll have to check it out later on my 1080P projector though rather than on my current 1024x768 LCD.

The thread mentions other clips. Has anyone been able to nab one?

I tried to play the clip with VLC but all I saw was 1 messed up frame and then VLC crashed.

I had to change the extension from .ts to .mkv and then played it in Zoom Player with ffdshow. It worked fine in WMP too. I can't get it to play in VLC regardless.

Ahh, sorry -- it really wasn't meant for the purposes of showcasing quality. I should have added what I said in the Linux forum as well, as then its purpose would have been clear. To repeat it here:

I didn't see them, and they are not in Mplayer's /incoming, so I would assume they have been deleted. In any regard, I don't think they'd likely be much different in terms of quality -- as it was the TS that was/is the point of interest .... nonetheless, I'm sure the sneak preview is also of interest to some, regardless of the weighting given to source/quality concerns .... I'll see if I can twist the source's arm to get something more telltale up, but no promises

you'd likely have to update to a recent SVN release.

Sure, ok. Pretty cool to see an actual clip nonetheless. This thing is going to be a winner... I'm sure it will be supported by Sage or BTV and maybe even MediaCenter eventually. And methinks it will be a while before the "analog hole" is closed. Even if they do it eventually on Blu-Ray I can't see it happening on cable STBs.

This is beyond my field of knowledge, but if it's in some special container how comes it plays just fine with FFDShow? And why would they even bother to put it in a non-standard container anyway? Just curious.

its not really -- the essence is encoded to AVC and packed in an (ever so slightly non-conforming) MPEG-2 Transport Stream container. This is all a fixed function of the hardware encoder. The fact that the IC uses a TS for a container shines light upon its pedigree. As I know next to nothing about camcorders, I can't provide much further comment, other than that that can be gained from the following:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_tr...dia_.28M2TS.29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD
• (FWIW, I don't know if the other cam formats, such as HDV (which uses MPEG-2 based encodes), also make use of a slightly modified MPEG-2 TS container or not .... [Sgt. Schultz mode] I know nut-tinggggg! [/Sgt. Schultz mode] )

Beyond that, questions in regards to any other peculiarities with the generated TS would have to be brought up with the IC vendor.


ffdshow uses the libavcodec library (which is from FFmpeg) ... there are many media players and middlemen in Windows and Unix derivatives (including Linux, the BSDs, OS X) that rely upon libavcodec....including MPlayer, VLC media player ....

Whatever frontend player you are using with ffdshow is obviously working seamlessly (which is good!).

In the FFmpeg-devel thread I linked to above, as well as in the case with hollywoodjoe above, the front ends (respectively MPlayer & VLC media player) crashed and burned. I can concur, that when I attempted to play the clip with MPlayer (or MPlayer frontends) that MPlayer froze. Later in the FFmpeg-devel thread it can be read that someone posted success with a recent MPlayer build from SVN. Again, I can concur. Paralleling this, I rather imagine that hwj would find similar success if he'd update to a recent VLC build (hence my recommendation).

It would seem that MPlayer and the likes were previously unprepared to handle such streams, as opposed to there being anything wrong with the engine (libavcodec)

Nope, still crashed with 0.8.6e

plays just fine in Windows Media Player for me

My take is that this means it should be available soon. They have successfully tested it, and are in the process of tweaking it.

I hope this is true!

Believe the latest word on the Snapstream thread (per call to Hauppauge) says April or May availability.

I'm as excited about this as any upcoming tech toy (aside from the XPERIA X1 PDA/cellphone, but that's *totally* off-topic).

oh my, another UPS delivery to hide....

I get all my HT stuff sent to my job address, this way I can control when it gets home

Here's a couple news articles on the device, both of which seem to say that it's still on target for the end of March.

ttp://news.sky.com/skynews/xml/article/tech/0,,91221-13212,00.html

ttp://news.idealo.co.uk/news/772/cebit-hd-pvr-from-hauppage-saves-hdtv-via-usb.html