[rsdio]

I recently became interested in the JVC 30K, but I don't have a FireWire HDTV tuner.


Does anyone make an HD recorder that simply connects to the terrestrial antenna coaxial cable, and plays back over a similar connector?


This would require a basic HDTV tuner to demodulate the broadcast signal, and an HDTV modulator to recreate the signal (low-level, of course), but would be compatible with all HDTV sets and tuners. This seems so obvious that I cannot believe it isn't available, except that I have noticed that nobody is making HDTV modulator chip sets while there are many cheap HDTV demodulators.


Photos of the JVC 30K rear panel show antenna connections, but all the reading I've done implies that these are purely for analog recording. If HDTV signals were available on this output, it seems someone would have mentioned it.


Comments welcome.

 

[Glimmie]

Why the JVC DVHS does not have an ATSC tuner is a good question. Perhaps that decision was made when the not too distant CODFM / 8VSB wars were going on. That stopped a lot of manufactures form going forward with any type of tuner designs.


As for RF output, I think it's not necessary based on today's HDTV designs. RF output was needed on VHS machines because very few TV's of that era had video and audio inputs. Any HDTV manufactured will have either 1394, DVI, or component inputs. Using any one of those is a simpler design than incorporating an ATSC 8vsb RF modulator in the product. It boils down to manufacturing cost on a small margin consumer product. Zenith does make an 8vsb ATSC modulator on a chip. Echostar used it on their 5000 HDTV modulator.


Another reason could be that an 8vsb output represents an unencrypted compressed MPEG stream. This is a major concern to the studios who voice it through the MPAA. Component analog is unencrypted but is at base bandwidth of HDTV which means 160MB per second. There are no practical means for a consumer to record that. But even at that there are measures in place to restrict or down grade analog output.