Anyone have HDTV on their computer?

[kamaboko]

Looking for some options on HD cards. Also, what sort of quailty is your picture? My LCD monitor does 1280 x 1024. I know ATI has a card, but I would like to know what other's are using, as well as the quality of their pic and screen resolution.

thanks,
k

 

[xtknight]

Are you talking about OTA or digital cable?

MIT MyHD MDP-130 is good I hear. Good OTA signal reception results (if that makes any sense). Basically from what I've read on AVSForum they say the MDP-130 produces a picture at a low signal reception whereas the other ones cannot. MPEG-2 Transport Stream is available with this adapter (not sure about the other two cards). I was looking at getting one this holiday.
DVICO Fusion HDTV 5 is decent, but not as good as the MDP-130.
ATI HDTV Wonder is a decent economical solution. Does not have QAM256 support so no US cable support. Even if it did, most digital cable is encrypted and nothing works with that unless you have a CableCard or custom tuner box from your service provider.

My LCD is 1280x1024. I hook up an external HD tuner's (Samsung SIR-T451) VGA output (1920x1080ix60) to my LCD, and it looks acceptable IMO. That's 60 fields per second and it looks very smooth, I love it. Not like it would on a 16:9 though. Your and my LCD is 5:4 aspect ratio. There is noticable aliasing due to non-square supersampling (scaling method). I expect the situation to be similar with any HDTV solution on a 1280x1024 LCD. I shouldn't say that for every situation. It depends. If you deal with black bars, the aliasing will be more acceptable. It's a game of trade-offs.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Both the MyHD MDP-130 and the DVICO Fusion 5 are good; the main difference being that the MDP-130 (which I have) has a hardware decoder for lower CPU usage. I'd recommend staying away from the ATI.

As long as you can get a signal (check antennaweb.org if you're planning on getting it OTA), the picture quality should be identical on either card.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
I'd recommend staying away from the ATI.

Why is that?

 

[Aenslead]

Because its decoder is software based and uses the processor, whereas other solutions have hardware based decoders and use less processor power, hence, hurting performance less and often give better quality/speed.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
I'd recommend staying away from the ATI.

Why is that?

I've read lots of reports of software problems, and it doesn't support QAM (like you noted). With the Fusion 5 Lite being only $99, I don't really see a reason to recommend the ATI, IMO...

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Aenslead
Because its decoder is software based and uses the processor, whereas other solutions have hardware based decoders and use less processor power, hence, hurting performance less and often give better quality/speed.

The Fusion's decoder is software-based too. The MyHD's isn't.

 

[rbV5]

I use both the MyHD MDP 100 and ATI's HDTV Wonder, and I actually prefer HDTV Wonder in MCE 2005 to the MyHD card due to MCE's superior EPG and software. The MyHD card is nice however, and well suited to a less powerful rig, and also has superior connectivety (HDTV Wonder relies on the connectivety of your graphics card)

I've found the HDTV Wonder very stable, and recommend it highly for an MCE rig. Using it in ATI's software is more of a YMMV recomendation since you can't ignore the assorted issues, however I've used it in MMC with good resultas as well.

Using an HDTV card at 1280x1024, especially with an LCD is less than ideal however.

 

[HDTVMan]

ATI HDTV Wonder on an NFORCE 2 motherboard 2700+ CPU and 512megs of ram, windows XP NON MCE. Onboard video output at 1280x960 resolution to a 19" monitor. Yes Onboard video. This machine basically acts as a media server recording HD OTA feeds and supplies all my MP3, Divx, Photo's etc. Its basically a Media Server and HD PVR. I will switch it to MCE once microsoft supports HD cards natively a lot better than they currently do. No problems with the software but I dont really mess with it. Its working fine so I dont try to fix what isnt broken. The ATI HDTV wonder has explicit instructions on its installation.

In the living room I use an Avel Link Player 2 from IODATA which is a true HD Media Player. I stream 1920x1080 movies from the PC to it in full HD. 27meg streams via Cat5 connection. Home lan is Gig-E so I have no network issues.

I also have 2 modded X-box's running XBOX media player not the microsoft one but the 3rd party one that requires the mod chips. The can play all Mp3, photos, divx, etc streamed to them. Cannot do the HD feeds the CPU just cant decode the stream.

I just recently added an OTA HD receiver to the living room for watching Football or another channel without interupting the PC doing its PVR HD functions.

PC's dont look right in the living room and for one of those rediculously overpriced computer cases you can get the IODATA linkplayer 2 instead. Linkplayer 3 is coming out soon also if it hasnt already.

I am hoping the XBOX 360 will allow for HD streams to it in formats like TS.

 

[dug777]

what hasn't been said is that with the DVICO fusionlite/plus the decoding can all be offloaded onto the gfx card pretty much (DXVA) thus my CPU usage won't break 30% ever with 1080i (i have the DVB-T version, as i'm in Aus)...

Amazing pic quality on my 17'CRTs...through my roof antenna.