On a side note... does anybody have any idea as to what will be required, hardware wise, to implement h.264 on a media center?

I ask because AverMedia has a new card out (the PCIe Bravo) that supports s/w h.264 encoding, but, for now at least, requires a seperate divx encoder.

H.264 (not an issue with the hd-pvr, but almost certainly for OTA, which cable and sat users still use for sub channels not sent over the wire) will certainly require more horsepower then divx. Will dual cores suffice? Will there be native support for hardware accelleration like AVIVO or PVHD, or will we all need to go quad core this summer?

Anybody have any info on this? I don't think this kind of question would neccesarily break an endeeay.

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New System: Vista/AthlonX2BE/GigabyteGA-MA69G-S3H/HD3450/(2) M780/3GB Ram/320GB&750GB Drive/Westy 32 LCD via HDMI/

Old System: MCE/ Athlon3000+/Asus K8NE Deluxe/vBox Catseye 150/NVTV Dual SD/2GB RAM/250GB HD/Ahanix DVine 4/Westy 32 LCD/

If Hauppauge would add MPEG2 as a compression option, then is there any reason why this product can't be supported by MCE2005 and Vista right now? Just slap another chip on there if needed (unless this is an OEM designed board that Hauppauge is just slapping their name on, which may be bad in terms of future support). I would imagine that I would need at least two of these cards, so a future dual-tuner version would be ideal.

In terms of extender support, do you think the network bandwidth requirements for HD over H.264 is significantly lower than that of the existing HD over MPEG2 (QAM, ATSC)? I have connectivity to a remote location with an extender via powerline networking and the bandwidth is not high enough for HD over MPEG2.

I don’t think the Ambarella all-in-one H.264 encoder chip can do MPEG-2. Adding a chip that can would delay the Hauppauge HD PVR even longer then it already has been and we haven’t even seen so much as a picture of the product yet AFAIK although it has been stated that the hardware is finished. I take this to mean the product is basically finished (barring basic changes for design and production efficiency) and perhaps part of the delay is in due to a projected simultaneous launch with Fiji.

Realistically I don’t think Hauppauge should have to change the hardware to accommodate specific software such as MCE / VMC. Normally one would think that hardware companies should just make their hardware conform to Microsoft’s specifications but in this case hopefully Microsoft will make the change,….

Perhaps another version of the Hauppauge HD PVR (Hauppauge HD PVR MPEG-2,..?) could be made for MCE later but it is interesting that the Hauppauge HD PVR will supposedly ship with ArcSoft TotalMedia Extreme,….which has Blu-ray (BDMV, BD Live) and HD DVD movie playback support. ArcSoft Total Media (non-Extreme version) is or supposedly will be made available to HDHomeRun users so they are really starting to get some headway with bundling their software.

I really hope Microsoft steps up to the plate on this one and in a timely manner too!

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Like any manufacturer, Hauppauge is probably trying to keep costs down.  They probably went with H.264 because they figured that was the future.  They might have added mpeg2 support if they knew that H.264 support would be delayed for so long with Vista (and, knowing Microsoft, we’ll be lucky to see Fiji by May/June).

Ambarella (the vendor of the H.264 chip for the HD-PVR) figures about a 2.5 X gain by using H.264 vs. mpeg-2, so it might work better with your router.

http://www.ambarella.com/docs/Transcoding.pdf

 

I know MCE2005 will soon go on the dead list, but MPEG2 support would mean I can keep using MCE2005 on my existing PC and extenders. Who knows when the next version of media center will come out. Any timeframe is optimistic at best. An upgrade to media center that didn't come on a new or oem version of windows? I suspect such a "bold" move for microsoft will not be free of delays. And who knows when extenders will be upgraded to match the new version. If you need all media center components to be upgrade to the same functionality, then I would say the wait will be much much longer.

And I hope hauppauge tests the non-obvious things such as closed-captioning support and the use of more than one of these cards in a PC.

MCE05 won't work with the new tuners I can almost guarantee if you want the latest and great an upgrade will be a must

As for extenders I believe the linksys and xbox 360 already support h.264 at least the linksys list it as supported formats.

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Dell xps420 w/ dual ATI cable cards
Hdhomerun for QAM
Panasonic 50" Plasma fed by xbox 360
Panasonic 42" plama fed by xbox 360
3TB in storage and counting

badbob001: "Who knows when the next version of media center will come out."

This may be a joke, and I am not getting it, but, the next version of Media Center is out, its called Vista.  And the next version of extenders are also out, and they support H.264.  The Fiji release of Vista Media Center will also support H.264, in order to allow for the DirecTV HDPC-20.  However, beta testers just started getting their letters in regards to the Fiji beta and teh delivery of DirecTV hardware, so it may be many months before the product is actually released.

WRK

there is a new version of media center coming out, and it's not vista they're referring to

kingwr:

badbob001: "Who knows when the next version of media center will come out."

This may be a joke, and I am not getting it, but, the next version of Media Center is out, its called Vista.  And the next version of extenders are also out, and they support H.264.  The Fiji release of Vista Media Center will also support H.264, in order to allow for the DirecTV HDPC-20.

Wouldn't you call Fiji the next version of media center, even if it's a point release? Unless they will call it vista media center sp1. Yes, I know the new extenders support h.264, but I doubt they are already fiji tested and ready without an update for them as well. And since extenders are made by third parties, we have to wait for them to test and release the updates on their own schedules.

HD PVR pictures posted.  Pre-orders possibly open today?

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32027

Nice, thanks for posting a link.

***edit***

The Hauppauge HD PVR model 1212 is Shipping May 1, 2008.,….according to the Hauppauge home page:

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/hd_pvr.html

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Did not expect it to be an external usb device, and a pretty bland looking one at that. I hope they test the device to make sure it works reliably after waking up from S3 standby. And another headache for people with computers that do not always correctly restore the USB state after waking up from the S3 standby (my PC sometimes doesn't see the microsoft IR blaster/receiver so I just have it automatically reboot after wakeup).

Its things like this that I find rather disturbing with respect to the “Hauppauge HD PVR”

Sky drops component outputs as anti-piracy move

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/Sky-drops-component-outputs-as-anti-piracy-move.html

It’s a matter of perception and the industry perceives the legacy component output as a hostile entity that they wish to destroy in order to keep a very tight lock on HD media. They may very well be looking to plug the analog hole and with haste.

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

You will see more and more of this.  I expect the first Blu-ray with ICT enabled to ship within 6 months.  That means watered down outputs over Component.

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Chris Lanier
The Green Button Forum Moderator

This is why we should have all prayed that HDDVD would have won the HD war.  With all the xbox 360 players out there and many early xbox's only including component out, they would have never fliped the ICT switch.....

 

-Jocal