What is Digg?66 Comments
- palmer, on 10/12/2007, -9/+52Nope. This thing is so crippled by DRM rip-offs that it's already useless. It's unreal that anybody bothers to sink R&D dollars into anything anymore, since no one has the spine to release anything that actually respects consumers' rights.
And then there's this:
"The digital tuner is capable of handling all common HDTV resolutions, up to and including 1080p"
There IS NO 1080P HDTV. And there isn't likely to be, since it won't fit into the pitiful data rate of so-called "HD" TV. If you ever see 1080P, it'll be from a non-broadcast/non-cable source like Blu-Ray. But that gets less and less likely every day, thanks to the infantile bickering that has already pretty much killed those formats. So really, there is nothing but continued WORSENING of video quality in our forseeable future. - wired4u, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38I seriously hope they hack the hell out of this thing and get it to work with myth.
- surfactant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25This tuner will leave a bad taste in your mouth too:
"Not just any PC can connect to this TV Wonder, though. It must meet a stringent set of requirements, including OCUR support in the BIOS and support for HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection)."
Let me put this succinctly: ***** You, Microsoft. ***** You, content industry. You can all take your lousy DRM ***** and shove it up your ass sideways. I won't buy anything until I know I can easily circumvent any jackass "content protection" system and view the media on MY TERMS. Failing that, I'll read a book instead.
Jerks. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16The Elgato Hybrid has DTV tuner built in and no DRM. Screw ATI!
- Stephenishere, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12"Once you have a TV Wonder and an OCUR-ready PC, the final step in setup will be installing the CableCard. AMD says this process involves making a call to the cable company, which will then dispatch a tech who will bring the CableCard to your house, install it, and enter a code to complete a pairing process that enables the device to tune cable TV."
Oh my... when will they learn... - realyst, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14DRMed to *****. Not worth buying.
- Stephenishere, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12That would be the only way I would ever even think of buying one.
- Agares, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9So anybody who doesn't buy a name brand PC such as Dell, Gateway, HP, etc. will be S.O.L for something like this because "build your own" PCs won't be OCUR compliant. Also who in their right mind would let a cable installer touch anything inside their computer?
- msgyrd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I wouldn't let anyone from the cable company touch my computers. I'd rather just download the stuff from bittorrent. Probably a better quality recording, I don't have to remember to schedule it, I can download it when I feel like it, and it's not in a crippled media format. I'd even be willing to pay for Apple store stuff if it wasn't in such crappy resolutions.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Good luck getting your CableCard working. Tivo Series 3 owners have been having a hell of a time, and it's all the cable companies' faults.
Man, the list of requirements in the article make Tivo look good :| - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10So, I take it folks on Digg don't like DRM?
Glad to know. Excuse me while I D/L some free movies. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16beware of vista. it will downgrade your media if it doesn't have DRM among other nasty things
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/28/vista_drm_analysis/
my fav qoute from that:
"It's somewhat bizarre that I have to go to Communist China in order to find vendors who actually understand the consumer's needs."
and this one is good too
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=25124 - Ratteler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Exactly. Show me the Linux Drivers, and ditch the DRM.
- ewhac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Don't expect this to actually do anything other than let you watch live transmissions. Maybe.
In order to receive digital cable, you need a CableCard digital decoder. This is a PCMCIA-like device provided by your cable service provider that plugs into a slot on your receiver that authenticates you to the network and decodes the signals. In order to be CableCard compatible, you need to be certified by CableLabs. If your device isn't CableLabs-certified, the service provider won't give you a CableCard.
And there's where the fun starts. CableLabs' requirements for copy-protection and other intentional defects are voluminous and stringent. No copying of anything, no long-term retention of anything, no third-party media players (i.e. no commercial skipping)... And, for certain CableCard configurations, the cable service provider gets to shove their UI into the box, replacing anything that may already be there.
In the case of a Vista PC, don't expect to be able to replace any component and the have machine still work without a complete re-certification. - TonyCubed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8@mikesbaker
Using the Inquirer as a news source is like promoting people to use Myspace. You just don't do it. - Takteek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
- Erasmus354, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5exactly correct and why this is all pointless. There will be a handful of PC's that this will work with.
- paker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Makes me glad I still have my good old trusty C-Band dish. With 169time I can record HD and send it to my hard drive via Firewire. To hell with DRM.
- Stephenishere, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Takteek, i just read that entire article. That was very well written. The amount of work they are going through to protect drm content is amazing....
People really, read that... - tito13kfm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"There IS NO 1080P HDTV. And there isn't likely to be, since it won't fit into the pitiful data rate of so-called "HD" TV. If you ever see 1080P, it'll be from a non-broadcast/non-cable source like Blu-Ray. But that gets less and less likely every day, thanks to the infantile bickering that has already pretty much killed those formats. So really, there is nothing but continued WORSENING of video quality in our forseeable future."
Have you ever heard of H.264 encoding? They are already broadcasting full 1080p 25fps in places beyond the united states.
Also, film that has been digitized (any movie shot on actual film) and broadcast in 1080i 50/60 fields/sec can be restored to true 1080p 24fps with 3:2 pulldown reversal (IVTC). - ismokedope, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I wouldn't recommend anything ATI.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Feel free to digg my earlier post down. I didn't realize this was a post praising ATI for being the first to adapt Vista's rediculious as ***** resrtictions. My bad.
- Kniggit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2OCUR/CableCard should NOT change your mind about what you're buying. Allow me to explain...
CableCard is a lame duck right now. Read all of the industry reports around and you'll see that the CE manufacturers and MSOs (cable operators) are pointing their fingers at each other over the botched attempts to get CableCard to actually work properly in the real world. In fact, this is just unidirectional CableCard, so you can't do Video-On-Demand of any type. There's a bidirectional CableCard that's around the corner that can handle multiple streams, but the MSOs still don't have the hang of getting unidirectional CableCard working properly for customers. To this day, there are less than about 200,000 installations of CableCard in the US. To further complicate matters, CableLabs is also considering a unidirectional multiple stream CableCard variant because of the expense of implementation of the reverse data channel. Topping all of this off is the enormous deployment cost because every CableCard installation (PC, digital TV, Tivo, cable box or otherwise) must absolutely be validated by a tech on-site coming out to your home. This means the actual deployment costs for mass adoption of CableCard are in the multiple tens of billions of dollars. Finally, there's no provision for moving your CableCard-derived PVR information to any other device. In essence, it'll be stuck on your PC with no way to get it off.
Now I'm going to let you all in on a little industry secret. CableCard is going to be replaced starting in 2009 with something called DCAS, or Downloadable Conditional Access System. It's a far simpler system for cable operators to deal with and has far lower deployment costs. It also has hooks for secure home networking infrastructure, so you'll be able to share this content around the home (albeit in a digital rights management and conditional access controlled type of environment), but at least you'll be able to move it around unlike CableCard. It's relatively simple to implement by the manufacturers of both digital TV and PC equipment. This is where all of the big set top box, digital TV and other equipment manufacters are headed. Best of all, there's no external card to purchase (other than the interface device which, for PCs, will be a coax-to-USB type of connector). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PolyCipher and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downloadable_Conditional_Access_System for more information. Broadcom, who is the biggest player in set top box chips, has done much industry wrangling to get this to come into play. The one factor is the deployment schedule, and I can tell you all that most of the manufacturers will start trickling out solutions in the timeframe I mentioned - 2009.
Don't let me dissuade you from buying an OCUR-based CableCard solution for your PC. Just remember that your investment may not be long lived and may not have the functionality you're looking for. - brandonu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Sadly, the OCUR-compliant PC must come from a major PC manufacturer... PC DIYers will be left out in the cold entirely, and AMD could not say whether this situation might change at some point in the future."
If the cable companies and CableCard are going to screw things up for people who want to build their own this is going to suck! I've been wanting for someone to come out with a cable card tuner for pc for awhile so I can actually use media center for tv and use my Xbox for a media extender. I thought cablecard would be the perfect set up, but now all this protection crap is making it look pretty lame. After what I've seen from CES I think I'm more interested in IPTV for my xbox 360. It looks pretty sweet.
http://www.engadget.com/photos/xbox-360-iptv-interface-gallery/
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/ces2007/microsoftintegratesiptvsoftwareplatform.htm - McG2k1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I work in television and I just wanted to comment on how frustrating it is to not have your work freely available for anyone to see. It sucks to think that soon consumers will have to meet a wacky series of requirements just to watch what I make. I wish they'd just figure out a way to embed revenue paths directly into the video so it could be enjoyed on the user's terms.
- citrusfizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2umm this card is introducing cable card for the pc RTFA
- mkrygeri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've been waiting a year for this ***** thing. This ***** is all because of CableLabs is in bed with the cable companys. They want to make this completely useless as a media device so that Comcast can rent you thier crippled assed Tivo box for $20 bucks a month.
CableCard is a ***** JOKE!!! The whole point was so we don't have to use thier boxes. Now we have to buy a certain computer with a certain bios from a certain vendor.
ARGGHHH. I give up. - truck87bp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Looks to be a real bad years 2007 & 8 for Hardware Manufactures. Everyone will be waiting for the Horror Stories to hit the Net before they buy.
From what I'm reading, M.S. is about to pull its finger from the dike and the flood of complaints will swamp the city. Manufactures of hardware are going to see a large drop in sales until this mess gets cleaned up. We buy hardware to improve Quality, we don't buy to degrade Quality.
Trying to protect the RIAA & MPAA might just go down in history as the biggest blunder in Internet History. They really didn't need protecting, I have stacks of DVD movies that I purchased and don't care to repurchase them again anytime soon. I also have piles of purchased VHS tapes collecting dust and so do most of my friends. - Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anyone think this will work with the 360? This thing would plug into the USB port, and you'd just have to install a bigger hard drive. The 360 can't run unsigned code, so it would be more secure than any Dell machine. Nobody is going to pay $2000 for an HD-DVR when Time Warner is charging $10 a month, but I bet a lot of people would pay a couple hundred bucks for this.
- kirupa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I concur. I used both ATI and Hauppauge tuners, and the Hauppauge tuners were a breeze to setup on my Vista Media Center box. I only receive analog signals, but that's fine for the limited amount of TV viewing I do.
- xhotardx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Sorry, But I WOULD NOT recommend any ATI Capture Card...
I had a ATI TV Wonder, the thing was a piece of crap. Not only did it do a junky job capturing TV, the included software sucked hardcore. If your thinking that this ATI thing sounds cool check out Hauppauge. The Hauppauge cards are much better for their price. From my experience, avoid ATI get Hauppauge when it comes to TV capture cards. - DiggChainey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3This is all fantastic but people have been doing this already using orb from orb.com along side a sweet addon called absORB found at http://briandailey.googlepages.com/absorb
- Mythguy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Hmm, I can buy this peice of ***** and have it crippled by DRM and the microsoft mafia. Or I can use my mythtv box and get free OTA HD. I think I will take door number 2 bob. If there is anything not on OTA that I want to watch. Download it. ***** em.
- McG2k1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd be a lot more interested in this if I could connect 3 or 4 of them to the machine and not be restricted to just two. At just two tuners you are totally right, why not just get the cable company version for 10 bucks?
- BevansDesign, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Well, it's not like the DRM protection (or whatever it is) won't be cracked.
How is this any different from their HDTV Wonder?
By the way, ATI's software is *****. - sissipher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2O.K. so could someone please answer this question. I have a t.v. card in my computer. I have it hooked up to my cable but I only get channels 1-99. Why don't I get the other channels that I do normaly? Is there a card out there that allows me to get every channel that I subscribe to. I mean, HBO is on channel 200 and I don't get that channel with my card. Thanks in advance.
- polymorphist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Think THRICE before you buy an ATI...that's the lesson I learned from my last and the only ATI purchase
- jb347, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Long live the HDTV Wonder! If you actually use decent software with it, ie BeyondTV, it's great. Records directly into un-crippled mpeg.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So now we will have to get itsalright's blogspot account banned as well. Won't be hard. He is violating TOS's on every site he goes to.
- radio1mike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sweet, looking forward to it!
- thund3rstruck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why not just use IR Blaster? My wife and kids use XP Media Center edition in the den and I use MythTV in the living room and I get all the channels, premium and all. I'm using DirectTV so maybe things are different for cable but I love my media centers and the XBOX360s ability to act as an extender to them
- farkdog, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Nope. As has been said - this is a crippled product.
The industry is trying as hard as it can to create high-resolution content that people want to pay for, but electronic devices that won't let you record it.
Don't fall for it. - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's ok. Bill Gates says the hardware needed is actually really cheap.
Frak'n jerk billionaire... - hypercube33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ATI hasnt treated me bad. Previous AIW drivers were trash, but after the 9700 series of cards ATI got it together and started loading out some decent drivers.
I dont know if I'll go nVidia again, esp since their cards are slower all around, but faster on the fill rates etc. - jron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1what a joke, ***** vista and ***** amd/ati for supporting it. 2007 is looking great...
- sissipher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is there a card out there that allows me to get every channel that I subscribe to?
- phi0x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I personally have given up on that dream of recording and playing around with my HD content. I just bought a theater 650 card for atsc capturing which is nice but i dont get many channels :(, I do realise though that we have just been given a taste all these years, we really arent supposed to be recording/archiving any of our shows or movies, its supposed to be like the old days, you see something u want, u buy it in store. with hdcp this will help bring that back, I am not one for wanting hdcp etc.. cause i wanted to create my own personal HTPC so i could record/play with my content but I do realise that its all just a fake dream where we are recording things with dvhs tapes to get our hd content but in reality hdcp will eventually put an end to all that and we will have to buy our stuff in stores again :( or online.. ;/
- knyghtryda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you want all this functionality... just get a digital cable/HD box, a serial cable, a firewire card, and a decent SDTV tuner. You've got your digital cable through the tuner (with channel changing through serial), your HDTV through firewire from the HD box, and the ability to record both. Its just too bad there's so much content protection that a lot of HD channels are restricted from recording (Discovery HD being one I really miss).
- dudley14144, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So this is why it's only available in America. What a mess.
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