andy's nerd blog

Samsung DTB-H260F Remote

After picking up one of these tiny ATSC tuners on ebay (sans remote) for super cheap, I discovered there are no controls on the front of the unit…oops! So I set out looking for a remote and all I could find was a Canadian vendor on ebay selling them for $20 + $20 for shipping…umm, no thanks. I sent them a nice email saying that price is ridiculous and they laughed at me. So I did some more searching and turned up the Samsung part # for the remote, MF59-00291B. I popped that into google and et voila, found several domestic distributors selling them for as little as $17 + $8 shipping. Pwnt. I’d say the 2.5 minutes of google searching was well worth the $15 I saved!

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ATSC-Only Media Center!?

So according to this thread, there is a way to trick MCE into thinking you have an analog NTSC tuner with a hardware encoder. Basically per this MCE devs explanation, you must have an analog tuner to set up Media Center. But I don’t, I only have a Dvico Fusion5 HDTV Gold ATSC tuner. (As an aside, this tuner can receive analog television but its software-based encoding is not MCE compatible.) And since I am pretty much going completely OTA, I don’t need analog because all of the local networks broadcast everything on their digital channels, per FCC mandate. (Not only that but by Saturday they’re all required to be driving their antennas at full strength.) So get these drivers and try this out.

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CRT HDTV

Looking to buy a CRT-based HD display in the range of 26″ to 30″ for the new place this fall and I need to figure out which set I want. Although I’d prefer an LCD, they are more expensive, can’t display dark colors well and might be too easy to walk off with.

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MicrosoftTV on the Motorola 6412

Comcast installed our DVR last weekend and after toying with it for a week, I’m impressed. The MS Foundation Edition is amazing compared to the TV Guide software. So far my only complaints aren’t related to the DVR: Comcast doesn’t carry CBS in HD, (Update: KIROHD is now on) TNTHD, BravoHD or HDnet. Since we’re temporarily on an analog Toshiba RPTV, taking pictures didn’t work out very well. Instead I vidcapped them using the Canopus ADVC55. Here’s the main menu:

I haven’t used Video-On-Demand yet but this is what it looks like:

Hitting the Guide button on the remote brings up the main programming guide. It shows 6 channels on each screen and you can scroll up/down a page at a time or a channel at a time. Of course, you can also scroll right to see the guide data up to two weeks out:

A nice thing about the MS software is that when you pause live TV, it shows where you are in the program not just by position but also by actual time:

From here if you press the Info button you can view program information in the Mini-Guide:

Selecting More Info brings up the complete program info screen, where you can set a recording or locate other showings:

Hitting up or down while watching live TV brings up this display, showing the program you are currently viewing. Delayed indicates that I am viewing from the buffer because I had paused the program earlier:

Pressing up, down or right will bring up a half-screen program guide. This is one of the best features of MSFE, allowing you to view a complete program guide while still viewing a program:

Pressing the My DVR button on the remote brings up the current recording. Notice the current program still being displayed in the upper left:

Selecting Scheduled will display the recordings that are scheduled:

The Series Manager is where you can view and modify series recordings. This “TiVo” like feature is one of MSFE’s most significant:

Selecting one of your series recordings displays the upcoming recordings and series options:

Here you can modify the recording options for the series. This looks like it was pulled straight out of Windows Media Center!

Another important feature of MSFE is conflict resolution, although it’s not as critical due to the dual tuners. Here you can specify which series take priority so that in case a recording conflict occurs the DVR will know which shows you would prefer to record:

Searching for a specific program is very easy in MSFE. You can search by date, program title, category or even keyword:

Here’s an example of searching by title:

This is by no means complete but should give you an idea of what to expect when Comcast rolls out the MS software later this year. Apparently it’s going out to ALL of their digital set-top boxes, with a scaled down version appearing on boxes without DVR capability.

HDTV Programming

Popular forum for discussion and info on HD programming.

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Comcast/Moto/MS DVR

James Davidson has some photos of his new 6412 (iGuide version) up…Our 6412 with the MS guide should be here tomorrow. I can’t wait!

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Selecting a High Definition display

Something clicked today about the ATSC formats for high definition television. I’ve been wondering why most of the plasmas or LCD displays don’t support native 1080i. That lead me to wonder why both the 720p and 1080i formats exist. I think the ATSC created two different formats to ensure that HDTV will have enough flexibility to become the de facto standard for television.

Most existing televisions use CRT technology. CRT’s can only display video in interlaced format. (See: here) They can not display 60 full video frames per second. But they can easily scan very high resolutions because each individual pixel in the frame is not being displayed. That’s why CRT based HD displays use 1080i as a native resolution. And that’s why a futuristic high definition standard exists that supports antiquated interlaced video. HDTV wouldn’t fly if everyone had to get a progressive scan display because a progressive scan display can cost twice as much as a similiar size CRT display.

However, a large portion of new TV sales are digital flat panel displays like LCD’s or Plasmas. These displays are popular mainly for aesthetic reasons because the technology they use allows them to be made very thin. Unlike CRT’s digital displays can display 60 full video frames per second, called progressive scan. But they don’t display interlaced video. So that’s why all of the digital HD displays on the market today have a native format of 720p. Why not 1080p? In the future they probably will. I believe Samsung already displayed a prototype 1080-line LCD. But for now, 1080p requires more than twice as many picture elements (pixels) as 720p so they are much more expensive and difficult to manufacture.

Basically what this means is that a CRT based display will upconvert 720p material to 1080i in order to display it. And an LCD will downconvert 1080i to 720i and then line double (or something) to get progressive scan. The next step for me is figuring out if the difference is noticeable. Does 1080i material look worse on an LCD than it would on a CRT? And does 1080i material look worse on an LCD than 720p material does on the same display? That last question is very important to me, because since most of my source material is 1080i that question may dictate which type of display I purchase. Secretly I’m hoping 1080i looks brilliant on an LCD because CRT’s are just too big.

Another major reason for the two standards is so the content creators have options. For example notice that HBO is 1080i because they broadcast mostly theatrical fims that have been digitized in HD. And most HBO subscribers with an interest in HDTV probably have home theater setups with large rear projection televisions, so 1080i is going to be more appropriate. But ESPN is broadcast in 720p. The benefits of progressive scan video are most obvious in fast motion video such as sporting events. So having two primary formats allows everybody some flexibility without things getting too complicated.

Update: There is a Panasonic LCD that claims to display all signals in 1080i, even though it has a pixel resolution of 1280×720. Don’t ask me how or why. And Samsung has unveiled the world’s largest LCD panel, a 46″ 1080p display available for $9000.

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Streaming from VLC to HD1000

Now that I have a bunch of high definition transport streams I am exploring playback options. One such option might turn out to be the Roku HD1000. This little device has HD component output and can play TS files streamed over a LAN. It doesn’t have internal storage but 100Mbps should be adequate to play transport streams from my Powerbook’s firewire drive. Unfortunately other user comments indicate that the HD1000′s TS playback is still quite immature. Essentially there are two main ways to playback HD video on the Roku. Option 1 is to share the TS files on the PC and play them from the Roku. However, there will be no seek or resume options whatsoever. Apparently it will play numbered files consecutively though. So a solution could be to use NullPacketStripper to break up a large transport stream into smaller segments, or chapters. Option 2 is to stream the video file from VLC on the Powerbook to the Roku. This would let us use the playback controls in VLC but would eliminate use of the HD1000′s remote control. Apparently this method also sacrifices 5.1 audio.

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Recording HDTV on a Mac

According to this article, it’s not that difficult to record High Definition content from the firewire output of the 6208. Just plug it into your Mac and use VirtualDVHS to record in pristine transport stream format. I suppose it would be much more useful if I was receiving HDTV over the air and didn’t already have a DVR. But I guess it’s a great way to backup a movie or special episode of CSI. I think there is software to transcode TS files into MPEG2, then it would be easy to convert those to Xvid to save disk space.

Update: AVSForum Thread

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