Re: Building my first HTPC
The biggest telltale PC requirements is PIII class for these latest 7 series of DVICO Fusion tuners means low datarate, too much loss even capturing or watching live on 480 via s-video. Based on CX23886
I had a video/tuner capture card that is based on CX23883 and had to modify it to screen the long unshielded traces from s-video input to stop herringbone pattern to the chipset. Conexent is not stuff of good stuff if one wants quality.
But no matter how much I tinkered with software downloaded from various sources, the consumer chipset betrays the quality. I was not able to turn off hardware compression.
I forgot to tell you how much processing power of a typical TV chipset, it usually have 1 or 2 CPUs usually based on ARM 8 or so, and DACs but they tend to put bit depth too low on analog input except component. This results in banding. And due to chipsets used, they don't use good one to get high quality cap/quality scaling due to wattage issues and using small chipset heatsinks.
I forgot to address another issue. Some need closed caption functioning of acceptable quality. I had seen many makers not put their effort to give a crisp, easy readable font design. One generic plasma tv brand I worked on was so TINY. Some made it so large that I find this comical or so shaggy and rough. Second issue with some TVs, many lost CC decoding on component (have witnessed this) even at 480.
I had sent email to Anchor Bay that made DVDO series about embedding decoded EIA-608 text onto video during video processing and send it out via HDMI or component and they refused because they said several methods they found were unacceptable. HUH? In fact I had told them about Panasonic doing this already with DMR-EZ28K when I posed the question last year.
FYI:
Datarate on EIA-608 is only 960 bps and not very many character set, very easy for a simple chipset even to extract data and translate EIA-608 to digital EIA-708 (this is digital CC data) and mux into upconverted video and out via HDMI or component. This is what quality upconverting boxes should have done.
I was that close to save up and buy DVDO box. The lack of CC support is what killed it.
If VLC was able to support the Intensity Pro uncompressed or MPEG2 low compression from analog input I would be all over it as well. VLC has outstanding CC decoding and font quality and quality video was very good.
The chipset for video capture devices that you can buy except few is what letting me down.
Also, ATi Radeon Theater 550/650 enforces compression despite outstanding 10 bit depth and potential for outstanding video but software and not able to adjust the compression up and down, support direct like VLC is what let it down BIG TIME. Very unfocused and fuzzy even they tried to hide the raggies by defocusing. I did use MythTV before but it was still immature and not easy to set up and use.
I had tried at least 4-5 capture even with tuner cards and all had these issues.
Oh yes, I tried Dscaler but the software development have not kept up so it got fell wayside few years ago. It had TONS of potential but chipset makers even ATI are very unwilling to have this info avaible with this such flexibility.
The only letdown with DMR-EZ28K is lack of video adjustment to fix the "errors". My analog TV doesn't react to this extremes due to correct low and high levels of adjustments. My LCD TV does not handle this well even it has RGB adjustments. What is needed is another six adjustments covering magenta, cyan and yellow. And ability to adjust in DMR-EZ28K is needed as well but it only have 2 levels of outputs. That is it.
I was seriously thinking of grabbing the LG 32LE5300 has this features built in already but people would think I'm crazy having two 32" LCD TVs in short time. LOL
The issue I'm trying to fix right now is COGECO cable is putting too green tint on the video signal. Adjusting this out results worse picture (purple). Not R-G tint.
Cheers, Wizard
The biggest telltale PC requirements is PIII class for these latest 7 series of DVICO Fusion tuners means low datarate, too much loss even capturing or watching live on 480 via s-video. Based on CX23886
I had a video/tuner capture card that is based on CX23883 and had to modify it to screen the long unshielded traces from s-video input to stop herringbone pattern to the chipset. Conexent is not stuff of good stuff if one wants quality.
But no matter how much I tinkered with software downloaded from various sources, the consumer chipset betrays the quality. I was not able to turn off hardware compression.
I forgot to tell you how much processing power of a typical TV chipset, it usually have 1 or 2 CPUs usually based on ARM 8 or so, and DACs but they tend to put bit depth too low on analog input except component. This results in banding. And due to chipsets used, they don't use good one to get high quality cap/quality scaling due to wattage issues and using small chipset heatsinks.
I forgot to address another issue. Some need closed caption functioning of acceptable quality. I had seen many makers not put their effort to give a crisp, easy readable font design. One generic plasma tv brand I worked on was so TINY. Some made it so large that I find this comical or so shaggy and rough. Second issue with some TVs, many lost CC decoding on component (have witnessed this) even at 480.
I had sent email to Anchor Bay that made DVDO series about embedding decoded EIA-608 text onto video during video processing and send it out via HDMI or component and they refused because they said several methods they found were unacceptable. HUH? In fact I had told them about Panasonic doing this already with DMR-EZ28K when I posed the question last year.
FYI:
Datarate on EIA-608 is only 960 bps and not very many character set, very easy for a simple chipset even to extract data and translate EIA-608 to digital EIA-708 (this is digital CC data) and mux into upconverted video and out via HDMI or component. This is what quality upconverting boxes should have done.
I was that close to save up and buy DVDO box. The lack of CC support is what killed it.
If VLC was able to support the Intensity Pro uncompressed or MPEG2 low compression from analog input I would be all over it as well. VLC has outstanding CC decoding and font quality and quality video was very good.
The chipset for video capture devices that you can buy except few is what letting me down.
Also, ATi Radeon Theater 550/650 enforces compression despite outstanding 10 bit depth and potential for outstanding video but software and not able to adjust the compression up and down, support direct like VLC is what let it down BIG TIME. Very unfocused and fuzzy even they tried to hide the raggies by defocusing. I did use MythTV before but it was still immature and not easy to set up and use.
I had tried at least 4-5 capture even with tuner cards and all had these issues.
Oh yes, I tried Dscaler but the software development have not kept up so it got fell wayside few years ago. It had TONS of potential but chipset makers even ATI are very unwilling to have this info avaible with this such flexibility.
The only letdown with DMR-EZ28K is lack of video adjustment to fix the "errors". My analog TV doesn't react to this extremes due to correct low and high levels of adjustments. My LCD TV does not handle this well even it has RGB adjustments. What is needed is another six adjustments covering magenta, cyan and yellow. And ability to adjust in DMR-EZ28K is needed as well but it only have 2 levels of outputs. That is it.
I was seriously thinking of grabbing the LG 32LE5300 has this features built in already but people would think I'm crazy having two 32" LCD TVs in short time. LOL
The issue I'm trying to fix right now is COGECO cable is putting too green tint on the video signal. Adjusting this out results worse picture (purple). Not R-G tint.
Cheers, Wizard
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