Got my digi TV card - first impressions. (and HD rant)

[Mike]

The new toy arrived in the mail yesterday - a Hauppage Nova-T PVI.
($199 inc post from Nunzio @ Renura)
Installed easily on Win2000. Took ages to scan for the channels.
The software is not great. I wouldnt recommend this to Windows
users, but I got this for Linux.
On some programs ... Wow!!! the picture is fantastic. But on
most, even some widescreen ones, its not visibly better than
analog broadcast. e.g. "rules for dating my teenage daughter"
had excellent picture quality. (Pity about the script though
- looks like a bad imitation of Married with Children.)

It looks like the bundled software (2.15A) will not do H.D.
But oddly it will play channel 7 and SBS HD channels. WTF???
The "high" definition is nothing but SD with a higher frame rate.
The bastards! Since when did "definition" mean frame rate?
The bit rate is barely higher. And 7 have the balls to advertise
"available in HD". Am I missing something here? I sure hope so.
One thing that worries me is there seems to be only one channel
per station. Shouldn't one HD program use up a whole UHF/VHF channel
by itself? (Whats the correct terminology here?)

Now to get it working in Linux, as a PVR. Have built the drivers.
Anyone else got the Nova-T working with Linux in Oz?

[Weststate A/V Systems]

Mike wrote:
> It looks like the bundled software (2.15A) will not do H.D.
> But oddly it will play channel 7 and SBS HD channels. WTF???
> The "high" definition is nothing but SD with a higher frame rate.
> The bastards! Since when did "definition" mean frame rate?
> The bit rate is barely higher. And 7 have the balls to advertise
> "available in HD". Am I missing something here?

Nope you pretty much got it.
It's Clayton's HDTV - (The HDTV you watch when your not really watching
HDTV). If it's on $even then it's probably going to be done on the
cheap. It is reported that Channel $tokes is scanning E-Bay daily to
pick-up old 4:3 camera's that other networks are selling off.
Watching Channel Cheap's latest moves is certainly worth a giggle though.



Colin
http://members.iinet.net.au/~colinf/product.htm

[Kevin Hendrikssen]

"Mike" <me@nospam.xx> wrote in message news:3fe46023$1@quokka.wn.com.au...

> But oddly it will play channel 7 and SBS HD channels. WTF???
> The "high" definition is nothing but SD with a higher frame rate.
> The bastards! Since when did "definition" mean frame rate?
> The bit rate is barely higher. And 7 have the balls to advertise
> "available in HD". Am I missing something here? I sure hope so.

Congrats... yes, Seven and SBS's "HD" is 576p (progressive), compared to
576i (interlaced) for SD.

[don't.email.me]

http://www.technotrend.de/english/download/download.html

I got the same card and downloaded the 2.16 software from the above website.
The 2.16 version is HD capable. But that's for Windows not Linux.

Frankos

"Mike" <me@nospam.xx> wrote in message news:3fe46023$1@quokka.wn.com.au...
> The new toy arrived in the mail yesterday - a Hauppage Nova-T PVI.
> ($199 inc post from Nunzio @ Renura)
> Installed easily on Win2000. Took ages to scan for the channels.
> The software is not great. I wouldnt recommend this to Windows
> users, but I got this for Linux.
> On some programs ... Wow!!! the picture is fantastic. But on
> most, even some widescreen ones, its not visibly better than
> analog broadcast. e.g. "rules for dating my teenage daughter"
> had excellent picture quality. (Pity about the script though
> - looks like a bad imitation of Married with Children.)
>
> It looks like the bundled software (2.15A) will not do H.D.
> But oddly it will play channel 7 and SBS HD channels. WTF???
> The "high" definition is nothing but SD with a higher frame rate.
> The bastards! Since when did "definition" mean frame rate?
> The bit rate is barely higher. And 7 have the balls to advertise
> "available in HD". Am I missing something here? I sure hope so.
> One thing that worries me is there seems to be only one channel
> per station. Shouldn't one HD program use up a whole UHF/VHF channel
> by itself? (Whats the correct terminology here?)
>
> Now to get it working in Linux, as a PVR. Have built the drivers.
> Anyone else got the Nova-T working with Linux in Oz?

[Mordwid]

I too recently picked up the Hauppage Nova-T PVI.

INstalled no worries but the indoor DSE (amplified) aerial was crap and
would only let the scanning lock onto SBS and ABC so split the attenna cable
in the roof and ran it down to the PC - updated the software to 2.16 & WOW!!
a new scan picked up all channels and the clarity is fantastic. Am really
impressed.

I also couldn't see a great deal of difference between Nine SD and HD...mind
you I am running an LCD monitor at 1024 x 768.

[dnas]

I bought a digital AVERTV DVB-T card yesterday for $158.

I haven't put it through all of its paces yet, but I was really impressed by the picture quality. It takes SD & HD. I did a short capture of some SD programs and it seems to work ok.
The scan of the digital channels is really quick.

[Danny Rohr]

Mordwid <mordwid@thecavern.com> wrote in message
news:3fe61723$0$18750$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.a u...

> I also couldn't see a great deal of difference between Nine SD and
HD...mind
> you I am running an LCD monitor at 1024 x 768.

Not all programs a HD however, when a non High Definition program is
playing, you are simply seeing a up-converted version of the SD program.

Danny.

[Matt Mcleod]

In article <3fe46023$1@quokka.wn.com.au>, Mike <me@nospam.xx> wrote:
>The "high" definition is nothing but SD with a higher frame rate.

To paraphrase that old Castrol advert, HD ain't HD.

>Anyone else got the Nova-T working with Linux in Oz?

Yup. Getting the card to work is a doddle, though I noticed
the other day that the CVS drivers didn't pick up the frontend
when I synced and grabbed the latest, so you may need to go
back a bit to get a working set.

I've got a reasonable setup now using WebVCR+ and the script at
<http://boggle.org/software/avfoo/wvcrrec.pl>. The latter takes
the place of "vcr" to grab MPEG-2 from the DVB-T card.

Matt

--
Matt McLeod Sysprog, Systems and IT Infrastructure
<mjm@unimelb.edu.au> The University of Melbourne
Security Is Not A Line Printer