Everything about HDTV…part two
September 16th, 2005 at 6:38 pm by Nikki
Let’s now explore what you’ll need to setup HDTV on your home PC. Remember, setting up HDTV can take a little bit of work, but once you’re done, you’ll have totally free and totally clear high-definition picture quality for the best TV shows on.
First Things First — Is it available where you live?
Not all stations are currently broadcasting in HD. And even within a given station, only certain programs are being broadcast in HD. To learn more about what TV stations in your area are broadcasting in HD please visit http://www.checkhd.com/.
What you need to create an HDTV PC
In the United States, HDTV is broadcast in the following ways:
- Over-the-air (OTA) in Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) format
- Over cable in Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) format
- Over satellite via a proprietary format
This means that you can get HDTV programs through an antenna, an HDTV cable box, or a satellite box. Currently, however, only OTA format, i.e. through an antenna, can be easily captured on your PC. To capture and play this signal on your PC, you need:
- Beyond TV 4
- an HDTV compliant Antenna
- an Interconnect Cable
- a computer with minimum specifications, outlined below
- HDTV shows broadcast in your area (see http://www.checkhd.com/ for a list)
And optionally (but recommended):
- An HDTV Television set with proper cabling to display content from the PC (see cabling instructions below)
Antenna
There are many different types of antennas that can capture an HD signal. The type that you will need is determined by your location in relation to the source of the HD signal, your terrain, and the distance to the broadcast tower. Antennas range from small "Rabbit Ear" antennas to large rooftop antennas. CNET has put together a very helpful and complete article on choosing and installing HDTV antennas. You may want to check it out when you’re done reading this post! To determine which type of antenna you will need, visit the Antenna Guide at www.checkhd.com, and follow these directions:
- First, input your location.
- Then, use the color-coded chart to determine the type. For instance, if your stations are mostly "Light Green", you will need a "Large Multidirectional Antenna." These colors are standardized for antennae approved by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Whether shopping in a store at Circuit City or online at Crutchfield, you should see these colors indicated on the packaging for all antennae.
- Select a CEA-approved antenna with the appropriate color code. There are six color codes which denote different types of antennae. They are, as follows:
| Yellow | Small Multidirectional Antenna |
| Green | Medium Multidirectional Antenna |
| Light Green | Multidirectional Antenna or Small Directional Antenna with pre-amp |
| Red | Medium Directional Antenna |
| Blue | Medium Directional Antenna with pre-amp |
| Violet | Large Directional Antenna with pre-amp |
Green:Medium Multidirectional Antenna
Light Green:Small Directional Antenna
Yellow:Small Multidirectional Antenna
Violet:Large Directional Antenna
There are a lot of types of antennae, but it’s pretty simple to determine which type you need on www.checkhd.com. The basic difference between a directional and a multidirectional antenna is that a multidirectional antenna allows you to receive signals from towers that reside in different cardinal directions from your house. In some areas, the broadcast towers will all be located in one general direction, and thus a directional antenna is all you need. But in others, you will need a multidirectional antenna to capture broadcasts, for example, if there is a tower to your north and one to your south, each of which broadcasts channels that you would like to view. Some antennae have more than one color code designated. This means that they will get the channels marked in both of those colors in your www.checkhd.com search results. All of this information refers to HDTV-dedicated antennae. However, you can try to hook up your current antenna to you HDTV set-up and see which OTA stations you can receive. In all likelihood, you will get better results with an HDTV antenna.
Interconnect Cable
To receive the best signal, use RG6-style coax cable and connectors. This style is available at most local electronics stores like Radio Shack. Failure to use this grade of cable will result in reduced or no signal.
Splitter (optional)
If you need to split the signal, use an HDTV-compliant splitter of at least 5 – 1100Mhz. Be sure that you are not getting a combiner. Though combiners and splitters look very similar, if not identical, a combiner will not properly split the signal.
The HDTV Tuner Card
To capture high-definition content with Beyond TV, your TV tuner card needs to support BDA drivers. Ask your manufacturer if you are unsure if your card does. Most BDA compliant cards will work with Beyond TV. We suggest the following HDTV tuner cards for use with Beyond TV:
- ATI HDTV Wonder
- AverMedia AVerTVHD MCE A180
- Divco FusionHDTV3
- Divco FusionHDTV5
- VBox DTA-151
- VBox USB-A 3560
If you want to record high-definition content, you must use an HDTV card or a hybrid card that can record both analog and digital content. Beyond TV 4 supports multiple tuners for free, so you can use an analog card with an HDTV card simultaneously.
The Computer
You will need an up-to-date computer with recent hardware to decode the HD signal. Make sure your computer meets or exceeds these specifications:
- 2.4 GHz or above Intel or AMD processor
- 512MB Ram
- ATI Radeon 9550 or NVIDIA GeForce 5200 or above video card. Failure to use a proper video card will result in a choppy picture.
- Windows XP (Home or Pro) with Service Pack 2. SP2 is a requirement, not a recommendation.
- DirectX 9.0c
- Sufficient gigabytes of free hard drive space. A typical HD show is about 9 GB for one hour of TV. This is up to 8 times more usage than traditional MPEG-2. For normal usage, 200 GB of free space is a practical minimum. The following chart shows the approximate amount of hard drive space you will need depending on recording times.
| Hard Drive Space | Recording Time |
| 9 GB | 1 hour |
| 27 GB | 3 hours |
| 54 GB | 6 hours |
| 108 GB | 12 hours |
| 216 GB | 24 hours |
Now you know what you need to get started creating you own HDTV PC. In the next article, I’ll discuss the process of actually setting it up! Stay tuned…
September 16th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
Just an FYI, your mascot lady is creepy looking…
September 16th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Point taken… she is a bit scary.
September 16th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Haha, I think she is stealing my soul. I’m having a flash back to a psychology 101 book that had one of those “Did you know!” article on how small pupils make people look “evil where large pupils make people look “cute”. (http://www.hql.or.jp/gpd/eng/www/nwl/n08/ergo.html) Creepy art girl asside, a very informative straight-the-the-chase article on HDTV.
September 17th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
I found this interesting –
“Beyond TV 4 supports multiple tuners for free”
Last I knew, they were hitting people up for $20 after the first 2 tuners.
Also, does anyone know how much data a hard drive can record in an hour?
For example, if I have 3 tuners recording at 2 gig an hour, and a hd at 9 gig an hour, for a total of 15 gig per hour, how will it affect playback on the main machine, and if 2 other clients are connected trying to stream back recorded or live content?
September 18th, 2005 at 10:09 am
“Beyond TV 4 supports multiple tuners for free, so you can use an analog card with an HDTV card simultaneously”. I think I’m missing something here — as far has I can tell browsing through Snapstream’s site, BTV 4 is not yet available! I’ve got my ATI HDTV Wonder card. I’m just waiting for BTV 4 — or is BTV3.7 able to recognize my card?. I think some of you may be using the Beta, but I’m still using 3.7, the Beta not having been offered to me. Great articles though. Thanks very much for the info. In Article One on HDTV I think more distinction needs to be made between NTSC (analog and BTV3) and ATSC (Digital provided in BTV4). Standard Def. is defined by ATSC as a digital format. I understood what you meant, but there may be others who wouldn’t.
Keep up the great work, all of you BTV Bloggers!
September 19th, 2005 at 9:03 am
I’m just getting things set up and am having fairly good luck with the Avermedia A180 card and an Antennas Direct DB2 antenna. I’m here in Houston and this small antenna seems to do the job for the UHF stations. I’m still not sure what to do to get our local PBS station which uses VHF channel 9 for DTV.
The Avermedia supplied software is not behaving very well. I hope BTV4 does better. The AVSForum folks showed me how to use use Graphedit to get a barebones application going. I even got the AC3 audio passed to my receiver. I hope BTV4 is going support AC3 passthrough as this is a major part of the experience.
September 19th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
thanks for the list of ‘approved’ HD tuner cards.
can you please qualify the statement regarding support for
multiple tuners?
specifically, will the recommended cards work with more
than one HD tuner, i.e. can i use 2 or 3 fusion5 cards and
records more than one HD channel at a time?
September 20th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
What about HDTV over firewire ? it works on my PC but i have yet to find a good software that can really control my cable box, change channel, and watch and record HDTV (as well as regular TV). Firewire is easy to set up and VERY cheap (no tuner card).
September 20th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
To answer some of your questions:
Bertrand: Beyond TV 4 will not support HDTV over firewire.
Jim: We’re going to have some more information on recommended HDTV tuner cards in the next couple of weeks, and we haven’t yet set an official release date. We’ll keep you informed.
cat6man: Beyond TV 4 will support multiple HD tuner cards. Yes, it will work with multiple Fusion5 cards to record multiple shows simultaneously.
Harold: Beyond TV 4 will support AC3 passthrough.
Kelly: Beyond TV 4 is not available yet, but it will be soon. We’re trying to get everyone prepared for it by letting them know about the extra setup required to use Beyond TV 4 with HDTV.
Skink: In Beyond TV 4, extra tuner licenses will be free. We hope people will be excited about the increased flexibility this gives them.
September 23rd, 2005 at 1:35 pm
http://www.checkhd.com tells me to use a ‘yellow’
http://www.antennaweb.org tells me to use a ‘red’
who is right?
September 23rd, 2005 at 3:00 pm
i spoke to one of snapstreams reps before ordering the btv suite . he gave me the impression that i could use my ati hdtv wonder card with my directv hd box. how do i get the hd signal inputed to the coax on the card. help
September 26th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
I GUESS BTV WONT HAVE DIRECTV HDTV SUPPORT- WHAT THE HEY- THE MAJORITY OF FUTURE HD PROGRAMING WILL BE SATELITE BASED- SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE A TUNER CARD W DVI INPUT TO KEEP THE HD SIGNAL DIGITAL- OVER THE AIR HD IS SO LIMITED- IF TIVO CAN DO DIRECTV HD I KNOW THE SNAPSTREAM GODS CAN PREVAIL-
September 29th, 2005 at 10:04 am
That’s DirectTV’s fault, not Snapstream’s. If they want to work in a closed system, then there’s not much you can do. Besides, I’ve seen HDTV on DirectTV, and whew… it’s pretty ugly. I’ll be perfectly happy with OTA, BitTorrent, and Usenet.
October 6th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
Might want to point out that RG6QuadShield is the way to go if you have a antenna greater than 50′ from the receiver. RG6qs loses 1/6th the signal of ordinary RG6.
Don’t even think about RG59 — it’s crap. Something like 2x the signal loss of ordinary RG6.
Quad Shield is expensive, but it’s worth every penny and may mean the difference between lots of channels and/or no channels at all.
October 8th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
What about changing resolution to 1920/1080i or 720p automatically within BTV4?
October 18th, 2005 at 9:36 am
Ok, dumb question, it said ” so you can use an analog card with an HDTV card simultaneously.”, now my ati AIW card won’t be recognized with my PVR250 card (not sure if this is a glitch or design) but as far as I can tell, there are no hardware encoding hdtv cards (are there), so will there be an issue mixing pvr-250’s and hdtv cards on the same system?
October 21st, 2005 at 3:18 am
I’m using BTV now with my DVICO Fusion 3 Gold PCI and my USB Vbox Catseye. Both are HDTV via ATSC. BeyondTV is absolutely fantasic with these.
After many, many months of futzing around with the software provided with the Fusion (VERY buggy, unreliable, and hard to use) I have to say that BeyondTV is a breath of fresh air. It truly brings the PVR experience to the PC and it works better with my hardware than the software provided by Dvico for its own card!!! In fact, “better” is an understatement, it works perfectly.
Right now I’m using some sort of “SE” HDTV version provided with the Vbox. Looking forward to upgrading to the full deal as soon as it supports HDTV too.
October 25th, 2005 at 1:39 am
I notice that you have limited support for HDTV satellite receivers. Are you planning on updating any of the channel changing through the serial interface of HDTV boxes such as the Sony HD-300 receiver?
Many people who watch HDTV invest alot of their money in AV equipment which means they also subscribe to Satellite or Cable for HDTV as well. However, the only way to change channels on the satellite or cable boxes in BeyondTV is with the IR blaster or USBUIRT. As you know, this solution does not work well and is not supported very well from Snapstream.
The list of supported receivers in your support forum has not changed in over a year. Any plans on updating this list and supported receivers?
October 28th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
“2.4 GHz or above Intel or AMD processor”
Um. A 2.4GHz Athlon64 is a 3800+ or faster. That’s the minimum requirement? Seems a little excessive…
October 28th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
Just an Athlon will do… Athlon64 not required. And the 2.4 GHz was unofficial — we’ve actually been working on reducing the requirements by optimizing our decoder, among other things. Current system requirements sit at:
- Intel® Pentium®, AMD Athlon™ processor at 1.7 GHz or higher
- 512 MB Ram
- ATI Radeon 9550 or NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 or Higher
- 40 GB of available hard drive space (this will allow 5 hours of HD Recording)
- BDA Compliant ATSC Capture Card
- Windows XP Service Pack 2
November 7th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Is anyone going to answer my question on supported HDTV receivers for Directv?
November 9th, 2005 at 4:12 pm
Hey Snapstream folks, might I suggest that you update your website/blog to use the proper spelling “DViCO” (http://www.dvico.com/) rather than “divco” when you list supported cards?
November 9th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Tom, will do — thanks for catching the typo. (and nice to hear from you again!)
March 16th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
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March 25th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Glad to see other hams into model railroading. I operate on all the ham bands 160 – 10 meters. As for the model railroading, it’s all N-scale. See ya a bit later maybe on the radio.
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April 7th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Glad to see other hams into model railroading. I operate on all the ham bands 160 – 10 meters. As for the model railroading, it’s all N-scale. See ya a bit later maybe on the radio.