2009 HDTV conversion.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by sleddogman

One thing that no one has mentioned in regards to PC HD tuners...

After July 2007, every PC HD tuner manufacturer was mandated to embed and enforce DRM capabilities into their products to prevent copying of the broadcast stream if the DRM data bits were set. It's interesting that pre-July-07 tuners haven't shown up for big bux on eBay yet, or do you think folks totally unaware of this little DRM gotcha...?

Didn't know that! So does this mean that none of the DVR software will work? That's awful, for people who aren't home when there's something they want to see. Easy to foil though, I bet. I bet I'll still be able to record through a Digital-to-Analog converter onto an old Betamax.

Charles

[peverett]

I was finally able to check digital TV reception at my mothers house in
Oklahoma, 70 miles from the transmitter. To my suprise, on rabbit ears, she receives 5 channels in good weather. Two NBC channels(here NBC only transmitts one channel, Telemundo(not much good to her, in Spanish). and a couple others.

Do not know how well it will work in bad weather or with a better antenna.

I have noticed one repeating artifact in both satellite and digital TV. If a car such as my 1963 Falcon is on the screen, the slotted grill causes a rainbow effect. I have seen this on several items with slotted type surfaces, including railroad cars and dress ties.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by peverett

I was finally able to check digital TV reception at ...
I have noticed one repeating artifact in both satellite and digital TV. If a car such as my 1963 Falcon is on the screen, the slotted grill causes a rainbow effect. I have seen this on several items with slotted type surfaces, including railroad cars and dress ties.

This is an old well known NTSC artifact called "cross-color" - where high frequency luminance details (lines or sharp edges) get into the color circuit and are demodulated as flickering color information. A comb filter reduces this greatly, but not on diagonal lines. It does not occur in purely digital systems, but can be seen when the digital signal is converted to NTSC for existing sets. (Or, sometimes, if the original signal fed to the digital system comes from an NTSC source, it may appear in the digital signal from that point onward.)

[andy]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

This is an old well known NTSC artifact called "cross-color" - where high frequency luminance details (lines or sharp edges) get into the color circuit and are demodulated as flickering color information. A comb filter reduces this greatly, but not on diagonal lines. It does not occur in purely digital systems, but can be seen when the digital signal is converted to NTSC for existing sets. (Or, sometimes, if the original signal fed to the digital system comes from an NTSC source, it may appear in the digital signal from that point onward.)

If the set has an S-video input, it should eliminate the problem.

Originally Posted by kx250rider

Didn't know that! So does this mean that none of the DVR software will work? That's awful, for people who aren't home when there's something they want to see. Easy to foil though, I bet. I bet I'll still be able to record through a Digital-to-Analog converter onto an old Betamax.

Charles

With a 42" LCD TV, I don't need a PC adapter but, more than likely the DRM electronics will keep it "read only" so to speak. That might mean the output can only be routed to the PC's system display port, so you might have to jump through hoops tapping into the VGA/DVI/HDMI display stream, unless you happen to have one of those older two-head output Matrox video cards.

[peverett]

The sets that I know to have seen the rainbow effect on are 20+ years old, so it is not supprising.

I think that I have also seen it on my mothers 4 year old TV(on satellite), but am not sure. I think that I was watching the "Beverly Hillbillies", so the source probably was NTSC(Granny was running for Possum Queen of Beverly Hills).

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by peverett

The sets that I know to have seen the rainbow effect on are 20+ years old, so it is not supprising.

I think that I have also seen it on my mothers 4 year old TV(on satellite), but am not sure. I think that I was watching the "Beverly Hillbillies", so the source probably was NTSC(Granny was running for Possum Queen of Beverly Hills).

How about that nice Imperial with the "vote for possum queen" banner on it?

[dr.ido]

Cross color artifacting was as a feature on some old 8 bit home computers to generate more colors than the video controller actually supported. The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer used it heavily to get color out of it's 256x192 monochrome display mode, as did some Atari 800 and Apple ][ software.

It took me a long time to work out why my display didn't match the screenshots in the magazines. It doesn't work on PAL sets. PAL sets aren't totally immune to cross color artifacting, but it comes out more as a shimmering green/purple tinge. You can't generate the solid blocks of color like on an NTSC set, so the effect doesn't work for games. Later I picked up an NTSC system so I could see it for myself, then it was a case of constantly swapping them back and forth. Use the NTSC monitor with a coarse pitch CRT for those games, then swap back to a sharper mono monitor when I was doing text based stuff.

It was used so heavily that the RGB output on the Apple ][gs emulates the cross color artifacts when running in an Apple ][ mode.

[peverett]

I liked when Mr. Drysdale tried to get San Juan Capistrano(the return of the swallows town) to hold the possum festival(Beverly Hills would none of it).

For some reason "The return of the Possums to San Juan" did not sound very good to the city.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by sleddogman

One thing that no one has mentioned in regards to PC HD tuners...

After July 2007, every PC HD tuner manufacturer was mandated to embed and enforce DRM capabilities into their products to prevent copying of the broadcast stream if the DRM data bits were set. It's interesting that pre-July-07 tuners haven't shown up for big bux on eBay yet, or do you think folks totally unaware of this little DRM gotcha...?

Are you referring to the so-called "broadcast flag"? It was originally supposed to go into effect in July 2005, but was struck down in court in May 2005. Do you have any links to describe anything planned for July 2007? I have seen nothing regarding any such resurrection of that proposal.

Oh, if it really happened last July, yes, people would be swarming all over "non-restricted" computer tuners on Ebay and elsewhere... I had friends who almost did that in early 2005.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

Didn't know that! So does this mean that none of the DVR software will work? That's awful, for people who aren't home when there's something they want to see. Easy to foil though, I bet. I bet I'll still be able to record through a Digital-to-Analog converter onto an old Betamax.

Charles

First of all, nothing happened last summer that I am aware of (and I have, I think, four HD DVR computers with five tuners total that all still work fine). In any case, the restriction would not work like that anyway. What it would do, if it had actually happened, is to stop you from making more copies of shows you had already recorded on your computer, provided the "broadcast flag" had been set to stop copying. In any case, Federal law prevents broadcasters from blocking recording of their shows.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by sleddogman

With a 42" LCD TV, I don't need a PC adapter but, more than likely the DRM electronics will keep it "read only" so to speak. That might mean the output can only be routed to the PC's system display port, so you might have to jump through hoops tapping into the VGA/DVI/HDMI display stream, unless you happen to have one of those older two-head output Matrox video cards.

If the "broadcast flag" were actually approved, and a network/show had turned it on for a specific show, it would not work the way you are describing. Also, if it did, a dual-output video board would not help (but a dual-output VGA amplifier would, if you had a way to record VGA signals, which is highly impractical). Rather, you could still record the show, but you could not make copies of the recording. The file/recording itself would be encrypted and linked to the hardware in the original computer. (The AccessDTV board originally worked that way, without any FCC mandate. Later versions of the software dropped that copy-protection "feature".)

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I got a new HD TV device which uses my LCD computer monitor for display, and the computer for controls. Although I'm very impressed with the high detail and super-sharp picture when watching HD broadcast (KTLA Morning Show in Los Angeles on Ch 5.1 via air reception), there is a serious COMPLAINT: The picture has a stop-n-start jerkiness to it, and the audio track is slightly out of sync with the picture. Kind of like an early internet video, but with a clear picture.

The HD tuner I got is a USB device, and my computer is a Core 2 Duo 6300 (IIRC) with 2 Gb RAM and a fairly high-end ASUS board. So I can't blame a lack of power in the computer. If I go out and buy a new TV with an ATSC tuner, will I have better results, or might this be a problem with how far I am from the transmitter? Is this inherently a characteristic of a USB TV tuner, or maybe the one I got is cheap?

Any opinions appreciated...

Charles

The problem could be with your antenna, but it could be other things as well. What tuner did you get? What OS do you use? There are plenty of tweaks that can make things much better on Windows machines. I have only watched and recorded digital TV with Windows computers for the last two years, and have used numerous other PC-based digital tuners since late 2000. My current HTPC (Home Theater PC) has two cheap USB HD tuners bought at Fry's for US$30 each (so I can record on one while I watch on the other), and they work fine.

If you have no other digital tuners besides the computer one, the basic way to check your antenna is to see how well it works on analog UHF stations. If those are not pretty clear and stable, you will likely have problems with digital. If they are good, then we need to suspect the settings of your computer. (I got good reception of at least one or two channels with a little rod antenna and a Dvico Fusion 5 USB tuner on my Pentium M 1.5 GHz laptop in a hotel near LAX on one visit.)

[fsjonsey]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

We're The FCC. We're part of the Goverment. We know what's best for you...Resistance is Futile...You are an Individual, therefore, you're an Idiot, WE know what is best....We're The FCC.....

Originally formed to protect the interest of the private citizen.
LOL

[NowhereMan 1966]

Come to think of it, one interesting side to HDTV is that one TV station can broadcast more than one TV signal. I'm not a fan of how it is being shoved on us though, but I wonder how things like the Olympics would be covered, you can put different events on different subchannels and the like. I wonder if NBC will do this for this year's Olympics? I applied for my two coupons and if I get my boxes in time, I'd like to find out.

I know in 1992, NBC did have a couple of extra Olympic channels you had to pay for via cable but with HDTV, you can do it over the air for free.