OTA HDTV Project - Continued

DLTV has an excellent segment on HDTV standards and technologies. The video is available in multiple formats... Check it out by clicking on the title of this blog message. Here is a breakdown of the special:

• Wondering what HDTV is? Robert Heron says it's two things: an HDTV screen and HDTV content. Big glass tubes, front projectors, rear projectors, plasmas, LCD, OLED... they all have their strong points.
• Plasma vs. LCD: why there's no such thing as the 'perfect' thin HDTV.
• Going HDTV shopping this holiday? Loyd Case tells Patrick how to find his ideal HDTV.
• Your HDTV checklist: Loyd's got a list you should check twice before dropping the big bucks on your.
• Get the hook-up on HDTV connectors, and what you'll need to get your PC, DVD, cable or sat TV hooked up!
• Wondering where to find the best HDTV content? Jim Louderback walks us thru his favorite sources, from TiVo to over the air Trust us, that old UHF antenna is far from dead!
• Looking for some of our favorite TVs? Check out the ultimate 'bang for the buck' guide to big HDTVs.
  

OTA HDTV Project - Continued

Installed 512meg additional RAM and a 256meg ATI Radeon 9250 card in the system to see if this would increase performance watching HD content. Here are a couple observations:

• The installation of additional RAM didn't improve the out of synch audio/video or change the video display which was being generated as a very small window in the upper left corner of the monitor.
• The installation of the video card made a difference. The audio/video is now in synch, the video content is now displayed in a window which is centered in the middle of the monitor. The display is not full screen. There is a bar of about two inches around the entire video content.
• Determined that screen resolution makes a difference! Since this is digital HD content, it needs to be displayed on a high resolution display. Moved from a 1024x768 display to 1280x1024 and the video is now displayed full screen! It's amazing that you can get an image this clear over the air...

Next steps include recording an episode to see if there is any lost signal strength during the recording and to copy the file to the media server which will then be accessed over the 100 meg network by the home theater pc and displayed on the ceiling mounted front projection projector.

OTA HDTV Project - Continued

The Dvico Fushion HDTV5 Gold Plus arrived yesterday and I installed it in the system last night. Once the proper drivers were installed Beyond TV4 found the card without a problem. The tuning of the stations take time and I was able to get signal on a couple of stations. Tuning this in could be interesting.

The video that was displayed wasn't terrific and I also had a delay in audio video synch. This could be due to RAM, video card, or processor. I'm planning on installing an additional 512 meg of ram tonight and a new AGP graphics card to see if this improves things.

I also noticed that the video wasn't being displayed full screen like it is with the analog signal through cable. We'll see if the hardware upgrades make a difference.

OTA HDTV Project

I've now completed the build of a barebones system which will be used to test the "Over The Air" functionality of HD from our local stations. The system will be initially configured with two 250 gig drives (Raid 0), 256 meg DDR Ram, dual layer DVD+r-r drive and CDR drive.

I'm now waiting for the HD card to arrive!

SnapStream Update (HDTV Support)

Snapstream has released a new update to their "Beyond TV" product which now allows you to view over the air HD content. I've purchased an OTA HD card from them and will soon be building a new DVR system to test this functionality. More to follow!

Orb Update

This took a bit but I've finally been able to figure out the issue with not being able to display "Live TV" via the Orb service. Codec contention... Once I removed multiple redundant MPEG2 codecs on the system I was then able to get this function to work.