Is anyone in the USA using Linux for a Digital VCR?
Michael Knight
Howto and the FAQ's on the linuxtv project, I have some questions that
I can't seem to find answers to.
First of all, is anyone in the United States actually using a Linux
box as a digital VCR similar to ReplayTV or Tivo? It seems like most,
if not all of the documentation and projects I read through are
specific to European broadcasts and hardware. I'm wondering if this
even works in the US which seems to be a century behind in digital TV.
Next, I understand that the MPEG2 encoder/decoder is the real secret
to making this work. Is the performance better than a regular VHS
VCR?
Does anyone have their linux box hooked up to a DBS dish service like
DirecTV or Dish Network? Can you tune and record programs directly
from the satellite? If so, how do you have this set up?
Finally, can you record multiple programs at the same time or record
and playback simultaneously? Does this require multiple tuner cards
and encoder/decoder cards?
Let me know if I'm way off on some of these, and if you are a person
who's actually doing this stuff, I want to know what you've got and
how well it works!
Thanks,
Michael
Lew Pitcher
(Michael Knight) wrote:
>After looking through several of the websites, and reading the VCR
>Howto and the FAQ's on the linuxtv project, I have some questions that
>I can't seem to find answers to.
>
>First of all, is anyone in the United States actually using a Linux
>box as a digital VCR similar to ReplayTV or Tivo?
IIRC, Tivo _is_ a Linux box.
[snip]
Lew Pitcher, Information Technology Consultant, Toronto Dominion Bank Financial Group
(Lew_P...@td.com)
(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employer's.)
Mike Martin
http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html
So I would guess many Americans are using Linux as a Digital VCR.. but few actually know it.
kyi
connected the cable tv box directly to my tv tuner card. Basicly you only
need a few things to get this setup to work. I will list the steps below, in
order.
1) Pruchase a Hauppauge WinTV m/n= 401 ( don't be fooled by the 'WinTV' name
it is fully compatable with linux )
2) Install WinTV board into your pc
3) Install the latest kernel or just load the modules for the tv card if
using a stock kernel.
a) modprobe tuner type=2 ( look at
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/BTTV-4.html#ss4.5 for a detailed list of
codes to use, I live in the US so I use '2' )
b) modprobe bttv
4) Download and install xawtv, http://bytesex.org/xawtv/xawtv_3.65.tar.gz
5) Make a directory, mkdir /usr/lib/win32
6) Download the mpeg4 codecs http://kyi.sytes.net/~kyi/binaries-010122.zip
and extract them into the '/usr/lib/win32' directory.
7) Download and install the avifile & player app, this is used for
encodeing, http://kyi.sytes.net/~kyi/avifile-0.53.5.tar.gz
8) Download and install the vcr program.
http://www.stack.nl/~brama/vcr/src/vcr-1.05.tar.gz
9) Now goto http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.4 and create a
.xawtv and .vcrrc files in your root directory.
10) Don't worry about the version numbers on the various www sites I
provided. The versions that I have linked to are know to work togehter ( on
my system ).
11) At the very bottom of this page,
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1 you will see a sample
script to record a tv show. Just put this in your cron when you
want a show recorded and you are good to go.
Also if you get real creative you can find a perl script from
http://freshmeat.net that will fecth th www.tvguide.com listings from their
server and have it inserted into your script for recording. The above howto
is very basic but it will be enough to get you recording and playback. On a
side not I have even used this method to record dvd movies from my Apex dvd
player.
--
- kyi
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.anti-dmca.org/
"Michael Knight" <re...@cc50029-a.wisland1.ga.home.com> wrote in message
news:ddb6b951.01120...@posting.google.com...
kyi
least that's what I got mine for at compusa.
--
- kyi
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
"kyi" <k...@psnw.com> wrote in message
news:u0sspus...@corp.supernews.com...
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
few actually know it.
>
imagine
> why anyone would want to use a computer for such a thing. My VCR works
> just fine, thank you, for its intended purpose.
You can't seek quickly through a VHS tape. And you certainly don't have
random access.
You can't "nicely" remove advertising from a VHS copy.
You can't easily DiVX-compress your VCR's storage and post it on newsgroups
or email it to your friends.
You lose quality with multi-generation copies on analog equipment.
--
=== Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
Responsibly disposing of dangerous liqueur chocolates
and surplus peppermints since 1974.
http://www.larwe.com/
cbbr...@acm.org
> On Wed, 05 Dec 2001 18:54:02 GMT, Mike Martin <mi...@overlord.linux-dude.com> wrote:
> > So I would guess many Americans are using Linux as a Digital
> > VCR.. but few actually know it.
> Though I am a strong supporter of Linux, for the life of me I can't
> imagine why anyone would want to use a computer for such a thing. My
> VCR works just fine, thank you, for its intended purpose.
You've obviously not used a TiVO.
The _big_ deal about TiVO is _not_ simply in "using it as a VCR."
It is in the combination of:
-> Having an online TV guide;
-> Having an automated recording scheduler integrated with that guide;
"I enjoy watching Star Trek; record the weekly broadcast."
-> (Less crucial, but cool!) Having the ability to do your _own_
instant replays.
-> Having a "helper" that looks at the stuff you watch, compares it
to what's on the TV guide schedule, and suggests similar stuff
that you might like.
"You watched _Hang 'em High_, and _The Good, The Bad, and The
Ugly_. Would you like to record _The Gauntlet_, _Dirty Harry_,
and _The Dead Pool_?"
It is _NOT_ a general purpose computer; the TiVO unit looks pretty
much like a big VCR without any slots.
--
(concatenate 'string "aa454" "@freenet.carleton.ca")
http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/sgml.html
"MICROS~1: The People who Brought the Y2K Bug into Software Titling"
-- cbbr...@hex.net
David Konerding
> On Wed, 05 Dec 2001 18:54:02 GMT, Mike Martin <mi...@overlord.linux-dude.com> wrote:
>
> why anyone would want to use a computer for such a thing. My VCR works
> just fine, thank you, for its intended purpose.
Let's see. You get a digital copy instead of an analog one. You can record much, much
more movies on a large hard drive than a VCR tape using compression. It's more flexible,
has higher video quality, and can do neat things like recording a show and letting
you watch it with a short phase delay- for example, if you hit pause you can
go to the bathroom and return to the show-- even if you hadn't already taped it.
There are quite a few others. Sure, a standard analog tape-based VCR "works fine". But a digitial VCR
works much, much better in some situations.
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
news:slrna0t3c4.e...@linux1.linux.bogus...
(various reasons why HE is down on digital video recording).
Your words: "I can't imagine why anyone would want to use a computer for
such a thing".
I described to you just four exceedingly good reasons why "anyone" would
want to use digital video recording. The fact that you are happy to live
with a less convenient technology has nothing to do with the rest of the
world.
I guess you also prefer cassette tapes to CDs, and of course your household
has no DVD player. Maybe you have an old turntable with glowing valves
somewhere in your home also.
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
> > somewhere in your home also.
>
Man... I wish I had lived in the 60s so I could blame this conversation on
some bad acid.
> it on a daily basis in the car. I do not have a CD or DVD player and
> have no plans to purchase such items.
Fine, but that's no excuse for being a wet blanket when other people say
they want to upgrade to digital media. I also own several VCRs, but I am
vigorously trying to get all my recordings off VHS and into DV (and hence
onto DVD-RAM) for all the reasons I stated as well as longevity. Optical
storage doesn't come into physical contact with the playback head; your
magnetic tapes are having their information layer scuffed off every instant
they're in the transport.
I used to churn my own butter, but if someone had asked me where he could
buy ready-made butter, I would have told him.
'Professor' J Frink
<rogbl...@fuckMicrosoft10.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 05 Dec 2001 20:54:34 GMT, cbbr...@acm.org <cbbr...@acm.org> wrote:
>> You've obviously not used a TiVO.
>
Your choice.
>> It is in the combination of:
>> ...
>
>I have no interest in any of the "features" you mention.
Good for you.
Plenty of other people, however, aren't you.
Frink
--
'Professor' J Frink - Ringtail to the Stars & Professional Mossbauer Guru
SciGraphica, Plotting and Analysis: http://scigraphica.sourceforge.net/
shrike at cmp dot liv dot ack dot ook
"Don't get mad, get mice!"
..owned by chinese..
>
> True on all counts, though I prefer 8-track tape to cassette and use
> have no plans to purchase such items.
C'mon, you're really Homer Simpson! Am I right?
David Konerding
> On 5 Dec 2001 21:06:24 GMT, David Konerding <d...@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
>> Let's see. You get a digital copy instead of an analog one. You can record much, much
>
>
>> There are quite a few others. Sure, a standard analog tape-based VCR "works fine". But a digitial VCR
>> works much, much better in some situations.
>
Speculatively, In another 5-10 years, they won't be selling very many
VHS or beta-based analog VCRs, The benefits to consumers we have
described, as well as the economics of the media industry, are such
that consumers will migrate over to digital hard-drive based VCRs,
because there will be fewer and fewer affordable choices based on the
tape-based analog systems. This speculation is fairly likely based on
past trends and future projections.
Dave
Bill Unruh
]On Wed, 05 Dec 2001 20:54:34 GMT, cbbr...@acm.org <cbbr...@acm.org> wrote:
]> You've obviously not used a TiVO.
]Nor will I use one.
]> It is in the combination of:
]> ...
]I have no interest in any of the "features" you mention.
Fine. Some people have no desire to use a compter. However when someone
asks how to log into a computer, the answer "you donot need a computer,
and abacus is just fine" is not a useful answer, even if you like to use
an abacus and hate computers.
Grant Edwards
>On Wed, 05 Dec 2001 21:00:21 GMT, Lewin A.R.W. Edwards <la...@larwe.com> wrote:
>> You can't seek quickly through a VHS tape. And you certainly don't have
>> random access.
>
>
>> You can't "nicely" remove advertising from a VHS copy.
>
>
>> You can't easily DiVX-compress your VCR's storage and post it on newsgroups
>> or email it to your friends.
>
>
>> You lose quality with multi-generation copies on analog equipment.
>
But you didn't say that you couldn't imagine why _you_ would want a digital.
You said "anyone". The discussion isn't about what you want, it's about
what anyone might want.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Nice decor!
at
visi.com
john
<un...@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
> Fine. Some people have no desire to use a compter. However when someone
> asks how to log into a computer, the answer "you donot need a computer,
> and abacus is just fine" is not a useful answer, even if you like to use
> an abacus and hate computers.
there is a name for these types........ludites
john
<rogbl...@fuckmicrosoft10.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Dec 2001 21:23:55 GMT, Lewin A.R.W. Edwards <la...@larwe.com>
> wrote:
>> Your words: "I can't imagine why anyone would want to use a computer
>> for such a thing".
>
> That's right, I can't.
>
>> I described to you just four exceedingly good reasons why "anyone"
>> would want to use digital video recording. The fact that you are happy
>> to live with a less convenient technology has nothing to do with the
>> rest of the world.
>
> "Exceedingly good" is a sujective value judgement here. I do not see any
> of those four reasons as "exceedingly good." Nor do I see VCRs as less
> convenient technology. Works just fine for my purposes. What the rest of
> the world does is its own business, I use what works for me.
>
>> has no DVD player. Maybe you have an old turntable with glowing valves
>> somewhere in your home also.
>
> True on all counts, though I prefer 8-track tape to cassette and use it
> on a daily basis in the car. I do not have a CD or DVD player and have
> no plans to purchase such items.
>
What I don't understand is how the hell you got on the net with that
commondore 64 of yours..........
Bill Unruh
No, a Luddite is someone who wants to destroy all new technology. He is
just uninterested, and expects everyone to share his view, which is a
milder version.-- he is not going to put any effort into espousing or
enforcing his view.
Michael Knight
> connected the cable tv box directly to my tv tuner card. Basicly you only
> need a few things to get this setup to work. I will list the steps below, in
> order.
>
> 1) Pruchase a Hauppauge WinTV m/n= 401 ( don't be fooled by the 'WinTV' name
> it is fully compatable with linux )
OK, good. I figured it would work with basic cable TV. Am still
wondering if the DVB PCI cards work with North American satellite
broadcasts, since we seem to be the last place on Earth to adopt
terrestrial digital broadcasts.
But that aside.....two follow up questions...
First, does the card mentioned above have a built-in MPEG2
encoder/decoder? Or are you using software to do this?
Second, the .avi files you are recording....how much disk space does
an average 30 minute show require? Is this with or without MPEG2
compression?
Thanks again for the help.
-Michael
c...@ragwind.localdomain.net
> > > has no DVD player. Maybe you have an old turntable with glowing valves
> > > somewhere in your home also.
> >
> > True on all counts, though I prefer 8-track tape to cassette and use
>
> Man... I wish I had lived in the 60s so I could blame this conversation on
> some bad acid.
>
...<snip>...
This is one of those news threads where you know it's a waste of time,
to keep reading it, but can't help yourself.
But at least this one post gave me a laugh. Thanks
PS.
There was some useful stuff at the beginning, now I'm thinking of maybe
buying a TiVo myself, though my main use for a VCR is to record old
Perry Mason episodes in the wee hours so I can watch them later.
--
Replace ragwind.localdomain with rahul for a working email address
B. Joshua Rosen
any mention of 2.4 drivers. Has anyone out there used the Hauppage card
with Linux?
In <ddb6b951.01120...@posting.google.com>, Michael Knight
wrote:
cbbr...@acm.org
> "Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" <la...@larwe.com> writes:
> > > > has no DVD player. Maybe you have an old turntable with
> > > > glowing valves somewhere in your home also.
> > > True on all counts, though I prefer 8-track tape to cassette and
> > > use
> > Man... I wish I had lived in the 60s so I could blame this
> > conversation on some bad acid.
> ....<snip>...
> This is one of those news threads where you know it's a waste of
> time, to keep reading it, but can't help yourself. But at least
> this one post gave me a laugh. Thanks
Indeed. The "Trekkie" thing to say would be "Too much LDS in the
'60s..."
> There was some useful stuff at the beginning, now I'm thinking of
> maybe buying a TiVo myself, though my main use for a VCR is to
> record old Perry Mason episodes in the wee hours so I can watch them
> later.
I'm sure you'd find it quite adequate for that :-).
It would be pretty sweet to have the capability to build your own
TiVO-like machine; the only thing is, it's _vastly_ most worthwhile
when it behaves as a "VCR with IQ of 1000," and basically can be
treated as an _appliance_.
- Not something needing configuration effort;
- Not something needing backups;
- Not something where "oops; set up the wrong version of DRI, so now
we're watching TV at 320x160";
- Not something where you say "What was the route command we needed
to get it to talk to the firewall?"
Folks have done some hacking on TiVOs, particularly to:
a) Install additional disk drives, to record more stuff;
b) Add an Ethernet card [which involves _MASSIVE_ surgery; attempt
only if you think it makes sense to solder in a custom ISA
interface so that you can take apart an ISA Ethernet card and
solder its components on...] which allows the TV schedule updates
to be done via fast cable modem/ADSL without any need for the
TiVO to borrow phone lines;
c) Get Bash up and running so you can run Bash scripts on the unit.
[Why? I haven't the foggiest...]
The hacks are largely NOT "nice;" they tend to be exceedingly
demanding of technical knowledge. If you haven't a degree in
engineering, you probably don't want to go near them.
And if you're not quite a bit of an engineering masochist, you're
likely a lot better off treating a TiVO as _just an appliance_.
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/oses.html
M$ is for people who want a half-way implementation of yesterday's
ideas tomorrow.
Me
> There seems to be 2.2 drivers for the Hauppage WinTV card but I don't
> see any mention of 2.4 drivers. Has anyone out there used the Hauppage
> card with Linux?
>
Where are you getting that info from?
You can just use the bttv driver that's included in the kernel.
Or, for the latest and greatest version:
http://bytesex.org/bttv/
Juha Laiho
>On 5 Dec 2001 21:06:24 GMT, David Konerding <d...@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
>>situations.
>
>Sorry, I just don't see any real advantage. I plan on sticking with my VCR.
Then there's the known deterioration problems with any magnetic (tape)
media. With analog tapes, every refresh copy of the tape will degrade
the quality, while with whatever digital media, the copies are of the
original quality (unless some heavy data loss happened in the original).
(this troll was so cute I just *had* to feed him...)
--
Wolf a.k.a. Juha Laiho Espoo, Finland
(GC 3.0) GIT d- s+: a C++ ULSH++++$ P++@ L+++ E- W+$@ N++ !K w !O !M V
PS(+) PE Y+ PGP(+) t- 5 !X R !tv b+ !DI D G e+ h--- r+++ y+++
"...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)
oh gr"eight" "one"
>What I don't understand is how the hell you got on the net with that
>commondore 64 of yours..........
well... I don't know about C64s but there's TCP/IP stack for zx81
floating around the net. I wouldn't be surprised if there's one
for C64.
Ashok Aiyar
B. Joshua Rosen (bjr...@polybus.com) wrote:
> There seems to be 2.2 drivers for the Hauppage WinTV card but I don't see
> any mention of 2.4 drivers. Has anyone out there used the Hauppage card
> with Linux?
>
Where is there "no mention of 2.4 drivers"? There is a bttv driver
distributed with kernel 2.4.x. Developmental drivers and updates to
the kernel driver can be downloaded from http://bytesex.org/bttv
Later,
Ashok
--
Ashok Aiyar
RLU #51601
john
<Juha....@iki.fi> wrote:
> Then there's the known deterioration problems with any magnetic (tape)
> media. With analog tapes, every refresh copy of the tape will degrade
> the quality, while with whatever digital media, the copies are of the
> original quality (unless some heavy data loss happened in the original).
Sorry to bust your bubble. If you are using recordable dvds, cdrs, CDRWs
etc, the dyes used on these media is also subject to degradation over
time. You still have to make sure those bytes are stored correctly.
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
> etc, the dyes used on these media is also subject to degradation over
> time. You still have to make sure those bytes are stored correctly.
Yes, but since it is a non-contact playback system you can play the media
back any number of times, within the life of the dyes and laminar seal.
Stored in a reasonably cool environment away from light, the dye layer will
also last a long time. Analog media are physically wearing out every time
you load and play them.
Digital media also have redundant space for error correction, which analog
media lacks. So even a damaged digital storage device may be able to supply
a perfect data stream.
And you can keep a known-perfect copy at all times by making duplicates,
which you can't do with analog without losing quality.
Steve Martin
> Then there's the known deterioration problems with any magnetic (tape)
> media. With analog tapes, every refresh copy of the tape will degrade
> the quality, while with whatever digital media, the copies are of the
> original quality (unless some heavy data loss happened in the original).
Strictly speaking, this is not quite true. The compression
used in most digital media (whether MPEG, JPEG, MJPEG,
DV, SX, or whatever) is "lossy" (i.e. some of the
picture content is sacrificed for the sake of higher
compression levels) rather than "lossless". Each time
you take a piece of video from the digital (compressed)
to the analog (uncompressed) domain and back again, you
put it back through the compression routines, which
again attempt to throw away some amount of information,
so that there is some degradation. Do this enough times,
and the human eye can notice a loss of detail.
The problem becomes even worse with situations where
video is dubbed between incompatible compression
schemes (say, an MPEG recording is played out and
is recorded into an MJPEG nonlinear editor). You
then run into a phenomenon called "cascading
algorithms", which effects can range from hardly
noticeable to downright objectionable, with
severe artifacting in the final picture.
Digital recording does have advantages if you can
stay in the digital domain, though, and one of
the best is lack of noise as you make dubs. Taking
the signal back into analog will invariably introduce
some video noise. A twenty-generation dub done digitally
will look a lot less noisy than one done in analog.
Detail may suffer in digital, but that's true in
both cases.
john
Edwards" <la...@larwe.com> wrote:
>> Sorry to bust your bubble. If you are using recordable dvds, cdrs,
>> CDRWs etc, the dyes used on these media is also subject to degradation
>> over time. You still have to make sure those bytes are stored
>> correctly.
>
> Yes, but since it is a non-contact playback system you can play the
> media back any number of times, within the life of the dyes and laminar
>
The only recording system that has proven to stand the test of time is
cave drawings and stone sculpture............
nob...@nowhere.com
:> Sorry to bust your bubble. If you are using recordable dvds, cdrs, CDRWs
:> etc, the dyes used on these media is also subject to degradation over
:> time. You still have to make sure those bytes are stored correctly.
: Yes, but since it is a non-contact playback system you can play the media
: back any number of times, within the life of the dyes and laminar seal.
: Stored in a reasonably cool environment away from light, the dye layer will
: also last a long time. Analog media are physically wearing out every time
: you load and play them.
Well, if you want to wander down that path...
Probably the most serious problem with digital media is _compatibility_.
Both hardware- how many of you out there can read say 5-1/4 floppies
(or 8 inchers, or reel-to-reel tape)- and software - get that
program data off an old CPM tape and what are you going to use to read/use it?
Nasty stuff, especially with proprietray binary formats. Insurmountable?
no, but can get pretty ugly.
Compare that to the analog world- little trouble reading
original Edison recordings that are well over 100 year old.
Or reading stone tablets that are thousands of years old.
Seriously think that the CD you write today will be readable in 100 years?
Or 20 years for that matter.
Stan
--
Stan Bischof ("stan" at the below domain)
www.worldbadminton.com
Grant Edwards
> Juha Laiho wrote:
>
>> Then there's the known deterioration problems with any magnetic (tape)
>> media. With analog tapes, every refresh copy of the tape will degrade
>> the quality, while with whatever digital media, the copies are of the
>> original quality (unless some heavy data loss happened in the original).
>
> Strictly speaking, this is not quite true. The compression
> used in most digital media (whether MPEG, JPEG, MJPEG,
> DV, SX, or whatever) is "lossy"
Why would you uncompress and re-compress the data when you make
a copy? If you want to make a copy of compressed data, you
just copy the bits.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! VICARIOUSLY
at experience some reason
visi.com to LIVE!!
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
> (or 8 inchers, or reel-to-reel tape)- and software - get that
> program data off an old CPM tape and what are you going to use to read/use
it?
> Nasty stuff, especially with proprietray binary formats. Insurmountable?
> no, but can get pretty ugly.
A couple of points you've forgotten, the major one being that none of the
hardware you describe above was a consumer appliance. A CD-ROM drive is a
consumer appliance. DVD is a consumer format. For the foreseeable future -
certainly for the rest of my lifetime (50 years, maybe) - it will be
possible to obtain hardware to extract the data from any CD/DVD medium and
software to decode it.
To use your stone tablets analogy, nobody on the street can read cuneiform
these days. It requires specialist knowledge and a lifetime's study, which
is why the average American rarely if ever quotes Sumerian written works.
But we CAN read those works and translate them, which is a closely analogous
process.
> Compare that to the analog world- little trouble reading
> original Edison recordings that are well over 100 year old.
> Or reading stone tablets that are thousands of years old.
And the informational density of both those items is so many orders of
magnitude smaller than a full-motion video recording (on any medium) that it
is a ludicrous comparison. The less dense your information system, the less
you will notice degradation. If I made a CD-ROM disk five thousand miles
across, with the same 650Mb capacity as the 5" disk we all know, it would be
similarly more robust, at least against accidental decay.
For a similar information density, digital vs. analog storage provides far
superior reliability.
> Seriously think that the CD you write today will be readable in 100 years?
> Or 20 years for that matter.
See above.
Bob Hauck
>> "Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" <la...@larwe.com> writes:
>> > Man... I wish I had lived in the 60s so I could blame this
>> > conversation on some bad acid.
>Indeed. The "Trekkie" thing to say would be "Too much LDS in the
>'60s..."
Which is _so_ much more funny if you live in Utah.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| Codem Systems, Inc.
-| http://www.codem.com/
kyi
compression is mpeg4 not mpeg2 ( hence it being a divx movie ). As for file
size, with the defaults settings, a 30 minute show is usally around 150-175
megs. The card is just capturing the video stream all encoding is done in
software so the faster the pc the better the movie will be, also a lot less
dropped frames. For example, my dual 500 piii w/512Mb & all scsi I/O can
capture with only a few dropped frames whereas my 950 athlon w/256Mb & ide
I/O can almost ( mayby 2 or 3 dropped frames every hour or so ) do it
perfectly. I hope that anwsers your questions, if not let me know.
--
- kyi
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.anti-dmca.org/
"Michael Knight" <re...@cc50029-a.wisland1.ga.home.com> wrote in message
news:ddb6b951.01120...@posting.google.com...
Bill Unruh
]In article <9unoae$klr$2...@ichaos.ichaos-int>, "Juha Laiho"
]<Juha....@iki.fi> wrote:
Yes, but it is all or nothing. A little degredation does nothing. It is
only when it falls below some threshold that disaster awaits. And if you
copy it befor then the new copy is fine. With analog, that new copy is
just as degraded as the original was ( slightly more so, as the copying
itself degrades and adds noise.)
However if you keep the cd or whatever long enough that the degredation
drops below that threshold, then what you have is completely useless,
while on an analog system, even scratchy old 75's can still be heard and
appreciated. Ie, we are good at dragging signal out of even relatively
high noise. A digital system is terrible at that.
Bill Unruh
]Strictly speaking, this is not quite true. The compression
]used in most digital media (whether MPEG, JPEG, MJPEG,
]DV, SX, or whatever) is "lossy" (i.e. some of the
]picture content is sacrificed for the sake of higher
]compression levels) rather than "lossless". Each time
]you take a piece of video from the digital (compressed)
]to the analog (uncompressed) domain and back again, you
a) No, the decompressin is a digital process.
b) why in the world would you take it to analog to copy it? If you did
that yes the image would degrade. On the other hand if you took
sandpaper to the CD first it would also degrade, but most people would
not consider that a good way to make a copy.
]put it back through the compression routines, which
]again attempt to throw away some amount of information,
]so that there is some degradation. Do this enough times,
]and the human eye can notice a loss of detail.
]The problem becomes even worse with situations where
]video is dubbed between incompatible compression
]schemes (say, an MPEG recording is played out and
]is recorded into an MJPEG nonlinear editor). You
]then run into a phenomenon called "cascading
]algorithms", which effects can range from hardly
]noticeable to downright objectionable, with
]severe artifacting in the final picture.
Yes. Why would you do that?
]Digital recording does have advantages if you can
]stay in the digital domain, though, and one of
]the best is lack of noise as you make dubs. Taking
]the signal back into analog will invariably introduce
]some video noise. A twenty-generation dub done digitally
]will look a lot less noisy than one done in analog.
A 20th generation dub will be identical to the original if done
properly.
]Detail may suffer in digital, but that's true in
]both cases.
Eric P. McCoy
> ]Strictly speaking, this is not quite true. The compression
> ]used in most digital media (whether MPEG, JPEG, MJPEG,
> ]DV, SX, or whatever) is "lossy" (i.e. some of the
> ]picture content is sacrificed for the sake of higher
> ]compression levels) rather than "lossless". Each time
> ]you take a piece of video from the digital (compressed)
> ]to the analog (uncompressed) domain and back again, you
>
> a) No, the decompressin is a digital process.
Yes, but it has to become analog at some point so the TV can display
it. That's what he's talking about.
> b) why in the world would you take it to analog to copy it? If you did
> that yes the image would degrade. On the other hand if you took
> sandpaper to the CD first it would also degrade, but most people would
> not consider that a good way to make a copy.
A simplistic "digital VCR" would work using a TV tuner card (or
somesuch) and a hard disk. You get data over a coax (or S-video
or...) cable in analog form, convert it to digital, compress it, and
store it to disk. That imposes an extra layer of ADC and compression:
once at the cable company, then DAC at your cable box, then ADC on
your tuner card, then DAC when playing it back on your TV.
That's as opposed to the ideal solution, which records digital
information directly as it comes off the wire, so to speak, bypassing
the converter box entirely. There's no reason that couldn't be done,
but I'm not aware of anything that works that way.
--
Eric McCoy <ctr2...@yahoo.com>
"I woke up this morning and realized what the game needed: pirates,
pimps, and gay furries." - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka
David Konerding
The trick that the original poster might not have been aware of is that
you have to enable the I2C drivers in the kernel before the bttv driver
appears in the list of drivers under Video Camera drivers. If you
use the "make menuconfig" system, unavailable drivers just don't appear at all.
If you use "make xconfig", unavailable drivers appear grayed out. If you
use that, you can at least see the following message:
BT848 Video For Linux
CONFIG_VIDEO_BT848
Support for BT848 based frame grabber/overlay boards. This includes
the Miro, Hauppauge and STB boards. Please read the material in
<file:Documentation/video4linux/bttv> for more information.
If you say Y or M here, you need to say Y or M to "I2C support" and
"I2C bit-banging interfaces" in the character device section.
This driver is available as a module called bttv.o ( = code
which can be inserted in and removed from the running kernel
whenever you want). If you want to compile it as a module, say M
here and read <file:Documentation/modules.txt>.
rdh
<ohg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>well... I don't know about C64s but there's TCP/IP stack for zx81
>floating around the net. I wouldn't be surprised if there's one
>for C64.
--
Russell rdh at salug dot org
Douglas Bollinger
<snip>
> True on all counts, though I prefer 8-track tape to cassette and use it
> on a daily basis in the car. I do not have a CD or DVD player and have
> no plans to purchase such items.
LOL!!! Only in a Linux group could you find someone expounding the virtues
of the 8-track cassette. Damn, you are one stubborn MOFU.
Ok, I gotta know, why in the world would do prefer 8-tracks? I remember
those things from when I was a kid, and the highlights were: they sounded
bad, the damn things spit-out the tape half the time and the greatest
'feature' was the fading in and out of a track during a song. Wow, that
was cool! :P
--
"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
those inside desperate to get out."
-- Montaigne
Jan Panteltje
(Eric P. McCoy) wrote in <87g06o6...@providence.local>:
That's as opposed to the ideal solution, which records digital
>information directly as it comes off the wire, so to speak, bypassing
>the converter box entirely. There's no reason that couldn't be done,
>but I'm not aware of anything that works that way.
about 2 GB / hour, 400 free to air channels, Astra and Hotbird satellites.
So???
This is Europe of cause ;-)
Technotrend (Technisat) DVB-s Skystar 1 (with mpeg2 accellerator).
There is also the Skystar 2, without I think.
The same card is sold by Hauppauge (spelling?).
So, no analog involved, until recently stored on 3 CD-Rs for 1 hour, in AV_PES
format (container for MPEG2 and 48000 audio mp2 as it comes of the satellite).
now also converting to Divx4 with MP3, more then 1 hour on a CD..
My VCR, had it on today, sniff snif, so bad...
This DivX stuff can be stunningly good.
Some links for Linux:
www.convergence.de (links to Linux TV).
Software for old drivers (card + kernel) I have I wrote on my site:
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/panteltje/satellite/
Subtitle stuff to make subtitles yourself if you like that:
htp://www.home/zonnet.nl/panteltje/subtitles/
OK, I talk to much, but this is a great topic, hope you Americans get that
digital going too, its worth it.
PS storing one movie on 3 CDs is not as bad as it seems at all BTW, just write
some simple scripts to split the files, then save, and to load the CDs and
then play from disk.
I have a dedicated harddisk for video, 40 GB is about 20 hours....
Future is digital, and you can make a copy of the disks for someone 8 minutes
per disk, not bad :-)
Regards
Jan
Alan Murrell
I am not sure if this is what you are lookig for, but my brother setup
a Linux box as a digital "PVR" (Personal Video Recorder). He is in
the process of making the "process" available via Sourceforge. You
can take a look here:
http://openpvr.sourceforge.net
It's not at the full completion stage yet, but he's constantly
updating (though he just had a baby, so it may be a few dys before he
updates). You can prolly keep an eye on it.
Alan Murrell <swa...@hotmail.com>
Eric P. McCoy
> On a sunny day (Thu, 06 Dec 2001 17:54:46 GMT) it happened ctr2...@yahoo.com
> (Eric P. McCoy) wrote in <87g06o6...@providence.local>:
> That's as opposed to the ideal solution, which records digital
> >information directly as it comes off the wire, so to speak, bypassing
> >the converter box entirely. There's no reason that couldn't be done,
> >but I'm not aware of anything that works that way.
> But I have been recording from digital satellite here for now more
> then a year, about 2 GB / hour, 400 free to air channels, Astra and
> Hotbird satellites. So???
So... I'm not aware of anything that works that way.
I'm sorry, was I unclear about something in there?
Roger Varley
>>> There seems to be 2.2 drivers for the Hauppage WinTV card but I don't
see
>>> any mention of 2.4 drivers. Has anyone out there used the Hauppage card
>>> with Linux?
>>>
>>
>> Where is there "no mention of 2.4 drivers"? There is a bttv driver
>> distributed with kernel 2.4.x. Developmental drivers and updates to
>> the kernel driver can be downloaded from http://bytesex.org/bttv
>
installed in the next couple of weeks and this sounds like it could be fun.
Could someone point me to the documentation I should be reading and explain
how I connect everything up.
Regards
Roger
kyi
--
- kyi
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
"Roger Varley" <roger_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9uq1vf$9pibt$1...@ID-79502.news.dfncis.de...
brian lanning
this thread. I'll share what I know so far, although I'm still just
starting the linux part.
I'm using a dish network receiver and an all-in-wonder radeon card.
I'm still using windows me, so maybe it's apples and oranges, but
here's my experience anyway. A 30 minute show is about 1.2gig on the
best quality setting. I then convert it to divx using flask and it
shrinks 90% to about 120meg. The all-in-wonder saves to mpeg2.
The all-in-wonder isn't able to select the chanel. This is because it
wants to be a cable tuner. When the cable signal comes it, it has all
the chanels, and the board chooses between them. The satellite
receiver selects the chanel and sends only that over to the board. So
I'm getting ready to cook up a way for the computer to emmulate the
remote. I've seen a few that plug into a serial port and look like
they're not too hard to deal with. Although I need to do some
research and see which one shows up as a device I can pipe to or
fopen.
brian
re...@cc50029-a.wisland1.ga.home.com (Michael Knight) wrote in message news:<ddb6b951.01120...@posting.google.com>...
Crabby Appleton
Douglas Bollinger <d...@pa.nospam.net> wrote:
> Ok, I gotta know, why in the world would do prefer 8-tracks? I remember
> those things from when I was a kid, and the highlights were: they
> sounded
> bad, the damn things spit-out the tape half the time and the greatest
> 'feature' was the fading in and out of a track during a song. Wow, that
> was cool! :P
You forgot to mention the satisfying KA-CHUNK sound as the player switched
tracks, generally right in the middle of the drum solo portion of
Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Grant Edwards
And nobody mentioned the wonderful flanger effect that started to happen on
about the 3rd play of a tape. How about the fun of sifting through a
friends box of tapes trying to guess which ones would play based on your
friends tastes (all their favorites had stopped working).
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Have my two-tone,
at 1958 Nash METRO brought
visi.com around...
Ron
> In article <RbLP7.1689$fa.1...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>, "Lewin A.R.W.
> Edwards" <la...@larwe.com> wrote:
[snip]
> The only recording system that has proven to stand the test of time is
> cave drawings and stone sculpture............
Cave drawings, until the combined body heats from all those eco-
turists raises the temperature of those small caverns, and starts
to fade the paint. Really, I'm not pulling a fast one, here.
Stone sculptures: Venus de Milo & the Sphynx come to mind quickly,
and "bit-rot" slowly occurs on outdoor sculptures...
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: ron.l....@home.com |
| Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81 |
| |
| "Why should we not accept all in favor of woman suffrage |
| to our platform and association even though they be rabid |
| pro-slavery Democrats." |
| Susan B. Anthony, _History_of_Woman_Suffrage_ |
| http://www.ifeminists.com/introduction/essays/introduction.html |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Kelly
<snip>
>
> I guess you also prefer cassette tapes to CDs, and of course your household
> has no DVD player. Maybe you have an old turntable with glowing valves
> somewhere in your home also.
I'm finding this thread because I want to learn about making a
PVR...but, old is NOT necessarily bad....many an audiophile are coming
back to 'valve' or tube amps. I've just discovered them myself...and
the sound blows away anything solid state I've ever played with...
I'll be using tube mono blocks for each channel of my surround
system...WITH my newly built PVR...
My $0.02
Kelly
Just curious....how difficult is it to make a VCD to play on your DVD
player from a PVR recording on your harddrive? How much can you put
on a VCD (time-wise)?
Any pointers or links to this info? Links to making a PVR with Linux?
Drivers and cards that work best?
TIA,
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
> player from a PVR recording on your harddrive?
Easy under Windows, probably under Linux too.
* transcode to MPEG-1
* convert from raw MPEG-1 to .DAT file
* create a VCD filesystem around the .DAT
* burn! (note: many DVD players can't read CD-R, use CD-RW if this is the
case for you)
> How much can you put
> on a VCD (time-wise)?
About 50 minutes.
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
> back to 'valve' or tube amps. I've just discovered them myself...and
Yes, and "different" is not necessarily "better" (or worse, of course). I
find nothing compellingly attractive about the sound of old valve-based
amplifiers. (Valve is the UK English term, BTW, and I am Australian, hence
my use of the word. Tube is the US English equivalent). Valve equpiment
sounds different, yes, but not better to my ears, and it's quite
unjustifiable to me in terms of cost, reliability, size and efficiency.
I find hardcore audiophiles somewhat frightening, a little like religious
cultists. Actually, a lot like religious cultists. Damn it, they ARE
religious cultists!
Serban-Mihai Popescu
> Yes, and "different" is not necessarily "better" (or worse, of course). I
> find nothing compellingly attractive about the sound of old valve-based
> amplifiers. (Valve is the UK English term, BTW, and I am Australian, hence
> my use of the word. Tube is the US English equivalent). Valve equpiment
> sounds different, yes, but not better to my ears, and it's quite
> unjustifiable to me in terms of cost, reliability, size and efficiency.
Are you serious? Excluding some music genres (rapp etc), the sound "is"
better when spitted out of a valve amplifier. Regardless of the
loudspeaker quality.
Of course, we're talking about tastes, but c'mon!
On the other hand, yes, the reliability, size, cost and efficiency are
much worse than of solid-state amplifiers. However, with the exception
of reliability (yeah, you always have to keep a supply of finals ready
to swap for the degraded ones), these are not important parameters when
describing audio amplifiers.
Serban
nob...@nowhere.com
: cultists. Actually, a lot like religious cultists. Damn it, they ARE
: religious cultists!
Interesting note in this (Linux) group since it would be very easy
and tempting to change one word - and the observation would be
just as accurate:
I find hardcore linuxphiles somewhat frightening, a little like religious
cultists. Actually, a lot like religious cultists. Damn it, they ARE
religious cultists!
Stan
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards
news:10081030...@cswreg.cos.agilent.com...
> : I find hardcore audiophiles somewhat frightening, a little like
religious
> : cultists. Actually, a lot like religious cultists. Damn it, they ARE
> : religious cultists!
>
> Interesting note in this (Linux) group since it would be very easy
> and tempting to change one word - and the observation would be
> just as accurate:
>
> I find hardcore linuxphiles somewhat frightening, a little like
religious
Absolutely. And it was not intended as a denigration. Christians, Muslims,
Buddhists, atheists, Wiccans etc are also all religious cultists. I'm using
the word cultist to refer to the existence of a faith which is often
objectively unjustifiable and not shared universally by all other members of
the human race.
Jan Panteltje
Popescu <ser...@no.such.address> wrote in
<3C166C45...@no.such.address>:
>"Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" wrote:
>> Yes, and "different" is not necessarily "better" (or worse, of course). I
>> find nothing compellingly attractive about the sound of old valve-based
>> amplifiers. (Valve is the UK English term, BTW, and I am Australian, hence
>> my use of the word. Tube is the US English equivalent). Valve equpiment
>> sounds different, yes, but not better to my ears, and it's quite
>> unjustifiable to me in terms of cost, reliability, size and efficiency.
>
>Are you serious? Excluding some music genres (rapp etc), the sound "is"
>better when spitted out of a valve amplifier. Regardless of the
>loudspeaker quality.
Sorry, unless there is some objective reference I have to inform you that this
is extreme bogus.
I have designed both tube amps and transistor amps, for both audio and RF.
And I can assure you there exists no tube amp that can beat a modern solid
state design.
Else please provide me with diagram and specs, and we will take it from there.
Maybe what you call 'better' is just some more distortion that makes it sound
different.
In a GOOD amp, what comes in goes out.
Then acoustics and loudspeaker set the listening experience, SOOOOOOOO much
more then any amp design.
Regards Jan
Grant Edwards
>> Are you serious? Excluding some music genres (rapp etc), the sound "is"
>> better when spitted out of a valve amplifier. Regardless of the loudspeaker
>> quality.
>
>Sorry, unless there is some objective reference I have to inform you that
>this is extreme bogus.
Of course it is. That doesn't mean it's not worth an extra $1500 or so.
>I have designed both tube amps and transistor amps, for both audio and RF.
>And I can assure you there exists no tube amp that can beat a modern solid
>state design. Else please provide me with diagram and specs, and we will
>take it from there.
>
>Maybe what you call 'better' is just some more distortion that makes it
>sound different.
Nah, it's the nice shiny glass envelopes and the cozy warm glow of the
filaments. That's what makes it better.
>In a GOOD amp, what comes in goes out. Then acoustics and loudspeaker set
>the listening experience, SOOOOOOOO much more then any amp design.
And don't forget the green magic marker to color the edge of the CD and and
the speaker cables impregnated with oxygen-free gold dust (or whatever the
snake-oil of choice is for audiophools these days.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! If this is the DATING
at GAME I want to know your
visi.com FAVORITE PLANET! Do I get
th' MICROWAVE MOPED?
Kelly
all this, but, after reading and hearing with my own ears...some
distortion is not a bad thing. Go look around www.decware.com and
check out some of the papers this dude wrote. The stuff about 2nd
order harmonic distortions is interesting....in that these can
actually make your stereo sound more 'realistic'. I bought one of
these little amps...a SET amp with very low power, but, with my
K-Horns...MAN talk about great sounds...you close your eyes and the
soundstage extends well beyond my speakers.
I'm definitely a tube convert now...and it was only $500 for a stereo
amp...
I'm hoping all my new PVR setup will sound good through it all....
Kelly
Jan Panteltje <pant...@zonnet.nl> wrote in message news:<pFwT7.10737$sl6.34743@zonnet-reader-1>...
Kelly
it...will this work as well as the 401?
Kelly
"kyi" <k...@psnw.com> wrote in message news:<u0st4gl...@corp.supernews.com>...
> I forgot to add that the Hauppauge WinTV 401 card is only around $49.95. At
> least that's what I got mine for at compusa.
>
>
> --
> - kyi
>
>
> "kyi" <k...@psnw.com> wrote in message
> news:u0sspus...@corp.supernews.com...
> > Yes I do. I encode all of my shows into a divx ( .avi ) format. I also
> have
> > connected the cable tv box directly to my tv tuner card. Basicly you only
> > need a few things to get this setup to work. I will list the steps below,
> in
> > order.
> >
> > 1) Pruchase a Hauppauge WinTV m/n= 401 ( don't be fooled by the 'WinTV'
> name
> > it is fully compatable with linux )
> > 2) Install WinTV board into your pc
> > 3) Install the latest kernel or just load the modules for the tv card if
> > using a stock kernel.
> > a) modprobe tuner type=2 ( look at
> > http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/BTTV-4.html#ss4.5 for a detailed list of
> > codes to use, I live in the US so I use '2' )
> > b) modprobe bttv
> > 4) Download and install xawtv, http://bytesex.org/xawtv/xawtv_3.65.tar.gz
> > 5) Make a directory, mkdir /usr/lib/win32
> > 6) Download the mpeg4 codecs http://kyi.sytes.net/~kyi/binaries-010122.zip
> > and extract them into the '/usr/lib/win32' directory.
> > 7) Download and install the avifile & player app, this is used for
> > encodeing, http://kyi.sytes.net/~kyi/avifile-0.53.5.tar.gz
> > 8) Download and install the vcr program.
> > http://www.stack.nl/~brama/vcr/src/vcr-1.05.tar.gz
> > 9) Now goto http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.4 and create a
> > .xawtv and .vcrrc files in your root directory.
> > 10) Don't worry about the version numbers on the various www sites I
> > provided. The versions that I have linked to are know to work togehter
> on
> > my system ).
> > 11) At the very bottom of this page,
> > http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1 you will see a sample
> > script to record a tv show. Just put this in your cron when you
> > want a show recorded and you are good to go.
> >
> > Also if you get real creative you can find a perl script from
> > http://freshmeat.net that will fecth th www.tvguide.com listings from
> their
> > server and have it inserted into your script for recording. The above
> howto
> > is very basic but it will be enough to get you recording and playback. On
> a
> > side not I have even used this method to record dvd movies from my Apex
> dvd
> > player.
> >
> >
> > --
> > - kyi
> >
Patrick I Taylor
> Sorry to bust your bubble. If you are using recordable dvds, cdrs, CDRWs
> etc, the dyes used on these media is also subject to degradation over
> time. You still have to make sure those bytes are stored correctly.
that degredation, and their effects, happen a lot more slowly than
analog magnetic media
pt
Patrick I Taylor
> The only recording system that has proven to stand the test of time is
> cave drawings and stone sculpture............
are you talking about the broken ones or the ones that are dust now?
Pt
Patrick I Taylor
> However if you keep the cd or whatever long enough that the degredation
> drops below that threshold, then what you have is completely useless,
> while on an analog system, even scratchy old 75's can still be heard and
> appreciated. Ie, we are good at dragging signal out of even relatively
> high noise. A digital system is terrible at that.
what's a 75?
Pt (anything like a 78?)
Patrick I Taylor
> Both hardware- how many of you out there can read say 5-1/4 floppies
> (or 8 inchers, or reel-to-reel tape)- and software - get that
> program data off an old CPM tape and what are you going to use to read/use it?
> Nasty stuff, especially with proprietray binary formats. Insurmountable?
> no, but can get pretty ugly.
again, you can make a copy from old media to new media before the
old media is completely obsolete without losing integrity.
for audio, let's talk about elcaset, 8 track, 78 rpm wax,
and the old band-tape recorders...
(by the way I do have 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppy readers)
> Compare that to the analog world- little trouble reading
> original Edison recordings that are well over 100 year old.
oh come on you can't say that there are more functional edison
players out there than there are 5 1/4" floppy drives that
are still functional.
> Or reading stone tablets that are thousands of years old.
i don't understand them at all. do you?
> Seriously think that the CD you write today will be readable in 100 years?
> Or 20 years for that matter.
I think that the CD written today will "play" more times than any analog
media without decay. I think it will hold a higher quality of standard
longer, whether or not the eventual total failure is sooner than a particular
analog medium, which by the way is generally short. For example
most commercially produced cassettes (compared to commercially
produced CD's) don't last more than a couple of years and then they
break. You might claim that this is due to the cheap player in
someone's car but I would answer that the medium is inherently
delicate. Sure you can scratch CD's, but you can avoid that
by being careful.
Pt
Patrick I Taylor
> Strictly speaking, this is not quite true. The compression
> used in most digital media (whether MPEG, JPEG, MJPEG,
> DV, SX, or whatever) is "lossy" (i.e. some of the
> picture content is sacrificed for the sake of higher
> compression levels) rather than "lossless". Each time
> you take a piece of video from the digital (compressed)
> to the analog (uncompressed) domain and back again, you
> put it back through the compression routines, which
> again attempt to throw away some amount of information,
> so that there is some degradation. Do this enough times,
> and the human eye can notice a loss of detail.
I think the poster meant that the digital copies of
digital materials are of the same quality as the original
produced digital material, not the original in the sense
of the original 70 mm or 35 mm film or whatever else was
the production source.
Which is true because you do not need to decode and
recode something in order to copy it.
Pt
Patrick I Taylor
> A simplistic "digital VCR" would work using a TV tuner card (or
> somesuch) and a hard disk. You get data over a coax (or S-video
> or...) cable in analog form, convert it to digital, compress it, and
> store it to disk.
No. A "digital VCR" would have a digital out as well. Just like
CD players do. This is the assumption that you guys trip up on.
Pt
Jan Panteltje
(Kelly) wrote in <fbe01d04.01121...@posting.google.com>:
>Hmm...well, depends on what you think about distortion. I'm new to
>all this, but, after reading and hearing with my own ears...some
>distortion is not a bad thing. Go look around www.decware.com and
>check out some of the papers this dude wrote. The stuff about 2nd
>order harmonic distortions is interesting....in that these can
>actually make your stereo sound more 'realistic'. I bought one of
>these little amps...a SET amp with very low power, but, with my
>K-Horns...MAN talk about great sounds...you close your eyes and the
>soundstage extends well beyond my speakers.
Yes, interesting, I should not be answering this, late here, need sleep,
but I forgot this in the previous post:
'Your head in a Vice' lets call it that:
All you great audio experts, I did lately the next experiment:
One sine wave (moderate strength so as not to shake the village),
4 speakers,
and one big woofer, each with their own amp.
Not bad, really, my workshop setup...
Now I had the 1000 Hz tone on, and you can make your own in windows with
cooledit or a program like that, or in Linux with 'sgen'.
Anyways, the sound was so soft (I thought).
Until I moved my head from where it was about 2 inches to one side, had to
turn the volume down then.
Some frequency at some place cancelled.
Now DO your @%$@~!!@! listening test NEXT time with your head in a vice
please!
Because that was only ONE frequency at ONE specific spot, and the spot is
different for each frequency.
I am NOT saying you cannot hear any distortion like second harmonics.
Only REAL bad amps do that.
What I am saying is your listening is 11000000000% determined by the acoustic
properties of your living room or wherever it is you listen.
So, just try it, move around a bit, then head in a vice, and repeat for the
other amp.
Any other thing and even clothing worn, chairs moved etc.. effect the
experience.
I accept it, I like music, it does not matter......
Have fun..
Regards Jan