Broadcast flag capture question

[yoda313]

Hello,

I don't have HDTV yet but I do have a question. Ok I've read around here that they are going to impose serious restrictions on digital recording next year.

What if you had a hdtv to analoge converter box and hooked that up to a capture card????

Would that bypass the protection?? Would that strip out the flag much like a sima converter removes macrovision from vhs tapes?????

Kevin

[DeadLamb]

well if I rem right, the flags are for digital recording (saving a digital HDtv stream with no change) and once you are no longer looking to do that it's not going to be an issues.. being at the point one is feeding the signal into a capture card by way of an analog converter box it's no longer a true digital save of a digital HDtv stream.

The same way one can "record" a DVD by way of a line out/in or a CD by way of a line out/in.. but those are also not true digital copies.

The thing is, much like recoding a DVD or CD that way, it's going to really suck over all for recording HDtv. Yeah still better then "normal" tv being it would be a very clear signal but it would not be a true HDtv digital recording (as in no loss), 5.1 sound etc. I don't think one can even encoded on the fly at 1920x1080 or 1280x720 all that easy in the first place, if you wanted to keep a HD rez.. I would guess it could be something lower in frame size but again, that's no longer HDtv really.

As I have said before, you don't record HDtv the same way you do normal analog stuff.. You don't convert or change or do anything with a HDtv capture card, it just "saves" the stream. Recording HDtv is much closer to ripping a DVD then most seem to understand till they see it first hand. At least when compared to recording analog tv .. You don't record HDtv, you just save it.

I know it sounds sort of strange

[yoda313]

Hello,

deadlamb - thanks! I guess the loss in conversion wouldn't really be worth the effort then....

Kevin

[bugster]

Hello,

deadlamb - thanks! I guess the loss in conversion wouldn't really be worth the effort then....

Kevin

Maybe, maybe not. The result won't be hi-def, but with such a (possibly) high quality source it should be better quality than capturing from normal res broadcast sources. Only by trying it will you find out.

After all, if you were capture Hi-def TV at full res, the only device you would be able to use for playback would be a PC.

[DeadLamb]

it should be better quality than capturing from normal res broadcast sources. .

yeah that's a good point.. if a person tracks down some of those TV eps that get posted to the net from a widescreen HDtv source, even those all crushed down still look pretty good.

Plus for many of the newer shows, they are starting to be framed more and more for widescreen thanks to not only HDtv's 16x9 format but also with TV on DVD selling like crazy. Most of the newer shows that are filmed in widesceen only come out in widesceen on DVD. So "normal" 1.33 ratio TV of a show like Lost or Alias etc is quickly getting to be like watching a lame pan and scan version of a widescreen movie. So in some cases just being able to see the widescreen version of the show would more then make up for any loss due to a converter issues.

Ah I really wish the price of the HDtv gear/tv cards would dump in price so more people could just try them out. Yeah, they are under $200 now but if they were say down to the wintv card level of $50-75 everyone would be messing with them and already tried a few of these ideas others come up with as far as recording this and that way.

[SatStorm]

In Europe we have DVB transmissions. That Broadcast flag gonna be an extra feature on the stream. I bet there gonna be ways to bypass it (same way we have ways to bypass the PVR recording restriction of the subscription services, when the "key" inside the card changes...)