I was wondering when we would see a ATSC tuner in a DVD recorder.

[sjc160]

http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/hd_tech/20051207/Low-cost-lsi-20051207/index.html

[yoda313]

So does that unit record hd and automatically convert to regular dvd specs to burn dvds????

If so does it record the 5.1 audio as well?

If it recorded hdtv in full digital with 5.1 and converted to 720x480 for burning with 5.1 I might want to buy one of those in the not too distant future.

I can record with my hdtv capture card and make dvds with 5.1 sound but it takes a long time to do it. I have to edit the commercials, demux, reencode (2 1/2 hours for 45minutes of video on a 2.66ghz celeron) and then author and burn.

If a settop unit could record hdtv and automatically create a standard dvd with digital surround sound that would be fantastic.

I just don't know if that is what the article was stating it would do.

[gadgetguy]

The article doesn't seem to address DRM at all. Is that the dirty little secret that would render the whole thing worthless?

[ebenton]

The article indicates that the device(s) can record HD to a hard drive and play it back from the hard drive. They say nothing about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disks, which would be necessary to record native HD to external disk.

It does say that they will be able to "upscale" SD, which would mean that regular SD DVDs would be played back in "upscaled" HD. They also say the HD will be decoded and written to a standard DVD disk.

Therefore, it looks like these devices will record HD to a hard drive and play them back in HD from the hard drive. They will record SD and HD to a standard DVD, in SD format only, obviously.

You are possibly on to something there, gadgetguy. The article does not mention DRM, which could theoretically make it impossible to record certain designated content to any kind of disk or flash media (which they also mention).

[edDV]

Well lets step back a bit. ATSC tuner, DVR and DVD recorder chipsets can be mixed and matched in many interesting ways.

sjc160 asked when?
My guess would be when the cost of implementing the tuner adds less than 100-200% to the cost of the DVD recorder. This will be when these chips are needed in mass to put $45 DTV set top tuners on every analog TV set. This points to the period 2007 (when all TV's need a DTV tuner) to 2009 when they start to shut off the analog signals.

A typical tuner will receive SD and HD channels and will probably output SD (w/downscaled HD) and HD (w/upscaled SD).

Add to that DVR. It should be possible to record and play out in either SD or HD.

Add to that DVD recording. Ideally you could backup your DVR to normal DVDR or HD/BD DVDR. Here is where it gets interesting. There is no need for the HD/BD highdef recorder if MPeg4 (H.264 or VC1 or DivX/XviD) hardware encoding is used. A normal DVDR could record ~2hr HD or up to 8-10Hr SD per layer.

DRM becomes a huge deal if the "Broadcast Flag"* passes. Short of that, AC-3 5.1 may be independently protected with DRM.

* http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/
* http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/?f=broadcastflag.html