Neither do the bulk of the "720p" plasma and LCD TVs.
Don't get too caught up in the numbers. Think of HD being more about greater video resolution and expanded color space.
Pocket DISH and HD
- Thread starter Peter Parker
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Don't get too caught up in the numbers. Think of HD being more about greater video resolution and expanded color space.
Oh please don't bring the old song about stupid masses who can't understand HD picture quality.
Standard for HD signal must be obey ! Period !
Huh? What does this comment have to do with Pocket Dish ?
The numbers are important. They tell us what we can sucessfully feed to the pocketdish (what its internal scaler supports). I don't think anyone is claiming that the Pocket Dish is a hi-def device.
Then then your face will be red. The 622 doesn't have a lot of processing horsepower. It's video scaling is done by separate dedicated hardware. Scaling hi-def for the pocket dish could take hours (it'll make USB 1.1 look speedy).
Have you watched any Charlie Chats? Charlie is really not a hardware guy. I think he barely understands what the pocket dish can and can not do.
The Dish branded pocketdish will not be around much longer. Archos is going to market Dish support as an add-on. I think it's unlikely Dish will put in the resources to add on the fly scaling for the PocketDish (especially since most customers would find the performance unaccetible).
I'm pretty happy creating my Pocketdish content on the pc. By scaling to the Pocket Dish screen (480x272) and using mpeg4 I can cut the file size to about 1/4 of what dish feeds over standard def (about 640x480).
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No. Currently only the Dish branded units support USB transfer. Most (but not all) of the Archos units support A/V capture and Encode. So content (even hi-def) could be transferred real-time (2 hour movie takes 2 hours).
Archos is supposed to be adding Dish support as a plug in:
ARCHOS
But, it's not there yet (and most of the plug ins are extra $$$).
Note that according to the manual the latest 405/605 still only supports "up to DVD resolution". So, HD video would require scaling before transfer).
OK, if Charlie is going to let me twist in the wind and I opt to use the red/white/yellow cable copy mode, can I pick 8 to 10 hours of shows and start the transfer, come back the next afternoon and grab my PD, loaded and ready to go out the door?
If I go pc loading, where can I get the 411 on the best and/or right codecs; where to get them and some content sources?
You mean he's still selling them? Does he buy you dinner first! Does he claim he'll respect you in the morning?
Oh no just when I thought I made up my mind. Is there anyway to get something off the 622 and transfer to PC then put it on an Archos unit? I formatted an external HD and found it to be a Linux system and windows of course won't recognize the HD. Any ideas bottom line I want to get copies to my home windows based pc.
Thanks again,
Ron
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Don't let these guys tease you.
Dish video files are Very well encrypted nowadays. You will grow old and die waiting for a key to open and read them.
David,
SD recordings on HD channels are NOT upscaled to Hi-DEF. They can be converted from a 480i signal to a 720p or 1080i signal but again they are NOT upscaled, only converted to be able to be displayed through an HD connection on an HD Television.
You can NOT simply MAKE UP or add in 600,000 pixels for a total of 1 Million plus pixels of an HD source, from an original source of roughly 320,000 total pixels of an SD source.
How do you add in 6 times more detail from an SD source to "UPSCALE" it to real HD without the actual data for all those pixels, the simple answer is you can't. What can be done is to use a line Doubler to try to fill in those missing vertical lines, but remember each of those created doubled lines can have half of the horizontal pixels.
John
John
Upscale vs "converted", that's just symantics. Somehow they are taking SD (480) source and putting it on a hi-def (1080) channel.
480 converted to 1080. Sounds like upscaling to me. They are creating the extra pixels. I didn't mean to imply this is hi-def. But, it's now being transmitted at a hi-def resolution (ie bit rate) that the pocketdish does not support.
And again, this topic is really not relavant to a Pocket Dish thread.
Speculation on this would be just that. You should purchase based on the features that are there now.
As was said, there really isn't a good (legal) way to extract files from the PVR to the PC.
Really though, we're jumping the gun here. Dish hasn't even begun swapping out SD boxes. SD in mpeg2 isn't going anywere for another 4-5 years. Get the Pocketdish and enjoy it. If you want to transfer to it, record the SD channel.
Personally, I like to purchase TV series DVDs (or movies), then convert/transfer those to the pocket dish. There are a number of PC programs that can do this (though they are becoming harder to find).
You could also put a TV tuner in the PC and record OTA.
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You have a point here. I just checked DishStore and there don't seem to be any pocketdish's left. There's a few on E-Bay.
Maybe that'll speed up Archos to get the plug-in going.
Maybe E* got so much flack for the lack of Hi-Def support that they've quietly let it go (doesn't seem like we've herd much about it for awhile).
This IS usually possible but not what I had hoped for.
But I guess I'll begin to focus on the upside and use my new 500Gb Maxtor USB drive to gobble up all the Dr Who, MI5, Scifi channel, and FX shows as well as the SD feeds of the network shows that although shown in HD but aren't wide screen and not too much worse when seen in Dish's great 100% digital SD signal.
And there are still some B&W nuggets to grab from AMC, TCM and The Fox Movie channel and still only grab-able in SD.
Or better for me, a plain old video capture card to grab the 622's analog feed of things like the Voom channel movies that can only be recorded in HD.
Any recommendations on capture codecs? I did try an Xvid download of a South Park episode this morning and it does look pretty nice on a 7" screen and it was only 140mb for 30 minutes so the PD can hold a lot of it.
Just tell me when do I do all this sitting around ripping, converting and saving and transferring stuff?
Setting an event timer and plugging in the PD on the fly to grab WHATEVER, WHENEVER was SUCH a great fantasy as put forth by Charlie and his fellow (somethings) that it will be a long, long, long time before I forget what they did.
And anybody want to trade places with me when the wife says "Bring the new episodes of 'Bones', 'House' and 'Law and Order SVU' tomorrow. I want to watch them Saturday night in the desert"
..."Dear there's something I've been meaning to tell you about that great little Pocket Dish gadget you agreed was a such great buy."
The two larger pocket dish models have this built-in (they can capture an analog signal real-time in mpeg4 at up to 640x480. You can select the quality level (file size). I've only played with it a bit, but I believe you can even send it 16:9 (anamorphic) from a hi-def recording.
Might save you some conversion time.
I do understand what your saying. It is nowhere near the convenience you were expecting. I didn't experience the dissapointment because I understood the limitations going in.
You're a genius! I was locked into the idea of just putting something on the PD to watch it but you are right, using it to create the compatible file even if it's going to be stored on my network file server would be a lot easier than messing with capture cards and codecs. I had one of the first ATI All-In-Wonder cards and it was a nightmare to make work.
I'm going to dig out the AV700 right now and try analog recording.
Please post back and let us know how it works out (I haven't played with this much).
You can even "record" from a DVD, but the PD will apply some kind of DRM to the file. I believe unprotected content should have no DRM. But, you should try it to verify.
