Tiger Woods Out...Until August!
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| | | Posted by Alan Dang on Friday July 01, 2005 - 08:31 AM |
(Post a comment) » Eternal Battle Day 5: Building a High-Definition HTPCPeople build HTPC’s out of spare parts all the time. The problem is that you shouldn’t be using spare parts – a high-end HTPC needs much more power than that. We’re putting a 7800GTX in our HTPC, and showing off the design issues behind building a high-end HTPC with an off-the-air HD tuner. Even if you’re not planning to build an HTPC, this is an important article to read to learn about PC video technology. |  Previous news article | Back to main news | Next news article  |
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#34
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Author:
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GX-Alan at 11:50pm 07/11/2005
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Response to #33:
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Depends what you're looking for, the MyHD 130 is good because it has
hardware MPEG-2 decoding and a true native-resolution output. It's
bad because there are no Windows MCE2005 drivers, limiting your
ability to make it a truly seamless consumer electronics device.
The deinterlacing isn't as good as PureVideo -- but the native-res
out makes it better for external deinterlacers.
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#32
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Author:
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GX-Alan at 12:13pm 07/9/2005
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Response to #30:
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The real-world test I mentioned is interesting because not all of
the per-pixel motion-adaptive deinterlacers will be successful.
These little details won't be noticeable by the casual viewer and I
think that's where NVIDIA will succeed -- the 7800GTX is going to be
good enough for the home theater enthusiast who may have a $1200 or
so AV receiver in the system. (With HQV/VXP being for owners of
ultra-flagship receivers or separates from Denon, B&K, Aragon,
etc.
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#31
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Author:
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raia at 12:58pm 07/6/2005
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Response to #29:
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Thanks for your reply.
Yah, I figured that bandwidth was the main problem. But then why
not make the max HDTV resolution the max resolution that can be
displayed in progressive scan, rather than have to deal with all
this de-interlacing mess? Thanks -Raia
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#30
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Author:
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Anonymous at 05:44am 07/7/2005
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Response to #27:
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I understand what you are trying to say, and to a certain extent, I
agree that it's not erroneous in a general article. It's just a bit
misleading in a video processing context.
About VXP & HQV ... I've seen both (quite closely I might add)
and both have their own strengths and weaknesses. They are VERY
different architecturally, but I'd say their performance are quite
similar. And if you know more or less my identity, then you can draw
your own conclusions ;)
I think the strength of HQV stems from its capabilities in its
peculiar architecture. You are quite right when you say that
"the size of region being analyzed will affect picture quality
substantially". And that's probably where HQV gets its
performance ('probably' more vertical analysis). Nonetheless, VXP
still does "per-pixel" analysis much in the same way as
HQV; Gennum people are simply not very 'connected' with a consumer
base and they don't seem quite as agile in the PR department.
I have to mention that the use of the term "motion vector"
is not very appropriate when talking about either HQV or VXP. In
their current form, they are both detecting motion PER-PIXEL (as in
On/Off); but they are not estimating it (strength / direction).
Teranex does have a motion-compensated algorithm, in which case
'motion vectors' are used, but, apparently, 1 HQV chip doesn't have
the juice to run it.
Taking into account your real-world scenario, I believe HQV and VXP
would perform VERY close to each other in terms of a de-interlaced
image (that sign will be perfectly clear). A much harder case would
be to have the same situation with a camera pan or wi
Read the rest of this comment...
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#29
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Author:
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ripfire (View my Profile) at 10:02am 07/6/2005
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Response to #28:
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I could think of a couple reasons why they didn't go straight to
1080p:
1. Bandwidth. Sure there are high end equipment that can handle that
huge bandwidth, but I don't think it is cost effective enough to be
commercially viable for consumers.
2. Anti-Piracy issues: Broadcasters are always paranoid about this.
I don't think they're ready to transmit 35mm film quality production
OTA. At least without setting up some anti-piracy measures.
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#28
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Author:
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raia at 05:53am 07/6/2005
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Comment:
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Wow, what a great article. Now I have the bug to build a HTPC...
I have two questions however, which will seem !$!@&!#@ following the
previous two posts. Since deinterlacing is such a big, expensive
hurdle to jump, and really inferior to having a progressive scan
source anyway, why didn't the HD gods make the standard 1080p, which
is planned for the future anyway. Rather then have to worry about
$15,000 deinterlacers (for high end stuff, I know you still need'em
for legacy stuff) why didn't they just make the max HD spec 960p??
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Also, does anyone know if
MCE has the ability to browse DVD ISOs in its interface? or do I
have to go out of the GUI and use Alcohol or Daemon? Thanks very
much -Raia
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#27
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Author:
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GX-Alan at 07:25pm 07/5/2005
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Response to #26:
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I was so impressed by your discussion deinterlacing, I had to check
your IP address... I know where you're posting from, but I'll keep
your identity anonymous since your comments add a lot to the
discussion for our technical readers, and I certainly would like to
encourage further posts.
----
The Lumagen VisionHDP should allow you to set the 1080i decoding
into a 3:2 pulldown mode. You are right that it can't actually do
any real de-interlacing or true cadence correction though.
----
Your point on the phrase region-based is well-taken, and I do
apologize for the confusion between VXP and HQV, although I did
mention that we really need to dedicate a full article to this. I
agree with the statement of "same in structure" but
tweaked, but it's still a notable difference.
The question is if there is a difference between frame-based
motion-adaptive deinterlacing and per-pixel motion-adpative
deinterlacing? The concept is still the same: "Bob if there is
motion, weave if not" but the difference is how motion is
determined.
So what happens if I invented a deinterlacer which divided the
screen in half? If the left side of the monitor was moving then I
would bob the left pixels, and if the right side of the monitor was
static, I'd weave that. That's no longer frame-based deinterlacing
but would you call that per-pixel motion-adaptive? I wouldn't --
I'd call it region based. What if instead of having two halves, I
had four quadrants... or 32 squares, or so on. Eventually you reach
a point where the motion estimation is based upon 100 squares, then
1000 squares, etc...
The size of the surrounding region is propri
Read the rest of this comment...
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#26
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Author:
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Anonymous at 06:23pm 07/5/2005
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Response to #17:
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I don't believe current Lumagen products can handle HD
de-interlacing and cadence correction correctly (Hence the 'only'
1500$ price tag).
---
As for the article, I think the term 'region-based motion-adaptive
de-interlacing' is misleading in this situation. It should only be
'motion-adaptive de-interlacing'. The term region-based, in the
video processing field, usually implies a 2D segmentation or
regionalization process of some kind. It can refer to Sobel/Canny
(etc.) operators to distinguish edges and different areas in the
image.
As in numerous de-interlacing technologies, no such operators are
done beforehand. Therefore, I believe VXP, PureVideo and HQV are
only per-pixel motion-adaptive technologies and certainly not
'region-based'.
Furthermore, I have to say I am quite confused about the artcile's
explanation on how HQV differs from Gennum's VXP and how it's
reportedly better. I think they are fundamentally the same in
structure, but are optimized and tweaked differently... The rest is
simply marketing magic.
I think it's important to remember that when de-interlacing, in
areas where there's motion, it's a matter of 'guessing'
(interpolating) what's in between 2 lines of real information.
Whoever has the best guess has the better image.
A mention on the more 'advanced' class of de-interlacing,
motion-compensated, would have been nice since there seems to be
quite an overview on the technology already. It seems to be a
necessary buzzword for the near future...
Otherwise, a very nice article. I hope you enjoy your Algolith
Dragonfly ... May also add that an Algolith Mosquito is probably a
VERY good addition to a
Read the rest of this comment...
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#25
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Author:
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Lawdrich at 04:27am 07/5/2005
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Response to #24:
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Plastic of course. We're not all made of money you know.
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#24
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Author:
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GX-Alan at 05:23am 07/4/2005
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Response to #23:
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Tin or plastic bottle caps?
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