Preemptive Strike: Apple Should Buy ElGato

sunilraman

Look, bring it on (the flaming that is)... Someone is bound to start an "apple should by elgato" thread, i thought it might as well be me.



i am looking at the Elgato eyetv 200... starting with the "iHome" concept but standard def to start with (baby steps peoples)



eyetv 200:

mpeg4 hardware encoding in realtime. firewire-powered, sweet... take eyeTV's software and put the apple touch. hook it up to a Mac Mini with superdrive



damnmit we're so close...!!



can anyone say firmware upgrade/ product revision for eyetv 250: standard def 720x576 PAL/ 720x480 NTSC h.264 realtime hardware encoding???



anyway, just an idea for now, and i know all those "apple should buy every company in the world" threads are idiotic but i guess i'm just looking for an excuse to encode a 720x576 25fps (i'm living in a PAL country at the moment) clip and see how h.264 plays back on my iBook 933mhz G4 256mb ram...



clip coming hopefully within next 24 hourse, let the discussions fly!!



yes, i know this is the year of HD but i'm gonna take a step back and look at S-Video-in-720x576/720x480 "standard def" encoding initially...



because pulling the clean HDTV mpeg2 or mpeg4 signal is still tough with different satellite and cable standards and descrambling, smart cards, etc, etc, for many many countries around the world. also in terms of potential market those receiving HDTV cable/satellite signals are much smaller compared to the majority still getting standard def and confused the hell out of this HDTV thing...



okay, back later...

nebagakid

I love my EyeTV 500, HDTV!!!, all that could make it better is if it had the MPEG-2 acceleration that the DVD Player had.

sunilraman

Quote:

Originally posted by Nebagakid

I love my EyeTV 500, HDTV!!!, all that could make it better is if it had the MPEG-2 acceleration that the DVD Player had.

h.264 HDTV realtime encoding and decoding acceleration

kishan

Do the ElGato products allow the playing of protected AAC files bought through the iTunes Music Store?

slughead

Quote:

Originally posted by Kishan

Do the ElGato products allow the playing of protected AAC files bought through the iTunes Music Store?

No.

hmurchison

I believe Apple will be entering the Media Center arena this year. They may have a product in the works or if not they could very well buyout El Gato.



I don't care....just deliver something that can allow me to access my audio, movie and photos from anywhere on my network.

sunilraman

DONE! "standard def" 4:3 h.264 encoded test clip here

720x576 (PAL) test clip

sorenson AVC pro codec eval, 1800kbps inc. sound multi-pass

requires quicktime 7





for testing and research use only:

cold mountain

2.2mb short clip

http://homepage.mac.com/sunilraman/c...0kbps.h264.mov



Question: what do i do with this clip?

Answer: you can use it to see how a h.264 720x576 4:3 aspect ratio plays back on your G4 in quicktime 7.



Question: why did you encode this as 720x576?

Answer:

this is known as 576p (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDTV )

this offers an intermediate for a catch-all upper limit on any non-High-definition signal, to test how elgato/apple/etc. may produce a hardware encoding h.264 personal video recorder. 720x576 (PAL, 720x480 NTSC) would represent the max non-high-def resolution such a personal video recorder would need to use for 4:3 broadcast signals (vhs, s-video, EDTV 480p or 576p).



Question: why 1800kbps?

2000kbps would allow one to record roughly 1 Hour of that quality per 1 Gigabyte. Thus 40gb gives you 40 hours worth of recordings, i wanted to test what quality this would be at



Question: where was the source clip from?

Answer: Cold Mountain region 3 widescreen dvd... yup, i did some 'pan and scan' to simulate a 4:3 tv broadcast



Question: do you have too much time on your hands?

Answer: no, i am actually gonna try some part time multimedia work starting next week



Question: where is nicole kidman from?

Answer: everybody knows she is from the great land of australia that produces great actors



Question: any final thoughts?

Answer: remember that this clip is meant to test for output to a 4:3 aspect ratio standard definition television screen, not fancy high-def displays, as a study on apple/elgato/etc developing a personal video recorder, starting with standard def or EDTV...



edit:

Question: what is the best way to see this on my 4:3 television?

Answer: S-video output from your computer, component would be cool but hard to find on older 4:3 sets, and worse come to worse, a VGA-->RCA output from your computer



Question: when i click on your link i just see a big blue "Q"

Answer: wait for the clip to load..! it's only 2.2mb...! also make sure you have quicktime 7 installed.



Question: video is choppy. anyway to improve playback?

Answer: let it loop once or twice, make sure nothing else is running in the background, overclock your ATI Mac GPU (yes this is very easy with the right software. risky though so you'll have to locate this software yourself)



Question: you lied. wikipedia says that 576p is 50 progressive frames per second, your clip is only 24 progressive frames per second.

Answer: well, you got me. also pixel wise in TV-land they don't always use "square pixels" so the exact width and height is fuzzy, not to mention when you talk about anamorphic encoding as well :embarass

i'm way tired now and going to sleep

slughead

Man that's a truly amazing codec. If it were mpeg4 that clip would be like 4-5MB I'm sure.

nebagakid

Quote:

Originally posted by sunilraman

h.264 HDTV realtime encoding and decoding acceleration

ah yes, if only HDTV came in h.264 and not MPEG-2...