Sending DV/HDV from PC to HD Monitor??
 

I have Windows XP in a high-capacity PC, with a 3-port ADS Pyro FireWire capture card. My HD monitor has only HDMI as a digital input and HD-component inputs. Is there any way to send DV or HDV back from the PC to this monitor, without resorting to analog connections? Does a FireWire to DVI/HDMI adaptor unit exist? Do any of the HDV VCRs have such built-in converters? An HD-component connection to the monitor would be acceptable if the HDMI couldn't be accessed.

I will also be recording HD television programming from a cablebox to my PC and will want to send that back out to the monitor. The cablebox (Motorola 6200, soon to be exchanged for model 6412), has 2 FireWire ports, as well as DVI and component outputs. Is there any potential for routing the FireWire output from the PC through the cablebox and to the monitor over its DVI to HDMI adaptor? If anyone has successfully used one of these cableboxes as an adapting interface between FireWire and DVI/HDMI, I'd like to hear about it.

Steve,

Does your video card have DVI out? I use DVI from video card (Many newer video cards hace DVI out) to 50" Samsung DLP. Should be easy to adapt DVI to HDMI. I play 1080i and 720p transport streams this way - including m2t HD10 files - you need software MPEG decoder. VLC is free. I also play WMV HD files with media player. You need a fast computer and decent video card.

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Unfortunately, I wasn't yet thinking about DVI when I bought my FireWire card and it isn't equipped to handle it. I do have a DVI to HDMI adaptor plug that I use between my cablebox and HD monitor. Your suggestion makes me think that the easiest and cheapest way to send output from my PC to the monitor, would be to buy another video card, that has DVI as well as FireWire and comes with the software upgrade I'd need. My computer has a 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon CPU and 512 Mb RAM, along with a 160 Gb HDD. I have room for another internal HDD, which I'll probably get. I assume this system is adequate for HDV editing, if I add the proper software upgrade for that. Right now, I'm just trying to work out a way to send out HDTV programs that I've recorded on my HDD. The small HD image on my computer monitor is excellent, but not very shareable with other people.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a FireWire capture card that also has a DVI port? I've been looking in the logical places and on Search and haven't found one. Is there a separate card that might have DVI without FireWire that could be used for export? I have an open PCI slot.

I think your pc does not meet the requirements for HD editing (1080i). Minimum System Requirements for Pinnacle Liquid Edition, says:
- Dual Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz
- Win XP SP2
- 1 GB RAM
- Hard drive, minimum data transfer rate 10 MB/s
- AGP/PCIe graphic card, 256 MB RAM, DirectX 9 support

You should consider this, cause my experience regarding pc-video-editing are that the minimum requirements should be fullfilled to avoid looooong render times, machine crashes etc, etc which again could lead to hight blood pressure, heart attack etc, etc... ;-)

- Per Johan

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Yes, according to those requirement specs, I would have to stick to SD video with my current PC for editing. It does record straight HD programs from broadcast or cable at about 19mbps or less, however.

I discovered a couple of ADS Tech Pyro products that could solve my problem of exporting both SD and HD directly to an HD monitor. They are the two pro versions of Pyro AV-Link. They include a PCI FireWire port and a separate box that connects to it. In addition to FireWire, the box also has component, S-Video, composite and RCA audio inputs/outputs. They come bundled with software for DV and DVD editing and the AV-Link DVD version has the Ulead HD Plug-in #2. They seem to give a lot for the $600. price, especially for HDV editing. I could use the component output to send HDTV programs recorded on my HDD to my HD monitor. But, just for this purpose of exporting to the TV, I'd like to find something less expensive.