Prerecorded HD D-VHS
Dear Gary: Greatly enjoyed your article and the others in the current WSR print issue. Prerecorded HD content available on demand in the home is a massive advancement for enthusiasts and for the industry. Spearheading the coverage of this area demonstrates again the magazine’s commitment to its mission of reporting and reviewing leading edge home theatre developments, regardless of the medium. One question, please. Can I currently record satellite HD programming in 1080i to the HM-DH30000U? I read and re-read the review article in Issue 59. I believe the answer is that 1080i can only be recorded on the JVC using the i.Link connector, and that no current set-top box or HD receiver has a compatible i.Link out. In short, the answer is NO. Did I read this correctly? Are there any third party manufacturers who build a conversion box that take either the YPbPr or VGA out of my SONY HD receiver and convert it to a compatible i.Link connection?
Andrew Topolnycky
Video Technical Editor Greg Rogers Comments:
You read the review correctly. The only way to record 1080i is to use the i.Link (IEEE-1394) interface, and at this moment there are no standard set-top boxes or HD satellite receivers with fully compatible i.Link interfaces. There have been reports of limited functionality with some (firmware version dependent) discontinued Panasonic HDTV set-top boxes that included IEEE-1394 interfaces, but those products didn’t include satellite receivers. There are active discussions on the topic of HDTV recording at the AVS Forum (www.avsforum.com). The current IEEE-1394 (i.Link) interface standard doesn’t support the necessary bit-rate to transfer uncompressed high-definition video, but a revision to the standard is in the approval process that would extend the bit-rate sufficiently. The current standard is limited to 400 Mbps (Megabits per second) and uncompressed high-definition digital video (8-bit, 4:2:2 YCbCr) requires about 1,200 Mbps. Analog high-definition signals need to be digitized and compressed with an MPEG encoder to transmit them over current i.Link interfaces. I’m not aware of any consumer-priced high-definition MPEG encoders. Professional HD MPEG encoders are in the $200,000 price range.
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