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Thread ID: 90694 2008-06-13 02:29:00 High Definition (HD) USB TV Stick? fatjoez (13761) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
678020 2008-06-13 02:29:00 Does anyone know if there are any USB Tv Sticks for laptops or PC's that can receive digital signal but in HIGH DEFinition

Can someone give me a link or brand or product name?

thanks
fatjoez (13761)
678021 2008-06-13 02:36:00 Uhm, one word.... no.

:illogical

It has to be able to decode signals etc etc, and how on earth could you stream HD content through USB?
wratterus (105)
678022 2008-06-13 02:56:00 Uhm, one word.... no.

:illogical

It has to be able to decode signals etc etc, and how on earth could you stream HD content through USB?

Umm... I've been doing just that since late March.

Any USB DVB-T tuner will pick up the FreeviewHD stream. You then need software to decode it - there is documented steps on the PCWorld and Geekzone websites.

If you want a tuner which does hardware decoding, Ascent had one for sale earlier this year, which Bletch (one of the PF1 members) tried, and had to return as it was faulty.
somebody (208)
678023 2008-06-13 04:55:00 you gotta be joking........

I was under the impression that the USB TV Stick had to have the built in hardware to decode the High Definition signal......

So you only need a usb stick like the happauge Nova-T which picksup the Freeview Signal and then can decode & get the HD quality via software?
fatjoez (13761)
678024 2008-06-13 05:09:00 you gotta be joking........

I was under the impression that the USB TV Stick had to have the built in hardware to decode the High Definition signal......

So you only need a usb stick like the happauge Nova-T which picksup the Freeview Signal and then can decode & get the HD quality via software?

Yes indeed.

BUT it depends on the rest of your hardware and software though.
If you have a NVIDIA Geforce 8 or 9 series graphics card or (in theory) an ATI Radeon HD 2 or 3 series card they can do hardware acceleration if used with a compatible h.264 software decoder (usually cyberlink powedvd 7 or 8). If you don't have one of these graphics cards, a fairly powerful dual core CPU is highly recommended - you will still need an H.264 decoder from somewhere.

You will probably need to use 3rd party playback software such as MediaPortal (free), GBPVR (free), or DVBviewer (not free).

Please note that while the ATI cards are supposed to handle full H.264 acceleration they all seem to have problems with interlaced content (most of the NZ DVB-T channels). This seems to be a driver issue, and has been broken for months.
Sherman (9181)
678025 2008-06-13 06:00:00 Yes - software decoding though, is very CPU intensive. Have a look at the tutorial here: www.geekzone.co.nz somebody (208)
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