TV Tuner/input card that accepts component 1080

F

Frostex

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 29, 2008
Messages
2,143
Hi everyone, I have a bit of a strange problem and I'm wondering if anyone has an advice for hardware that would solve it.

I have a Dell 30" 3007 monitor (2560x1600 resolution) which has a single DL-DVI input which is connected to my PC. I was given an xbox360 for free recently and wish to play games on my monitor with as high as quality as possible (preferably 1080p upscaled to 2560x1600)

The problem is that the monitor does not have any other inputs, the single DL-DVI wont connect with a standard DVI cable, and even if it did the monitor doesn't have an internal scaler so the only 2 input resolutions it can accept is 1280x800 and 2560x1600, the xbox wont output either of these.

So my only option is to power the monitor through my PC, I need to find some kind of input card (PCI, as I dont have any PCI-e slots left) which can recieve high defintion output from the xbox, the only high definition output I have riht now is the component cables.

So a TV input card that can handle 1080p (or even 1080i) over component cables would be perfect, except I cant seem to find anything like this...surely something exists, these aren't exactly brand new formats...if I have to buy a different xbox cable then I will I think it has HDMI out as well.

Before anyone asks, I dont have a TV and I dont intend on getting one, I dont have the money for a large screen TV right now.

(note that I actually picked up a TV tuner card today with S-video, composite and coax input, it suppoedly supports 1080p but found out that neither the s-video or composite cables actually support more than 480p, so using this card I have the xbox working on my PC but so far only at 480p which when stretched to 30" looks diabolical)

Any input/feedback/advice is welcomed!
 
Quick update, the only devide that seems to be even close to what I need is the Hauppauge HD-PVR which has component in and can encode 1080p streams from TV and save them to your PC via USB/Firewire, does anyone know if this can stream TV in real time to your PC?
 
Well, this is an option: http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/, but for that price you could just buy a >30" 1080p TV, which obviously is not what you had in mind. Honestly I really doubt there is a cheap HD solution for you. Even if you do find a cheaper capture card, you will suffer from horrendous input lag.

I would say your only option, other than a TV, is a SD capture card that has minimal lag (no software encoding), for which I don't have a recommendation off hand. I can only imagine what a 480p image looks like stretched to 2560x1600 :eek:

The 3007 is a great PC monitor, but I'm sure you knew when buying it that that was all it would ever be.
 
MasterTactician said:
Well, this is an option: http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/, but for that price you could just buy a >30" 1080p TV, which obviously is not what you had in mind. Honestly I really doubt there is a cheap HD solution for you. Even if you do find a cheaper capture card, you will suffer from horrendous input lag.

I would say your only option, other than a TV, is a SD capture card that has minimal lag (no software encoding), for which I don't have a recommendation off hand. I can only imagine what a 480p image looks like stretched to 2560x1600 :eek:

The 3007 is a great PC monitor, but I'm sure you knew when buying it that that was all it would ever be.
Click to expand...

Yup pretty much, I always assumed should I want to play consoles I could do it through an input card, I didn't realise they were so stupidly expensive, Im not much of a console person to be honest, I didn't even buy this one :}
 
The black magic card is garbage, and 95% of the time it won't work anyway for what people think it will work for. Almost all consumer marketable digital devices with high def HDMI ports (besides video cameras or computer graphics cards) require HDCP. The black magic card does not support HDCP and won't recognize the signal. Not only that, but it's a card made for video editing and pulling in digital video from video cameras into a non-linear editor application. You'd still see noticeable lag even if you did get it working.
 
Yah, there are no regular tuner cards that support component in. I'm pretty sure you can thank the content industry for that. Most of the ones that list 1080i are talking about OTA/ATSC/QAM signals only. The hapugge HD capture device really isn't designed for what you want to do.

You might consider getting an HDMI switch though and a HDMI to dvi adapter for the cable going to your monitor. Run the DVI to HDMI from the monitor to the switch and then HDMI from the Xbox and DVI-HDMI from the PC.

I'm not sure if that will work with this monitor, but it should work with regular DVI.

On second thought, just remembered you mentioned your monitor doesn't have a native scaler. So that one won't work either.
 
w1retap said:
The black magic card is garbage, and 95% of the time it won't work anyway for what people think it will work for. Almost all consumer marketable digital devices with high def HDMI ports (besides video cameras or computer graphics cards) require HDCP. The black magic card does not support HDCP and won't recognize the signal. Not only that, but it's a card made for video editing and pulling in digital video from video cameras into a non-linear editor application. You'd still see noticeable lag even if you did get it working.
Click to expand...
-- No firsthand experience myself, so thanks for sharing. How about http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hdlink/ or any other scaler that supports 2560x1600 (of which there seems to be almost none). That was the only one I found, and its still too expensive for this purpose.

-- Is this a newer HDMI 360? I know that the 360 supports many monitor resolutions via VGA, but will it do it for DVI/HDMI as well, or is that limited to 1080/720? If not, you could set it to output at 1280x800 with no additional hardware needed othetr than a HDMI--->DVI cable and a DVI switch.

-- If you only have VGA, maybe the same thing would work with a DVI to VGA converter box (this or this for example). That gets a bit expensive again, and there are many things that could go wrong with that setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top