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HDTV and MCE 2005
By John Craske
(first posted on AVForums)
The rise of HD
There has been a lot of commotion about the arrival of HD television in the UK, debate about the next generation DVD format and marketing spend on ‘HD Ready’ televisions. There is already plenty of good information about what ‘HD Ready’ means and which televisions are and aren’t HD Ready. See: http://www.hdready.org.uk/.
There are basically three components to watching protected HD TV through MCE:
1. Getting a (good quality) digital HD broadcast signal into MCE’s TV card.
2. The MCE must be a trusted device.
3. Having a graphics card that can output a protected HD signal
I’ll deal with each of these three components in turn, but a quick description of what I mean by ‘protected’ first:
Protected HD content requires the use of HDCP (High Definition Copy Protection – the acronym to describe the method for protecting HD content that provides for the ‘handshaking’ between output and receiving devices). There is a good explanation of HDCP with diagrams here: http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index...howtopic=23416.
I am not aware of any ‘protected’ HD content being broadcast or available at the moment and I understand from other posts that even when Blu-Ray and HD DVDs start appearing, they will not be content protected (ie; not require HDCP) until at least 2010 (see: http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co....php?t=230347). So – to get unprotected content to play on MCE, we should currently be able to ignore step 2.
Getting HD broadcasts into MCE
Firstly, its worth noting that aside from some limited HD broadcasts by Sky (satellite) and Telewest/NTL (cable) and a limited Freeview (terrestrial) trial by the BBC in London, there is no broadcast HD television in the UK at the moment. So, much of the commotion about HD is basically ‘froth’ aimed at selling new TVs. This was especially the case before the World Cup. In the USA, HD broadcasts are readily available.
I am not going to cover other ways of getting HD content into MCE (ie; Blu-Ray or HD DVD drives – if they were available and supported in MCE or downloaded HD content) as that kind of misses one of the main points of MCE for me – to act as a PVR for broadcast television.
MCE 2005 accepts two types of TV card (1) digital or (2) analogue. Although MCE allows up to two TV cards, it is not possible to have both digital and analogue set up (for a reason I don’t understand). See: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/111923.aspx. Also, MCE is very fussy about the cards that can be installed (see: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/11463.aspx).
Here comes the crazy bit. To get your satellite or cable signal into your MCE, you need to buy an analogue card. This is because these broadcasters do not provide any form of digital output (even though it is a digital device) on their set top boxes and you need to take an SCART/s-video or composite output. This is a real shame as every time you convert digital to analogue you lose some picture quality. See this good post: http://www.microsoft.com/communities...3fd7d60ca2&p=1
To add to the woe, Microsoft says for MCE 2005 they only support digital TV in the USA and only for over the air transmissions (see: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ert/hdtv.mspx). I believe that it is possible to get Freeview into MCE in the UK using a digital TV tuner card (but not in HD) - but I don't have Freeview.
In addition, although it is possible in theory to buy a PCI card for your MCE that includes a CAM card reader (to read the kind of card that goes in your set top box that allows the signal to be decrypted), MCE 2005 doesn’t support them at all. In the USA, this initiative is called ‘cableCARD’ or ‘OCUR’.
I understand that MCE Vista will support these cards (see: http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/hot-do...d-hdtv-in.html) and video card manufacturers are starting to catch on. See this press release for info on ATI’s proposed card: http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=10...0664&highlight.
Matt Goyer (one of Microsoft’s Windows Media Center programme managers) has an interesting blog that has some more info on Microsoft’s plans in Vista (see: http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/arc...006/07/26/1157 and the follow up here: http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/arc...e/2006/07/28/). Although it seems Digital Cable Tuner (aka OCCUR or cableCARD – confused yet?) support will be added in MCE Vista, there is no information about that or a date for when info will be available and whether that will help us in the UK (probably not). Also, the statement that Vista will not support DVB-S (satellite = Sky), DVB-S2 (satellite = Sky HD) or DVB-C (cable = Telewest/NTL) seems to cut across this.
I had a really helpful reply to a post about this from John Lockwood on Microsoft’s Discussion Groups (http://www.microsoft.com/communities....mediac enter) that is worth repeating here (thanks John):
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“Telewest are using MPEG2 [currently] over DVB-C. While [obviously] MCE supports MPEG2 it does not support DVB-C in MCE 2005 or even MCE Vista.
Sky are using MPEG4 AVC (aka. MPEG4 H.264) over DVB-S2. MCE 2005 (and MCE Vista) do not support either MPEG4 or DVB-S2 or even DVB-S.
The BBC are currently running a limited trial on "Freeview" of HD transmissions on just one transmitter (the Crystal Palace transmitter). This is using MPEG4 AVC over DVB-T. While MCE 2005 and MCE Vista support DVB-T they (as indicated above) do not support MPEG4 for live TV.
The BBC are also currently transmitting in HD on Sky, this is using MPEG4 AVC over DVB-S. Again as previously indicated, MCE 2005 and MCE Vista do not support DVB-S.
In short, currently it is IMPOSSIBLE to get any HD transmissions in the UK using MCE 2005 or MCE Vista. It is possible using different software e.g. MediaPortal (for Windows) or EyeTV (for Mac) to get many of these.
This problem is all due to the current pathetic support by Microsoft for TV standard used by most of the world (excluding the USA).
There is now a small glimmer of hope. At WinHec 2006 in June this year
Microsoft showed this PowerPoint file http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...D076a_WH06.ppt which shows they at least now realise their international support sucks. However don't hold your breath waiting for them to deliver.”
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There is a hack for Sky that involves tricking MCE 2005 that the DVB-S card is a DVB-T card (see: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=319927), but I don’t think there is an equivalent method for cable.
On top of all of this, the satellite and cable companies do not support the DVB cards either (see this interview with Telewest’s head of TV strategy: http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5670). They want you to buy their own PVR devices and although it should be possible to connect these boxes to a TV card with a HDMI port, I am not aware of any TV cards with this capability and you would need to pay the extra to subscribe to their HD service and get another PVR as well as your MCE.
So, there is currently no way ‘official’ to get HD content into MCE 2005 or Vista.
MCE as a trusted device
This is to do with the encrypted nature of protected HD content – basically the operating system (Windows) must not allow you to make unauthorised copies of protected content.
I’ve not dug around on this much after I got so disheartened on the lack of HD inputs. However, MCE Vista should be ‘trusted’ thanks to the digital rights management technology built into Vista. See the following article at PC Stats: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1871.
MCE 2005 is not trusted as there is no built in way of protecting the HD content once it has been received. So, although MCE 2005 could handle HD content (in theory – if you could get the broadcast into it), it could not handle protected HD content (ie; content with HDCP).
Getting HD content out of MCE
Fortunately the picture here is less bleak than on the ‘input’ side – but there are still gotcha’s.
To display HD content, your MCE graphics card needs to support HDMI or DVI connectivity and, depending on the television, HDCP. These are starting to appear (for example see: http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2006/07/powercolor_x160.html). Some televisions will not even display a picture if the card does not support HDCP and obviously you need a HD Ready television. You also need to be careful about the cables as to receive full 1080i signals if that applies to you as there is apparently a different cable required…
There are a lot of posts around about display problems with MCE and HD televisions, mainly due to lack of HDCP (see: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showt...light=mce+hdcp for one example) and poor 1:1 pixel mapping (see: http://iandixon.co.uk/cs/forums/1479/ShowThread.aspx). Some televisions only accept PC input into a VGA port (which obviously doesn’t have HDCP) or with some tweaking/hacking of screen resolutions and drivers etc. Just search this forum for information about your TV and MCE. You may need to use a tweaking program called Powerstrip (Guide here: http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/powerstrip.html).
In particular, people with older graphics cards with a DVI output should research carefully as card manufacturers seem to have been liberal with the truth when they advertised them as ‘HDCP compliant’. What they meant was ‘has a HD type connection’ and not that it is necessarily HDCP compatible. See: http://www.audioholics.com/news/edit...cardsHTPCs.php
Also, the older ATI (97xx) cards have come in for a particularly rough ride and if you have one of these you should read up everything carefully as you might need to change your card before you can play any HD content.
Suffice it to say that your graphics card and television need to get along.
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