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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:57 am 
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Hello All,

We've been kicking around some product ideas and I wanted to run something by the community for feedback.

Is there any interest in a dedicated h.264 transcoder product? We're talking about a stand alone device that has an ethernet port and can do real time or faster transcoding of video up to 1080i from MPEG-2 (and various other formats) to MPEG-4 AVC (h.264).

The device would have a cigarette pack sized footprint and use less than ~5W of power. No more big CPUs for transcoding, all your boxes could be light and quiet.

What else would you like to see in such a product and how do you feel about a target price of $179? Would you buy one? If not, what would it need to do/cost for you to buy one?

Thanks for your input.

-Jeff


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 9:18 am 
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Sounds interesting but the only way I see myself being willing to open up my wallet for a device like this would be if I could point it too a network share (example /myth/video ) and it would access those videos real time over the network / web and it would transcode to my specifications. In other words I could set up profiles for my wife's iPod touch, my Galaxy S phone, my PC, etc. at various resolutions and bitrates depending on device and connection speed.

I guess basically what I would want is Subsonic only for video that allows me to specify the output format. Just like I can covert my 320 CBR .mp3's to 128 VBR on the fly for streaming over 3G to my phone.

The other problem is I'm cheap and probably wouldn't speed more than $150 for something like this and I doubt that is feasible.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:09 am 
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Martian, thanks for the excellent feedback.

Yes, the design brief includes support for various types of file shares so you could point it at a directory and schedule transcodes during"down time" when the device wasn't doing more time sensitive tasks.

We envision a windows app as well that would allow drag and drop transcoding, it would not be a myth only device.

Multiple profiles to support multiple devices would be supported as would multiple video/audio codecs on the input side. This includes full 1080i MPEG2 to 1080i AVC at high bit rates for archiving for TV playback, in additional to down scaling to lower res/bit rates for mobile devices.

The intention would be to make it scriptable/expose an API for advanced users like the myth community as well as do more non-technical user related tasks.

Your pricing feedback is especially valuable. We are running the numbers and volumes necessary to get down to the $149 price point which sounds like it would tip the scales for you which is good to know. Out instincts are saying we need be able to deliver under $200 to get started while continuing to drive the unit cost down from there.

This is not an entirely theoretical exercise for us, we work with silicon that does this today albeit in a much more complex/expensive commercial/industrial application. So don't worry about if it can be done, the answer is that we can do it. The question is how tight we can get the bill of materials and make it viable for the community, and that ties in to general interest levels, thus the original question. :)


Let me have it guys. What would you love to see in a transcoding unit and what is the max you would pay for the convenience, power savings, flexibility etc?

-Jeff


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 12:08 pm 
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The bottom line is that my quad core can covert a DVD to H.264 using handbrake in roughly half an hour. You will need to have a compelling enough feature set to displace that.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 1:18 pm 
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At what output resolution and bitrate for your quad core?

-Jeff


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:05 pm 
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jac1d wrote:
At what output resolution and bitrate for your quad core?

-Jeff


Resolution is whatever is native to the disk (ie. 480p) and bitrate is variable. I believe the relevant setting in Handbrake is set to 20 but i don't remember what it is called. This is single pass, obviously double pass would take longer but that isn't really relevant when comparing to real time.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:07 pm 
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Ok so you're comparing SD to SD at potentially at lower quality.

We were talking about supporting up to 1080i at or greater than real time so up to full HD to HD.

-Jeff


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:46 pm 
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I'll toss in my two cents....

"Standalone" If this is something EXTERNAL to the PC, via USB, Firewire, etc, it's a waste.

ADD this technology to an ATSC tuner card, and I'm in line to get one.

ADD this technology to ANY tuner card, and others will get in line.

Maybe talk to the HDHomeRun folks...and integrate into that.

I appreciate your effort, but it may not be worth your while.

--

Larry


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 8:48 pm 
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larrybpsu wrote:
I'll toss in my two cents....<trimmed>
"Standalone" If this is something EXTERNAL to the PC, via USB, Firewire, etc, it's a waste.
ADD this technology to ANY tuner card, and others will get in line.
I appreciate your effort, but it may not be worth your while.
--
Larry

Adding it to a tuner card seems a bad idea:
- You'd need separate models for each tuner/source type dvb-t/s/c vs atsc vs iptv, etc.
- I have four tuners, but would only need one transcoder not one for each tuner.
- Plenty of people would want to use this for transcoding videos that aren't recordings and would have no use for a tuner at all.
- Making it external would make things easier as it wouldn't use a slot, some machines don't have any slots at all.

My only concern would be its benefits might be negated by spending the same amount on an upgraded CPU instead.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 9:11 pm 
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I would like a rough idea how you would access this device.

Would it be like the Homerun and any client could request a transcode?

This could be useful.

A PCI card version could also be useful. The reason I say so is i do not like to throw a dual-quad at my mythbox. I figure the PCI/PCI Express card would not have the bandwidth limits of ethernet and generally my mythbox is the only machine I need this feature on. On other systems it would be infrequent and the resident processor would be fine. Worst case, I send the job to the mythbox to be done.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 8:21 pm 
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My Guess is it attaches to your network and accesses shared files and transcodes them.

BigB.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 9:31 pm 
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averagejoe wrote:
A PCI card version could also be useful.


That was my thought, too. This way the server has access to it at any time and at full speed.

Mike

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 2:14 am 
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averagejoe wrote:
I would like a rough idea how you would access this device.

Would it be like the Homerun and any client could request a transcode?

This could be useful.

A PCI card version could also be useful. The reason I say so is i do not like to throw a dual-quad at my mythbox. I figure the PCI/PCI Express card would not have the bandwidth limits of ethernet and generally my mythbox is the only machine I need this feature on. On other systems it would be infrequent and the resident processor would be fine. Worst case, I send the job to the mythbox to be done.


We had envisioned an API that allows access over the network, as well as various job details. So you could tell it you wanted to set up a transcode, send the paramters then stream the file to it and get a return stream with the result, for example.

-Jeff


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