Grrr .. .. ...

I just purchased a new Power Mac G5 box containing a Dual 2.7 Gig 
PowerPC Core and ATI Radeon 9650 2500 X 1920 res (HDTV)display card
(two DVI ouputs!!), + the 30" Cinema HD APPLE monitor to match.
  
Part of my rationale for coughing up so much dough was so that I could
watch HDTV (DISH supplier) in sybaritic self-satisfaction while
pursuing email correspondence, web-surfing, speech-to-text blogging,
and other Type-A activities.   I was assured @ the Mac Store (Mall of
America, MPLS) I could do all these things simultaneously.

10 minutes ago I was informed by an uber-techie @ "BetterCables.com"
there is no expander bus card or adapter cable which will accept HDTV
connector signal & route it to the 9650 display card  (their rational
being prevention of theft of HDTV content --- which makes no sense at
all since the HDTV decoder is, in itself, an HDTV recorder).     The
best I can do is get a gender changer --- HDMI (from Dish Box) to HDI
(direct input to 30" Apple HD monitor).   Either/or, not both.

Apparently I can't have my HDTV and eat it too.

Does anyone know of an PCI expander bus card or Firewire
gender-changer to accept the HDMI input from the satellite decoder &
pass it to the monitor.  (I already found out USB2.0 doesn't have
enough bandwidth, and there's no Firewire 800 adapter I've found so
far).

$25.00 to the Digital Hermit (no releation to the DigitalHermit(TM)
who can solve my problem (without telling me to buy an Intel box
:-)!!!!


Thanks in advance!
--
Chris M.

Indeed my good sir. 
if you JUST want to use the 30-inch monitor to watch the incoming hdtv
without any interfacing with the mac, then a simple $5.00 hdmi-male to
dvi-female adapter will allow you to plug the monitor directly into
the cable box. If you want to watch TV while doing other things on the
same monitor, then see below:

Miglia makes a little device for the Mac called the TVmini HD which
will allow you to interface High-def signals with a powermac G5.
Downside is that it only picks up free-to-air signals with no other
input so you might as well throw your satellite box out the window.
Here is the page detailing the device and it's uses:
http://www.miglia.com/products/video/tvminihd/index.html
It comes with it's own DVR software, so you can use your Mac like a
Tivo. The Ati 9650 card has one dual link port and one single link
port, so if you got a (cheaper) secondary monitor you could watch the
HD content on the 30-incher and go about your normal tasks like email,
text-to-speech blogging, etc on the secondary monitor. The 9650 is
actually not the best performance-wise, as you can see from this
comparison: http://www.barefeats.com/rad9650.html The most cost
effective card for the powermac G5 is the ATI radeon x800 XT card,
which can be had at it's lowest for around $270:
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cluster?q=x800+mac+edition&pid=4746390855853747609&oid=874435272519990650&btnG=Search+Froogle&oi=froogler&lmode=&addr=&scoring=mrd&hl=en

Another good product is the eyeTV 500 firewire interface, but it has a
clear-cable connection which you may or may not have:
http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetv500
It would be the connection going into the dish box, not the hdmi out of the box. 

I came across this little gem of a quote from a makezine.com article:
"The FCC passed a regulation requiring all cable companies to provide
a firewire port on their cable boxes. You can request one of these
from your cable provider for a minimal fee if you do not already have
one. Most Macs over the past few years have a built in firewire port
or you can at least buy a card for it. You will want at least a 500Mhz
Mac and a LOT of drive space. "
You can then use the eyeTV software to watch and record TV broadcasts
over tis firewire port...nifty!
I'd call up dish and ask them about adding the firewire port. 

If you need more help I'd go to this site and see what's up:
http://centerstageproject.com/

Hope this helps some, 
-Max Aandrews

Greetings!  

Having read your two entries, I had to chime in with the following
link:  http://macteens.com/features/fullstory/how_to_make_your_own_home_theatre_mac_htmac/

Check that out.  And then consider adding MPEG Streamclip to your
collection of programs.

I was able to capture m2t files uncompressed to my G5 Quad.  The
quality is amazing!

Cheers!