Will the ATI HD4650 do hdmi in --> monitor out? I very much suspect it won't, but it's one off the possibilities I want to rule out.

/background
I need options. The Analogue TV is being switched off here (Ireland) on October 24th, so no signals can be received without a set top box. I am not buying such. Period.
But the licensing people are playing silly buggers and require a license for TVs whether or not I have a set top box. I have the TV for a video player (little used Scart input) or dvd/blueray player (more often used). The license is €160, so there's the price of a monitor in that which would pay back in year one.

If the HD 4650 did hdmi --> monitor (It has monitor1, monitor2, & hdmi) I could save the price of a hdmi capable monitor.

The HDMI port on videocards is output only.

The post confuses me.

Where are you getting OTA signals from?

@TobiSGD: Thank you, that's exactly what I thought, but no harm in checking.

@jefro: My posts usually confuse somebody. As long as I didn't confuse everybody, it's ok :-).

I have various legacy devices lying around this house which were using a TV, which I am now throwing out, rather than pay €160 p.a. of a license to keep it. So they are without a screen.
If I had a hdmi input, I could use a pc and feed out on the monitor. The pc has the hd4650, hence the interest in whether it does hdmi in - which it doesn't.

My understanding of Ireland's TV license law is that you will be imposed the fee if you have ANY device capable of decoding TV signals, be it a capture card or device for a computer, TV, recording device,... whatever. If An Post "busts" you,... my understanding is that the fine is €174,... which doesn't include the license fee which you're still required to purchase.

The problem with hdmi is that hdmi has a form of DRM called HDCP. You can get capture devices that have hdmi in, but they cannot record TV or commercial DVDs, because of this limitation. For ripping movies, you are better off with a software solution. If you have an internet streaming service for content, you're better off capturing it through software, if that's your goal. If you have a cable service, transmitting over coaxial cable, any TV tuner device you'd use would trigger the license fee...

I still don't understand why you are looking for hdmi in for the PC... Other than to maybe pull content off bluray (which won't work). To rip/playback bluray discs, you need a bluray drive on the machine and the right software. The only alternative is to find legacy bluray devices with analog out and use an analog capture device (but the analog out will be reduced resolution).

Thanks for the reply @JaseP:

Re Ireland's laws - that's correct. I dumped the tvs today.

It's all about my preference, JaseP. I'm not trying to rip anything, or stream anything. The only time I want to watch two people having sex is if I'm one of them and my wife is the other :-). I don't want to watch arguments. continuous violence, mental bullying or crap. I'm not a soap addict and don't like the use of bad language. I'm not into sport in a big way, and all the matches are on in pubs anyhow. I don't want life to be interrupted every ten minutes for ten minutes of advertising. What's left in entertainment?

My blueray feeds hdmi out. I don't want to rip it, but have the option to watch it occasionally I'll probably sacrifice the video player( a little bit last millenium), and buy a hdmi pc monitor for the blue ray.

A lot of hdmi enabled monitors have tuners in them too, which would trigger the law,... so be careful what you buy. You can get a USB bluray, but you'd need to rip/cache to watch the discs (USB drives apparently lack the throughput for 1080p).

Kudos to you for giving up the idiot box... I sometimes wish I could, but then I come back to my insanity.

At the moment I have the pc monitor from my desktop, and my laptop. I'll get one with hdmi in as well, and that will cover the spot. As for the kudos, thank you. I was brought up in the 50s & 60s, and there were no computers, pathetic tv, and you read if you wanted something to do, or went to the cinema. There was a cinema in Grafton Street that ran cartoons (about 2 hours worth) for the show. With a shilling or two to spend(=€0.05 - €0.10), I'd be happy for the day as a kid. People meditated, and had time. There wasn't as many admen telling us what we needed.

Ok, as a footnote, I've settled on a 24" PC Monitor with speakers for about the price of the license. It takes vga, dvi, and hdmi inputs, and has no tuner.

I had issues on this box with the hdmi grabbing dsp0 and bullying the little 'AC 97 builtin saying "I'm the real soundcard around here," so I put things in modprobe.d which laid out the red carpet for the AC97 and gave the middle finger to the HDMI card, and they will have to be changed.

So can anyone with more experience any experience at all in multimedia tell me how to get things like xine & mplayer and those only to play through /dev/dsp1 or the alsa equivalent device, which of course is . . . /dev/snd/<something>?