Recording in 5.1 Dolby Digital DTS

[cyrus419]

I've had SageTV for around a month now. Love it by the way!

my only gripe is the recordings are currently in stereo/analog. I am using a digital cable set top box, which has digital output.

Is there some sound card that i can purchase that will allow sagetv to record the shows/movies in 5.1?

I've seen some sound card with optical inputs and outputs. Are there ones with digital coax inputs (my cable box only uses digital coax)?

[stanger89]

Nope, sorry.

[Fluffdaddy]

And that's why my co-worker/buddy feels his D-Tivo DVR is better then my HTPC with sagetv DVR......................and honestly I have no good come back

btw: why is this, Is there no hardware to record DD5.1/DTS via a computer/HTPC ? A DTivo an or Dishnet PVR's are just simple computers and they record dd/dts

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

And that's why my co-worker/buddy feels his D-Tivo DVR is better then my HTPC with sagetv DVR......................and honestly I have no good come back

btw: why is this, Is there no hardware to record DD5.1/DTS via a computer/HTPC ?

In that one aspect of D-TIVO your buddy may be correct. I can make a long list of why I believe Sage and a homebuilt PVR system better product than TIVO overall. Little things like multiple tuner expandability, storage expandability and redundancy and backup capabilities, stream output to any PC Client on your network etc. I may be wrong but it seems unfortuately the TV hardware encoder cards aren't there to support 5.1 audio recording so Sage can't support what doesn't exist. When it comes to TV recordings, I can live with Stereo. (which I output SPDIF to Denon receiver and output in 5 channel stereo)

[mlbdude]

Hopefully if MCE comes out with cable card support SageTV will be able to use the same hardware and all this cablebox crud will go away.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

And that's why my co-worker/buddy feels his D-Tivo DVR is better then my HTPC with sagetv DVR......................and honestly I have no good come back

Ask him, "How much content is actually IN DD?" The truth is not much, pretty much only some of the movies on some movie channels. For the rest of the channels, you're sometimes lucky to get stereo.

As for why, there are a few reasons:

1) There's no software to record DD directly off a digital input, you can capture a PCM stream containing DD, but it then must be processed to get the embedded AC3 stream.

2) If there were software, it would require capturing the audio and video via separate cards, and anyone who's tried that in the past knows that's very prone to A/V sync issues.

3) Related to 2, none of the all-in-one (audio and video) Hardware encode capture cards have digital inputs.

Now there's an important distinction between the way a DTivo works and the way Sage works. And that is the DTivo just captures the bistream off the satellite, Sage works like a Standalone Tivo, recording the analog signal.

OTA HD recording (sadly not in Sage yet), OTOH, works just like the DTivo, capturing the bitstream DD and all. So with OTA HD, digital cable (unencrypted), or when cablecard comes to the PC, it will work just like a DTivo recording a perfect copy, digital audio and all.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by mdmint

Little things like multiple tuner expandability, storage expandability and redundancy and backup capabilities, stream output to any PC Client on your network etc. I may be wrong but it seems unfortuately the TV hardware encoder cards aren't there to support 5.1 audio recording so Sage can't support what doesn't exist. When it comes to TV recordings, I can live with Stereo. (which I output SPDIF to Denon receiver and output in 5 channel stereo)

All Very True. I guess I just went the best of everything.

[stanger89]

One more thing, not recording DD doesn't mean you can't record surround, it's just that it will be matrixed (Dolby Pro Logic) surround instead of discrete surround. Which can be really good.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Ask him, "How much content is actually IN DD?" The truth is not much, pretty much only some of the movies on some movie channels. For the rest of the channels, you're sometimes lucky to get stereo.
.

You know you are right. Guess I missed that because the only thing I watch without my sagetv-dvr is Sports and HDTV.................and even then only 50-60% of HDTV is in full DD 5.1. Good Point

[korben_dallas]

The universal network encoder might be able to do this. Setup in GraphEdit the video capture from your tuner and the audio capture from your sound card digital audio input. But even if you could get the graph correct, get the audio decoded, mux the audio/video in sync, and get a file writer running, the file format would not be native to SageTV recordings and wouldn't get any of the show detail.

However, it might not be a bad way to record movies off of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc.

[cyrus419]

well that sucks.. i suppose there's no real reason to purchase the more expensive sound card with optical input then

thanks

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

The universal network encoder might be able to do this. Setup in GraphEdit the video capture from your tuner and the audio capture from your sound card digital audio input. But even if you could get the graph correct, get the audio decoded, mux the audio/video in sync, and get a file writer running, the file format would not be native to SageTV recordings and wouldn't get any of the show detail.

Problem is you can't record AC3 directly, you have to capture it as PCM and then extract the AC3 stream from that. There's no way to do that in one step now.