Capture HDTV using s-video?

[klaberte]

Currently I use the HDHomerun to watch HD and my Hauppauge PVR250 to watch analog cable TV (I have comcast).

If I upgrade to comcast's hdtv using their set-top box (STB), and if I connect this to the s-video input of my 250, what would I get? I know that there would be some conversion loss (HD-->NTSC (480i)-->mpeg2), but it would be "easy", at least a stop-gap until another solution becomes available.

Would this downconverted, captured signal from the HD STB look better or worse than the equivalent SD channel?

Thanks!

[mrwolf]

Originally Posted by klaberte

Currently I use the HDHomerun to watch HD and my Hauppauge PVR250 to watch analog cable TV (I have comcast).

If I upgrade to comcast's hdtv using their set-top box (STB), and if I connect this to the s-video input of my 250, what would I get? I know that there would be some conversion loss (HD-->NTSC (480i)-->mpeg2), but it would be "easy", at least a stop-gap until another solution becomes available.

Would this downconverted, captured signal from the HD STB look better or worse than the equivalent SD channel?

Thanks!

It should look much better. I did just this with DirecTV a couple weeks ago and the downconverted HD channels look pretty good, plus it still comes through as a full 16:9. The reason I took the chance is if you think about it, composite video out of a DVD player is a much better video signal than you get from SDTV, so the same logic applies. The only thing I struggle with now is that some channels are full 16:9 while the STB puts side bars on the standard channels so I have to switch aspect ratios all the time. On my HD extender I added a custom AR for "Pillarboxed" that stretches the video to fill out the screen. I haven't time to look and see if the PC client can do the same thing, yet.