HDHR Recordings vs HD PVR Recordings

[BBCritical]

If this has been answered elsewhere please point me to the thread. If I record OTA HD through my HDHR I can watch a 1080i or 720p recording on my mediamvp just fine because I have it set to record to .mpg exension. Why cant I watch a 720p file recorded by the HD PVR to .ts extension on my mvp. What is the HDHR doing that the HD PVR is not? BTW.. I can watch all of these with my STX-100 extender...

[gplasky]

The HD-PVR uses h.264 as it's recording format and the MVP needs to transcode that. Transcoding is done on your server. I don't think there is really a processor powerful enough to do that for h.264 format. HDHR is recording in a mpeg2 format and so the MVP only needs to handle the resolution. STX-100 handles all of that natively in hardware.

Gerry

[BBCritical]

Originally Posted by gplasky

The HD-PVR uses h.264 as it's recording format and the MVP needs to transcode that. Transcoding is done on your server. I don't think there is really a processor powerful enough to do that for h.264 format. HDHR is recording in a mpeg2 format and so the MVP only needs to handle the resolution. STX-100 handles all of that natively in hardware.

Gerry

Does recording it in mpeg2 format decrease the quality in any way?

[gplasky]

No. The digital stream from HD is actually broadcast as mpeg2 and it's at whatever resolution they are broadcasting in. 1920 x 1080 (1080i) or 1280 x 720 (720p). (Or lower for 480) Some people actually say the HD-PVR looks a little softer because it is transcoding it into a different format.

Gerry

[BBCritical]

Originally Posted by gplasky

No. The digital stream from HD is actually broadcast as mpeg2 and it's at whatever resolution they are broadcasting in. 1920 x 1080 (1080i) or 1280 x 720 (720p). (Or lower for 480) Some people actually say the HD-PVR looks a little softer because it is transcoding it into a different format.

Gerry

So could hauppuage change the formatting to mpeg2 through a firmware update or would it take a new hardware release model?

[gplasky]

The future is h.264 for HD recordings. It's all done in hardware so it would require a new device which I don't think you're going to see. If you're using the HD-PVR you're going to want to replace your MVP with the STX-HD100 or whatever new model Sage is bringing out. See this thread for more reasons why things are the way they are: h.264 instead of mpeg2

Gerry

[BBCritical]

Originally Posted by gplasky

The future is h.264 for HD recordings. It's all done in hardware so it would require a new device which I don't think you're going to see. If you're using the HD-PVR you're going to want to replace your MVP with the STX-HD100 or whatever new model Sage is bringing out. See this thread for more reasons why things are the way they are: h.264 instead of mpeg2

Gerry

Thanks.. once again youve saved my Sage sanity Gerry!!!

[HelenWeathers]

Some people actually say the HD-PVR looks a little softer because it is transcoding it into a different format.

And some people say they can't see any difference between OTA ATSC and HD PVR from OTA ATSC.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

And some people say they can't see any difference between OTA ATSC and HD PVR from OTA ATSC.

Theoretically there is going to be a difference; however, a lot of that has to do with how good the ADC's are on the source device so some of the softness reports may not even be HDPVR's fault!

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by BBCritical

So could hauppuage change the formatting to mpeg2 through a firmware update or would it take a new hardware release model?

The HDHR grabs the raw digital stream that is sent out by your cable company and just writes it to a file. The file is sent out by the cable company in an MPEG format. There is no decrypting or re-encoding going on inside the HDHR, which makes the process very easy. However, because of this it cannot record premium content from encrypted channels.

The HD-PVR takes the High-Definition analog signal that is coming out of your cable box and encodes it to the h.264 format. Your cable box is doing the decrypting, so you can record anything that you could watch through your cable box, including premium content like HBO or pay per view.

The h.264 format is able to get a much better quality with a smaller file size. This is particularly important when converting an analog HD signal to digital in real time. When you convert from analog to digital, any noise or "static" in the signal tends to get magnified and you end up needing a really large file size to get decent quality when recording to MPEG unless the source material is pristine.

So, it is unlikely that they would support MPEG encoding with the HD-PVR because the files would be huge.

[TallMomof2]

Re the softer picture from the HD PVR. I went into the settings in TME and increased the sharpness setting and now my recordings appear the same as direct from the STB. I'm only watching on a 36" Sony Vega but it looks good to me.