A card with hardware encoder for OTA DTV signals?

[HeeZy]

i recently purchased a WinTV-HVR 950Q USB stick which i am using to capture OTA DTV. it works fine as it captures the video straight to my HDD uncompressed. but this can eat up lots of HDD space. most videos are 704x480 with 6 ch. AC3. a 30 minute show takes up to 900 MB. the 1080i HD signals take up over 2 GB for a 30 minute show.

i wasn't prepared for the large file sizes, so i am wondering if there is a card out there with an ATSC tuner and a hardware encoder that can encode the OTA feeds to a lower bitrate like my other tuner, WinTV-PVR-USB2.

any recommendations? i hear the WinTV 1600 has a hardware encoder, but i am not sure if it can encode OTA to a lower bitrate.


thanks!!

[gplasky]

If you're recording HD shows the file sizes will be large. Anything else you do with the files will not leave them at the HD resolution. All digital HD capture cards will record the stream straight from the source uncompressed. You can have Sage transcode them later but that is another step and like I said won't truly be the same resolution. You should probably count on adding more drive space as it is relatively cheap nowadays.

Gerry

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by gplasky

All digital HD capture cards will record the stream straight from the source uncompressed.

Just to be clear, they record the raw bitstream as broadcast, which is already highly compressed MPEG-2 video. What they don't do is apply any further compression.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by gplasky

All digital HD capture cards will record the stream straight from the source uncompressed.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Just to be clear, they record the raw bitstream as broadcast, which is already highly compressed MPEG-2 video. What they don't do is apply any further compression.

Yes thanks. That is definitely clearer and more of what I meant.

Gerry

[fyodor]

There's this product

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/17/i...es-on-its-own/

Searching around, it seems to be on sale on Korean-language websites.

http://www.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/n...code=155725905

No way to know obviously whether it would work with STV at all. I can't imagine that setting it up without english documentation would be super-fun, either.

F

[HeeZy]

so there are no cards that can receive an HD signal and encode it to a compatible DVD resolution so i can burn it to a dvd?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by HeeZy

so there are no cards that can receive an HD signal and encode it to a compatible DVD resolution so i can burn it to a dvd?

No. I think most people record HD because they want to see it in HD. It can be transcoded after it is recorded within Sage and burned off to a DVD with other programs. (Or transcoded and burnt totally outside of Sage.) The HD-PVR transcodes it in hardware to h.264 transport stream but they are still good sized files. Again other programs can transcode it and burn it to a DVD.

Gerry

[sandor]

Panasonic makes set top Blu ray recorders with built in tuners. I think the 1 TB model started at $2600 (but this was awhile ago)

The beauty of these Panasonic devices is that the are/were the first to have realtime transcoding of the MPEG stream to a h.264 stream for recording to Blu ray.


If you are only interested in DVD quality, look at Panasonic's set top DVD recorders --
http://tinyurl.com/d5s76f around $250, and they actually sell them in the US, unlike the Blur ray set top recorders.

[stanger89]

If you've got no interest in HD at all, the best option may be a Converter Box (which is cheap and outputs SD) connected to a normal SD tuner. But I'd rather transcode after recording HD myself.

[mayamaniac]

listen to Gerry, buy a new harddrive, that is the cheapest solution.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If you've got no interest in HD at all, the best option may be a Converter Box (which is cheap and outputs SD) connected to a normal SD tuner. But I'd rather transcode after recording HD myself.

thats a "good" idea... and if you get the right converter box, you can even maintain 16x9 formats (i believe) so you can get widescreen NTSC... yay?!?

[pjpjpjpj]

A 500Gb USB hard drive is as cheap as a tuner these days....

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

A 500Gb USB hard drive is as cheap as a tuner these days....

Seriously-you can get a 1TB drive for $100 and store 150 hours of HD. Why waste your time trying to get smaller video. If he wants to archive things for the long term, he can transcode it.