What do the new breed of DVD recorders with HD tuners downconvert an ATSC signal to before recording? Most of the comments mention they downconvert to SD. I consider SD to be lower resolution than what a DVD is capable of handling. Is the signal being converted to analog resolution (about 330 lines / 4Mhz) then being recorded? Or is it being converted to commercial DVD resolution (about 500 lines / 6Mhz) & then being recorded? IOW, is the signal being dragged down below what would be considered normal DVD quality?

Mike

What do the new breed of DVD recorders with HD tuners downconvert an ATSC signal to before recording? Most of the comments mention they downconvert to SD. I consider SD to be lower resolution than what a DVD is capable of handling. Is the signal being converted to analog resolution (about 330 lines / 4Mhz) then being recorded? Or is it being converted to commercial DVD resolution (about 500 lines / 6Mhz) & then being recorded? IOW, is the signal being dragged down below what would be considered normal DVD quality?

Mike
Everything gets converted to 720x480. Even QAM channels at 528x480 get upconverted to 720x480.

Ron

Don't forget, the effective resolution you actually get on the disc also depends on the quality of the MPEG encoder. A consumer-grade DVD recorder that encodes in real time can't do as good a job as a commercial encoder that uses longer encoding times and more sophisticated processors.

Everything gets converted to 720x480. Even QAM channels at 528x480 get upconverted to 720x480.

RonTo me the down convert looks much better than the equivalent analog channel. Much sharper image.

I basically wanted to verify that, for example, recording HD CBS to a DVD-R should result in a better picture than recording analog CBS. Since these HD tuner DVD recorders only pass thru an SD signal, my concern was that the recording was utilizing the low resolution SD signal.

Thanks for the info,
Mike