Recorder Market Is Unsettled Everywhere, Not Just USA/Canada Anymore - Page 4

I hope to try out the free open source MediaPortal at some point, that I mentioned in the sticky thread, and report my results, unless someone else ends up trying it first...I probably won't get to it for a while. Sounds better than WMC and has specific community support for the Hauppauge units.

You and I are in the same boat with very similar needs and uses. I'm also leaning toward the Hauppauge units you mentioned. Perhaps we could combine our investigative efforts to prevent overlap and report back our results.

If Media Portal supported the HomeRun Prime I think I'd be all over it but sounds like so far it doesn't. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see if anything interesting happens to change that, thanks for the link.

Yes, it is one of the apps Silicon Dust lists that supports the HD Homerun and runs under Windows:

• Windows Media Center
• SnapStream BeyondTV – DVR for Windows
• SageTV – DVR for Windows/Linux/Mac
• MediaPortal – DVR for Windows
• GB-PVR – DVR for Windows

I'll be looking at all of these with the HD-HR, as long as they run under Win-XP. So sounds like Mediaportal should be the first on the list.

Dartman,

The WD Live lists .WMV as one of it's supported playback formats. Have you ever tried streaming WMC captures from the HD-HR Prime through your WD Live?

No I haven't, I just fire up the player that's best at what I'm trying to do and use it. The Aios has much better media navigation and chapter support for most formats so I use it to just watch my captures, the Live has way more internet goodies and apps because of b-Rad and the community support, so when I want to watch HD movie trailers or some of the other cool streams out their I use the live.
And all the captures my Prime does are in WTV format natively then I have to convert them to something either player can see, but both play almost the same formats, so far neither can do WTV. I might have to try it again but 99.9 sure it wont play those caps as is.
In fact aasoror and the group just released another semi official update with some fixes and new skins so was just testing it out today, the live hasn't had anything new for a while.

That is what I'm anxious to play with -- the video formats. What does the HD-HR transfer to the PC. Unless I missed it, I saw no mention of on-board H.264 encoding so my guess is it outputs the MPEG-2 transport stream from the tuner. WMC will package that as .WTV so it can have DRM control for copy-protected cable channels. I'll be using those other apps I listed above and I doubt they will package the stream as .WTV. If they package as any standard format -- .ts, .m2ts, .mpg or even .mkv -- I'll be able to directly stream the capture with the Live-S. Even better, if they package as .mpg, I can always send them back to my TiVo and use the commercial skip function during playback.

Amazon is giving me a delivery estimate of 2/2-2/7.

edit: yup, I just saw in a review that it outputs HD MPEG-2 streams.

Well for your unit you can use a lot of good free or cheap programs that will capture it to something more universal. When I was using my divco with CWEPG it was always in TP format which most things can play and edit then I'd use videoredo to edit out the commercials and covert to MPG.
So unless you want to use media center just about anything else you like should work and capture the stream to something normal. Like I said before I upgraded my videoredo to TV Suite version 4 H264 and that version can deal with and edit WTV format as long as it isn't copy once encoded, and it will save the edits to a TON of formats in HD. If you already have that program in either flavor and use anything else it should work great, if WMC format get the H264 version.

You bet. Although right now I'm only testing the waters and I won't bite the bullet unless my RDR-HX780 dies. One thing I wish the Hauppauge would do is give you a choice of SD encoding in H.264/AVC or "MPEG-2 for burning to regular DVD-Video so you could make DVDs compatable with any old DVD player." Also a lot of the features are overkill for my needs but I heard very good things regarding the Hauppauge encoding quality. Do you know of any other capture cards that have HD component inputs?

I found these 2 Avermedia products:

http://www.amazon.com/AVERMEDIA-C281...ref=pd_sim_e_1
Pros: does not require a computer to operate.
Cons: doesn't appear to have composite/s-video inputs, and it appears to only record in avi format

http://www.amazon.com/AVERMEDIA-AVER...sr=1-1-catcorr
This looks to have both component and composite/s-video inputs, but it only appears to encode h.264, not mpeg2.

From what I understand, h.264 compression is superior to mpeg2 in terms of quality and space used, yet it can only be played on modern blu-ray players, whether they be standard DVD discs, or BD-Rs. Still looking for something that encodes mpeg2 natively, without the need for re-encoding/conversion, but I suspect that any device with HD component inputs probably won't.

I'm also going to post this in the "Recorder Options" sticky thread, as I think our discussion is more appropriate there.

Just so we're all on the same page with regard to codecs and formats:

• MPEG-2 codec does not mean SD. MPEG-2 can be used to encode other resolutions including HD. All broadcast HD TV is encoded as MPEG-2 with bitrates of 12-18 Mbps.
• H.264/AVC codec is one of the most efficient for encoding all video -- SD and HD. It is used for 90% of all BluRays. You can get equivalent PQ to MPEG-2 at a lower bitrate, but not absurdly lower. Many encoding programs default to 1.5 Mbps for encoding DVD to H.264 which will shrink the file to 1/3 the original size. It may be watchable, but I think it looks like crap on even a 32" display. I find I can go down to 80% of the original DVD file size without a noticeable difference on a 50" display. As usual the perceived quality depends on the display you will view it on. Each person needs to determine for themselves how much shrinkage they can tolerate.
• AVCHD is a video disk format derived from BD-video and was originally developed for camcorders. It was designed to be burned primarily to DVD-R, DL. All modern BluRay players support AVCHD on DVD. Although you can in principle burn AVCHD onto BD-R, many players don't support it and only support BD-Video on BD-R. Nearly all digital HD camcorders record in AVCHD. The AVCHD specification is more restrictive than BD-Video and only includes H.264/AVC as a supported codec and AC3 audio. An AVCHD made from MPEG-2 encoded source is "illegal" and may not be supported on your BluRay player. Many players do support it, including Panasonic BD players, but you typically don't find that stipulation in the specs. But it is still good to keep in mind that for maximum portability you should adhere to AVCHD specs. which means the video must be encoded as H.264.
• BD-Video is the BluRay disk format, intended to be burned to BD-R disks. In principle you can burn BD-Video to DVD-R and DL -- commonly referred to as BD-5 and BD-9. But most players only support AVCHD on DVD media and won't play BD-Video on DVD. The BD-Video specification supports SD/HD video encoded as MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-1 codecs and HD audio.

IMHO, if you are going to record in HD quality, you need to put DVD-R, DL in the rear-view mirror. You burn HD to BD-R as BD-Video format. People talk about encoding broadcast TV to H.264 and fitting 2hr of HDTV on a DVD-R. I don't particularly like the resulting PQ. I would rather leave it as MPEG-2 and burn to BD-R. Given typical file sizes for 1hr HD recordings, you can usually fit 4-5 1hr HD episodes on a BD-R after you have cut out commercials. For SD content I really don't feel it's worth the substantial encoding time (even with a powerful PC) to encode to H.264. If you are concerned with keeping original PQ you will only be saving 20-30% of the file space -- for some that may be worth it. Recording at SP mode you can typically put 3x1hr episodes on a DVD-R after commercial removal -- you can put 14-15 of those episodes on a single BD-R without any further encoding or compression.

Yeah codecs have many levels and many profiles. For instance Sony’s professional XDCam format uses MPEG-2 for both HD and SD. It does SD (IMX) all the way up to 50Mbps with 4:2:2 color sampling.
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/micro-x...ideorecorders/

On the other hand cable companies are starting to send MPEG-4 AVC HD for special live event programming, saving bandwidth while running high progressive frame rates. Of course normal cable is sent in MPEG-2 to keep the signal compatible with all the older STBs in people’s homes. Check it out, my Moto DCX3400 will indeed receive the old school SD/HD MPEG-2 and the newer AVC MPEG-4.
http://www.motorola.com/Video-Soluti.../DCX3400_US-EN

What I stated in my previous post is that any standard def broadcasts and VHS/BETA tapes I send to my Hauppauge (If/when I get it) I’d like to encode in MPEG-2 so I can make DVD-Videos that will be compatible with just about every DVD player out there.


SD DVD-Video storage isn’t a problem for me as I archive mostly 60 min shows in XP and for long shows I’m fine with the quality up to 2hrs 40 min on a SL DVD in MPEG-2 SD. HD archiving as a hobby on consumer gear will be new to me but archiving HD in H.264/AVC on BD discs should work fine for my short programs.

I know my grammar tends to translate funny sometimes.

EDIT:
Kelson, sorry I'm not perfectly clear on one issue.
Can you put H.264/AVC coded stuff on a regular DVD? Not that I need to but just want to make sure one way or another.

Thanks for the links, I'll look into those tomorrow. But the one that does not need a computer probably means that you can only archive to HDD and can't archive to a DVD or BD disc? Haven't really looked yet so I'm guessing



Yeah MPEG-4 is newer and more efficient. But I'm hoping to find something that will encode SD signals via S-Video or composite to MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 and encode HD video via component in MPEG-4 only. But you're probably right that I won't find what I want.

Dishnetwork transmits MPEG4 on most of their HD programming, while the DVR receiver I have also has an OTA module that will record OTA HD in MPEG2. The space usage between the two is phenominal...a 3-hour HD OTA MPEG2 program will reduce the available hard drive space by 3 hours as expected, while a 3-hour MPEG4 satellite program will only reduce the reported available HDD space by about 45 minutes, 1 4-to-1 ratio. I realize that different OTA channels use different bitrates to transmit, but that appears to be the average difference in file size.

Short answer is yes, as AVCHD format. From my post above:

Again to keep the terms clear (which is always difficult), H.264 or H.264/AVC is just shorthand for MPEG-4 part 10 (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 or Advanced Video Coding) which is the format used on AVCHD and BD-Video. So they are one in the same.

This is opposed to MPEG-4 part 2 (Advanced Simple Profile), used by codecs such as DivX and Xvid. I believe this is the codec used by satellite and cable special broadcasts.

This all gets confusing unless you make a career out of it. But as long as we stick to disks, one only needs to be concerned with MPEG-2 and H.264. It also means one has to be careful just using the term MPEG-4 because without qualification it doesn't mean much.

Gotcha.

The AverMedia products do not have optical input/passthrough whereas the Hauppauge units do. You can only record 2.0 stereo with the AverMedia while you can record DD/5.1 with the Hauppauge units.

For MPEG-2 encoding, check out the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR products. I was glancing through a product comparison chart and it seems that other than the HD PVR and Colossus, the rest of their products have either hardware or soft MPEG-2 encoders (MPEG-2 from either SD or HD DTV). I've not seen anything that will do both hardware MPEG-2 and H.264 in the same box.

Is your HD STB Cable or Satellite?

^^^ I would assume for the same reason people want them for DVD recorders. Most STB do not output widescreen (without letterboxing) from composite or S-Video outputs. That's why all the talk about component converters on the Magnavox thread. Also, component input is the only way to record HD video. HDMI inputs on these devices can only record non HDCP-encrypted video. STB's and DVD/BD players all encrypt their HDMI output. HDMI inputs are mostly for Xbox gamers who want to record their gameplay. That's one of the few things that is output as unencrypted HDMI.

Of course I understand the 16x9 Anamorphic problem.

I can also understand jjeff spending ~$50 to get a Component-to-S-Video/Composite adapter, although taking a slight quality hit.

But, here we're looking at ~$200 for the (No-Tuner / One-Input-Device-at-a-Time, AFAICT) Hauppauge 1212, leading to my Cable or Satellite STB question.

If Super Eye has Satellite, yes the choices are limited - i.e. the 1212 or jjeff's converter box. But, if he has Cable, for ~$300 he could get a 4-Tuner Ceton card for a PC (i.e. the SAME PC the 1212 was going to feed), dump the PVR completely (~$20/month?) and just use a CableCard (1st one free?) in the Ceton. If he didn't want the PC with the Ceton card in the living room, he could buy one or more Media Streamers (~$50 on sale) and access the shows throughout the house.

I haven't yet read the posts since midnight - WAY too technical to just 'glance over' (i.e.
) - but I just wanted to clarify the logic behind my question to Super Eye.

ClearToLand, I already explained in this thread that cablecard is not an option for me, as my cable co does not support cablecard and encrypts QAM. I also mentioned that my cable company sold me a brand new duel tuner 500GB Motorola DCX3400 for $97. My cable package that I now had for a long time contains basic + 4 tiers of cable and includes 4-outlets. The 4-outlets included means that I can purchase up to 4 set-top-boxes/PVRS without paying any extra fees.

See my first post in this thread for clarification. Ignore the shutting off of component outputs as wajo’s PDF link clearly explains that the cable PVR outputs will stay active.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...1&postcount=56

So I have no cable card support but I do “own” my Motorola PVR with no additional cable fees.

I need a capture card with component inputs because as Kelson pointed out, HDMI is encrypted and component is the only way to get a true HD signal out of the box. Actually my cable co has the 1394 FireWire enabled with the CP off but they might shut that down in the future. Here is what it says in the service mode of my Motorola box regarding firewire. “””1394 - 5C implementation: no Copy control: copy free" – but like I said, they may shut that down soon as there is no mention of it anywhere except the service menu. So I must get a component input capture card if I want to capture in true HD and I guess there is a premium cost associated with that.

Kelson thanks for the codec clarification. I didn’t know the difference between MPEG-4 part ten and MEG-4 part two. But that link to my Moto box I linked says that the box can receive MPEG-4 AVC here is the link again.
http://www.motorola.com/Video-Soluti...N?pubid=987654

Add me to the Super Eye list of wanting component...yes, I have a satellite receiver which does allow transfer of titles to an EHD, but they are all encrypted and only accessible during the life of the account. If I were to switch providers or even change to a different family of receiver, all of my stored EHD titles would be useless.

I also have a desire to record streaming content from my Roku.

Hauppauge may not, but I found this internal card from AverMedia:

For SD Video Capturing
◦Intel® Pentium® 4 3.0GHz
◦AMD Athlon 64 3200+
For HD Video Real-time Capturing (MPEG-2 Format)
◦Intel® Core2 Duo 2.4GHz
◦AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 2.8GHz
For HD Video Real-time Capturing (H.264 Format)
◦Intel® Core i5 750 or AMD equivalent
VGA card with DirectX9.0c or above*
512 MB RAM**
PCI-E Slot
Sound Card
Windows® 7/Vista/XP (32/64-Bit)

It's not clear to me that this card is a hardware encoder or a software encoder. Considering the PC requirements for MPEG-2 vs H.264, I'm leaning towards this being a software capture card.

Nevertheless, it is really great having all these different options. Once you bring a PC into the equation, everything expands.

My most sincere apologizes Super Eye.

Both my, and my dear wife's, short term memories are failing more and more each year. You know how you go down the basement to get something and then forget what you went down there to get until you get about halfway back upstairs? I remembered the:
But completely forgot the rest.

I also remember the Analog Sunset talk and printed off a couple of pages of that info in case I decide to buy a Blu-Ray Player before the end of 2012. And the more recent discussion of Ceton 4-Tuner and 6-Tuner cards. And *ESPECIALLY* the new SiliconDust 2-Tuner unit that Kelson just bought!

You could have just said "See Post #56" and saved yourself all that typing and aggravation.

On that note, the Hauppauge 1212 looks like a 'Good Fit' for you - portable, not tied to a Desktop PC, but unfortunate that there's no Ethernet OUT, just USB.

Hauppauge 1212 Connector Diagrams
[Can't get a direct LINK to work - you have to CLICK on the Connector Diagrams Tab after CLICKing on this LINK] Possibly, if you have a laptop that can handle at least one HD show at a time, you could offload the shows from the "...brand new duel tuner 500GB Motorola DCX3400 for $97..." and then transfer them, wired or wireless, to a desktop with one or more HUGE HDDs and a BD Burner (Pretty much what the SiliconDust units do on their own). I could write a BATCH file for you to check for the existence of a MPEG file in a specific directory at, or after, a specific time (or maybe I could check filesize and if it hasn't changed in let's say 15 minutes, we could declare the offload complete) and then create a Task Scheduler entry to kick it off such that the MPEG could be moved from your laptop to your desktop overnight while you're sleeping.

Or maybe you have an External HDD that you can hook up to your laptop and then 'Sneaker Net' it over to the desktop.

What's your opinion of buying a Media Streamer or two for viewing the stored 1212 shows from the desktop (ala Kelson and myself when using the new SiliconDust 2-Tuner unit)?

Kelson, just to be sure, any old Media Streamer, like my FAT+ or PBO, will be able to play the HD files created by the 1212 (and the SiliconDust you just bought)? And, BTW, those TECHNICAL discussions from ~midnight last night through this afternoon are simply fantastic information! I'll have to re-read them more closely when I'm more alert. You and CitiBear are just CHOCK FULL of interesting information! Thanks for taking the HOURS to share it!

I decided to recode one of my MPEG-2 HD .wtv recordings to H.264 .wtv with VideoReDo. I just wanted to compare the size of each type of file. I can't believe how much processor power it's taking. If I do the typical commercial cutting and trimming at the beginning and end of shows and keep them as MPEG-2 .wtv the processor barely notices VideoReDo running. During this H.264 recode VideoReDo is taking 85% of the processor resources and the total CPU usage is up to about 90%.

My processor is a dual core (4 thread) i5-650. The clock speed is 3.20 GHz but the maximum turbo frequency is 3.46 GHz. I've had this computer for over a year and I've never seen the frequency go above 100% until today. It's running at 107% right now so I assume it's nearly at full speed. This program is just over 4 hours in length after cutting the commercials out (NFL Pro Bowl). It's been recoding for about an hour already and it still shows 4 hours 20 minutes remaining.

The computer has 6 GB ram but this recode doesn't seem to be using very much of it at all. It's only using about 275,000 KB (working set). Firefox is using more memory than VideoReDo.

I'm not sure disc speed is important for this either. I'm only showing about 1.5 MB/sec during the recode.

From my experience transcoding DVD-R recordings to XviD video files using Fairuse Wizard, the size of the file is the key factor in how much load you put on your CPU. Transcoding a 21 minute video (a network nightly news show minus the commercials), no problem, fast work and the task master shows 25-30% usage by the AMD A6 processor. A two hour recording is another matter, the % CPU usage goes way up.

By the way, I think the jury is still out whether Funai has ditched the USA HDD DVD recorder market. The problem is that the FCC is a corrupt agency in the hip pocket of the industry the FCC is supposed to regulate. Why should the FCC be different from other Federal agencies. The other day, 6 FDA employees who reviewed cancer screening devices filed a lawsuit stating that the FDA either fired them or blocked their promotion because these FDA employees contacted Congress about the FDA top political appointees who overrode scientific findings and approved defective cancer screening devices. These FDA leaders went so far as to try to get Health and Human Services to file criminal charges against the whistleblowers. Naturally, the Obama administration did nothing about the FDA matter as Obama's appointees have done nothing about anything else that harms ordinary Americans, such as the analog shutdown.

There's no need to apologize for anything ClearToLand. There is no way any of us remember everything other posters post.

I'm still thinking about the internal PCI-E Hauppauge Colossus that dare2be linked. Still going to explore other units as well. The AverMedia unit looks intersesting but I think Kelson may be right stating that it's software based. I think that going hardware based may work better for my needs.

I don't have much opinion because I lack any real world experience with media players and media streaming. I can say that I've been exploring media streaming options as well. Kelson gave me some great info in the past. If I did that it would free me up from needing MPEG-2 DVD-Video encoding to stay compatible with old DVD players. On the other hand even if I pass on a media player/server for now and just get the Hauppauge 1212 or Hauppauge Colossus and encode SD stuff in H.264, I could trancode the SD stuff to MPEG-2 and make DVD-Videos using my Nero software. There is some TV concert broadcasts not available in North America and I download them in DivX and trancode them to DVD-Video Mpeg-2. The DivX files are around 1050 megs for a 90 minute show. I trancode using 2-pas VBR to a SL DVDr and the results are pretty good but it takes a long time even with my AMD dual-core 2.7Ghz per core. I'm still exploring my future options. For now still using my RDRHX-780 DVD/HDD for TV archiving. I don't archive a ton of stuff so off-loading from my PVR to either my HDD/DVDr or a capture card isn't that big a deal for me. Love my stand alone but I need to think about the future.

The devices don't output files, the software that processes the AV stream makes the files. Although one can convert any format to just about any other, I'll be looking for the DVR app that makes the kind of files I want -- the kind that will play on my media players. So in answer to your question -- yes, I just don't know how I'm going t do it yet.

I've downloaded the manuals for the Hauppauge and AverMedia offerings I've found and am compiling a feature list...stay tuned.