I am thinking of switching to a hauppage card that can capture local broadcast HD here in u.s. I would like to play the captured mpg back through the mvp, onto non-HD televisions (for now).
Will I have to do any transcoding, or can the MVP handle this situation? Does anyone know if the hauppage HD capable cards can be set to "downcode" to lower resolutions?
thanks for any suggestions.
thanks. i am not concerned about on-the-fly transcoding or live-tv, i will just do that manually or scheduled. my main question was if after transcoding, a file usable by the mvp can be created. but even better would be a capture card that dumps to lower resolution.
I was not suggesting mpeg-ts for live tv, since it wouldn't work, but to avoid the post-processing. When the HVR 1600 records your OTA HD contents it is effectively just downloading a stream more like a network card than an analog capture card, so you can't lower the capture rate. They can be muxed to have a different container but the only transcoding would have to be done in the post-processing step where you convert the saved files to SD mpeg or another format live xvid.
Martin
are you saying that i would only have to process the file to a new container, and not need to transcode to lower bitrate and resolution for display on a non-hd tv?
i sometimes use vlc(videolan) to convert from ts to ps, and simultaneously convert audio ac3 to mp2...and it does so very quickly (no transcoding of mpg stream). if i do not need to touch bitrate or resolution for the mvp to play the file on my older tv, could this solution work? won't portions of the video be cropped?
You cant play HD files on the MVP without transcoding them. There is nothing built in to do this, unless you happen to record .ts files.
In summary, the MVP is not a good client to use if you're intending to have any HD content.
To avoid confusion, I'm sure sub meant cannot play HD.
Note that mvpmc does mpeg-ts to mpeg-ps demuxing on the fly and even ac3 to wave conversion via software in real time, these aren't good measures of HD transcoding performance. If I want to transcode 1080i to something playable on the MVP a good rule of thumb would be real time for the transcoding and it is probably something you want to do overnight. When you are dealing with HD files don't be surprised with 100 GB files however
Martin
as i side note, i am looking to switch from my pvr150 to an hd card because of the transfer to pure digital broadcasting next year. but i don't want to spend the money for an hd television when the tv i have now is perfectly fine. i will be perfectly happy with a 360x240 1200kbps (or lower) mpg2 experience after the transcoding. so i guess what i want to do is remux (if necessary) and transcode to a lower resolution and bitrate so the mvp can handle the file with ease.
as to the mvpmc dongle, i always thought it used vlc on the client machine to perform the tasks you describe?
as for the file size, when you say 100gig, what length of program would that equate to? the literature on the hauppage web site says 5 or 6 gig per hour?
or maybe its time to ditch the mvp.
mvallevand Wrote:To avoid confusion, I'm sure sub meant cannot play HD.
lol - yep typo. Edited above.
I made the switch to the HVR 1600 from the PVR 150. Given that today with the Boxing Day sale at NCIX.com , and the price of $80 vs $50 CDN there isn't any question that the 1600 is a better deal, think $30 for a digital tuner.
In native mode there is no need to do a mpeg-ts conversion, the problem with .ts files is the GBPVR parser since it is based on the Hauppauge dongle which doesn't support mpeg-ps. In native mode mvpmc does use vlc for non-mpeg files, similar to the way GBPVR uses ffmpeg. However as MythTV users are also finding, out this doesn't solve the HD puzzle because .mpg files don't go through on the fly transcoding any better.
I run about 7.5 GB an hour for 1080i, (18 Mbs * 60 * 60 / 8) on OTA HD but it adds up so much faster than SD that with a couple of heavy days of recording, 100GB happens very fast, at least for someone like me who doesn' t bother post-processing. GBPVR records analog SD at a pretty high bit rate too, but I think files 3 or 4 times bigger will be a good rule of thumb.
Martin