MVP and HD mpg

[Jaggy]

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.

I think this is the real question! I have seen it asked a number of times now & haven't seen a proper answer yet as to the best way to transcode etc. from HD to SD

or maybe its time to ditch the mvp.

I guess it could be an option but won't be happening for me for quite a while as I can't even afford to replace the mvp's & there is no way I want a computer in our sitting room/bed room or lounge!

[mvallevand]

I think this is the real question! I have seen it asked a number of times now & haven't seen a proper answer yet as to the best way to transcode etc. from HD to SD

I said it a few times post-process or record as mpeg-ts with the exception that x264 broadcast must be post-processed. In a digital world livetv will be dead on the mvp. There is not a lot of choice and the reason you haven't heard a "proper" answer is probably you aren't hearing the answer you want to hear.

I guess it could be an option but won't be happening for me for quite a while as I can't even afford to replace the mvp's & there is no way I want a computer in our sitting room/bed room or lounge!

Don't shot the messenger. If you've been following my posts on mvpmc I've been on a hunt to find a cost effective solution to a client PC for HD for quite a while.

The fact is in the 'States there is one more year of OTA analog, and on cable it is really up to the provider how much is analog available to the subscriber. Here is Canada we have a few more years. I don't know about NZ.

Martin

[Jaggy]

I said it a few times post-process or record as mpeg-ts with the exception that x264 broadcast must be post-processed. In a digital world livetv will be dead on the mvp. There is not a lot of choice and the reason you haven't heard a "proper" answer is probably you aren't hearing the answer you want to hear.

Sorry I don't think worded my message very well, I wasn't getting at you (or anyone else for that matter) I think we all realise we can't transcode HD to SD on the fly & will have to do it postprocess & I guess the real question is what is going to be the best way to do this?

Don't shot the messenger. If you've been following my posts on mvpmc I've been on a hunt to find a cost effective solution to a client PC for HD for quite a while.

Yes I have been following all the threads for a cost efficient solution with great interest but having said that it really doesn't matter how cheap they are I won't be able to afford anything PVR related until at least 2009

The fact is in the 'States there is one more year of OTA analog, and on cable it is really up to the provider how much is analog available to the subscriber. Here is Canada we have a few more years. I don't know about NZ.

From what I have read it is just the new DVBT channels (at the moment) that will be HD & to be honest I don't know when I will be able to receive anyway as they haven't even put a date on when they will be enabled on our transmitter yet.

[mvallevand]

Sorry I don't think worded my message very well, I wasn't getting at you (or anyone else for that matter) I think we all realise we can't transcode HD to SD on the fly & will have to do it postprocess & I guess the real question is what is going to be the best way to do this?

Probably the thing to do is to treat this as a simple TRANS2MVP type problem. What you are doing is taking a non-compatible video file and turning it into a file with the proper format which GBPVR and the MVP can handle. From this perspective ffmpeg/mencoder doesn't really care that the input file is SD xvid or divx or flv, HD dvr-ms, mpeg-ts, or even a 1080p mkv, what is important is specifying a MVP compatible output format you are comfortable with. zehd's written at length about how ZProcess handles this.

Maybe the reason that one solution hasn't been posted is there is no best solution. I think there's too much personal preference involved, after all my wife and I can't even agree on 16:9 vs 4:3 cropped. I like the way mpeg-ts works at the expense of losing resume and forward skip in on the mvp, I'm assuming I'm in the minority I don't like DVR-MS as a storage solution, many HD viewers prefer it, and zehd has written how to work with them on the MVP. Some of the finest looking videos I've seen on the mvp are on the fly transcoded 720p xvid's, but I can't get the whole AGK thing streamlined or I might say this is best. For those that want to devote a lot of CPU to post-processing and to playing, maybe x264 in a mkv container is now best for archival, especially since sub has permitted on-the-fly mkv transcoding, but for many this is going to be too painful.

Martin

[jbyram2]

One obvious way to handle it is to use an external Set top box that has an SD output, and then run that into a PVR-150.

Works fine for me, and I get Live TV from HD stations, running over my MVPs.

[mvallevand]

One obvious way to handle it is to use an external Set top box that has an SD output, and then run that into a PVR-150.

Works fine for me, and I get Live TV from HD stations, running over my MVPs.

Although most DVB users won't consider that solution, sadly that looks like it's going to case for me even though I want to record HD because of the lack of clear QAM from my cable provider.

Martin

[paperchaser]

If I could, I'd like to get back to my original question somewhat. Let me first go over my requirements:
1. Record HD using hauppage card.
2. Display via MVP on older non-HD TV
3. Do NOT need live. (I do have the PC next to a tv, and can actually feed its signal to the TV, but this is not our preferred method because the graphics card/signal is not the best, but will work when we simply can't wait. Also this only applies to 1 room in the house, there is a 2nd mvp in another room).
4. Do NOT need on-the-fly processing, usually a lapse of a few days before we get around to watching the shows we record. So I have no problem scripting a conversion or starting it manually and waiting for it to finish.
5. We have relatively low volume needs, 5-6 hours a week of recording.
6. We do not archive after we watch, we delete.
7. I like mvpmc but for now let's leave it aside.

A. So I understand that one "conversion" I'll have to do is from a ts container to a ps. I am familiar with this converting vobs to ps mpg using VLC. When I use VLC this way, I have it simultaneously transcode ac3 audio to mp2 for MVP compatibility. On my PC this happens relatively quickly, usually it takes less than 5 minutes to convert a DVD VOB to something the MVP can play.

B. What about cropping? I routinely do A above for DVD's at 720x480, and I think I end up with some cropping but I'm not sure and it doesn't bother me. But if I start with 1080 recordings, how are they going to be displayed on my older non-hd tv? Does the MVP scale it down, or simply crop? If it crops, how badly, would it be worth transcoding to a lower resolution?

C. Slightly off-topic, but does the hauppage hd card still handle older non-hd signals from rca cables? I ask because I currently use the pvr150 to convert old video cassettes and camcorder footage into mpg, it does a great job for my purposes. My guess is if I leave the pvr150 in the same machine with the new card they might not play nice together, but can the new card do some of the old media transfers as well?

[flyswatta]

IMHO, it you are just going to transcode an HD recording to an SD recording it'll be a lot easier (and cheaper) to get a STB that will down convert the HD signal to 480i and send that into your PVR150.

Assuming that you're in the US, you can pick up an older DirectTV STB that will allow for OTA HD w/o a subscription for under $100 (I bought mine off craigslist for $50, and one from a co-worker for $20, they sell them on Ebay also). Here's a link to ones that have been tested to work: http://home.att.net/~roashru/Directv.html

Not sure how you'd go about transcoding HD to SD. Someone mentioned something about on-the-fly transcoding in another thread (and this one), but it requires a pretty beefy machine to do it. I know. I tried it.

[mvallevand]

If I could, I'd like to get back to my original question somewhat. Let me first go over my requirements:

Since you are used to converting I guess what I'm trying to say is ignore the fact that the file is HD. Convert you like you normally do making sure that whatever tool that you use has an SD mpeg size up to MP@ML, specs are here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-2 You might have to drop the bit rate or size.

Cropping is a whole different topic, I prefer to maintain the aspect ratio.

Fnally the HVR 1600 composite input is SD, not HD. and uses the analog tuner so you can treat it like the PVR 150

Martin

[paperchaser]

IMHO, it you are just going to transcode an HD recording to an SD recording it'll be a lot easier (and cheaper) to get a STB that will down convert the HD signal to 480i and send that into your PVR150.

1. I want to avoid this because of bad past experiences with channel changing via IR. Even if it is 99% reliable, WAF drops to zero when that 1 in 100 channel change fails on her show.
2. I don't think its actually cheaper.
3. Eventually I will get an HD tv, and can still use gbpvr as scheduler for recordings...even if I leave the MVP at some point.