Big, bigger, biggest?

[stuck-in-second]

I'm confused to say the least.

My Hauppauge PVR-150 analog card creates a 1 hour SD 4x3 mpeg2 file that is 2,450,000KB in size.

My Hauppauge DCR-2650 digital tuner captures a 1 hour HD 16x9 TS file that is 1,315,303KB in size.

The HD 16x9 file is smaller than SD 4x3 by near half... some 54% by my calculations.

Can someone please explain why this is so? Does this have to do with the fact that analog requires more bandwidth than the digital .ts format (hence the reason why cable wants to ditch analog ASAP)?

[sub]

The bitrate dictates the size of the file.

You have no control over the bitrate from the DCR-2650. The broadcaster decides the bitrate. Usually an North American HD recording (ATSC etc) is between 5GB - 8GB for an hour, depending on 1080i/720p and quality. I guess you could possibly get one that is 1.3GB, but that's a very low bitrate, so will probably look a bit shitty in places. You might find it was a SD 16x9 video.

With the PVR-150 you can tweak the bitrate in the <Analog> section of config.xml.

[stuck-in-second]

You are correct sir. Forgot the lower channels are still 4x3 analog for the time being. Still, though, the same NBC network channel. In fact, the 2650 is capturing it 16x9 while the 150 card only captures 4x3 and still that file is way larger... odd.

I even have that 150 card set to "good" quality as opposed to "best". Any lower and it looks pretty crappy.

Retesting now with NBC HD.

[sub]

In fact, the 2650 is capturing it 16x9 while the 150 card only captures 4x3 and still that file is way larger... odd.

The default for the PVR-150 is fairly good quality (variable bitrate, 3Mbps, 5Mbps peak). Broadcasters will often use lower bitrates for SD channels. Usually they'd use higher bitrates for HD content (sometimes up to 18Mbps).

[johnsonx42]

for me, digital SD is typically about 1 to 1.3GB per hour. digital HD is anywhere from 4.5GB per hour for 720p, to around 6GB per hour for 1080i. I no longer have any analog channels, nor do I see any recordings left-over from those days, but I had the bit-rate set pretty high for analog and my recollection is that it was somewhere between digital SD and digital HD.

[stuck-in-second]

As it turned out, the 1 hour 1080i HD file was 5.1Gb. So about 90% larger than a 1 hour SD show using the analog PVR150 card.

Time to order up some 4TB drives I guess : (

[christheman]

I'm confused to say the least.

My Hauppauge PVR-150 analog card creates a 1 hour SD 4x3 mpeg2 file that is 2,450,000KB in size.

My Hauppauge DCR-2650 digital tuner captures a 1 hour HD 16x9 TS file that is 1,315,303KB in size.

The HD 16x9 file is smaller than SD 4x3 by near half... some 54% by my calculations.

Can someone please explain why this is so? Does this have to do with the fact that analog requires more bandwidth than the digital .ts format (hence the reason why cable wants to ditch analog ASAP)?

Dumb question, but is the DCR-2650 recording an H.264 TS file, instead of an MPEG2 TS file by any chance?

P.S. I've had this post up for a while while you replied. 4TB HDDs are the way to go, in my opinion.

[stuck-in-second]

It is an mpeg2 .ts file for sure. Tested recording both an SD signal and an HD signal and still the same file format.
Interesting... because the VP for Product Development for my cable company (Cox) assured me they were using h.264 for their compression for the "best quality".

I'm testing using Handbrake to compress down to smaller files... even to 720 x 480 SD using H.264 and it looks very good.

BTW: Not a dumb question... ask away.