2010 Olympics recording settings

[Dale]

Quotation
"In an Olympic Games first, the Consortium will deliver every second of every competition LIVE from Vancouver 2010, encompassing more than 4,800 hours of coverage in 22 languages on 12 television channels, 20 radio stations and two dedicated
websites. In all, the Consortium will present more than 2,250 hours of coverage on television, 2,350 hours online and 200 hours on radio."

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I have GBPVR connected to NTSC regular definition cable TV and would like to know what bit rates would work well for show quality but not be too large file size?

The current High Quality settings are shown below. How much can I reduce them and retain show quality for viewing on TV screen of regular definition?

Video Resolution : NTSC 720x480
Variable enabled
Bit Rate: 6500 <=== How low should this go?
Bit Rate Peak: 9000
Audio Bit Rate: 320 <=== How low should this go?
Audio Sample Rate: 48 kHz

What settings do you use for shows you want to put on DVDs?

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[pBS]

i wouldn't go below 128 for audio, even that may not be to your liking...test it...
as for video...around 3000 is the lowest i like to go...below that seems to really degrade things badly..
and if you want to save some space, use variable bitrate...it adjusts and doesn't waste bits on still motion etc..
but the lower number will be the average, so same recommendation applies..3000 or better..

if your capture card allows frame size adjustments, you can lower the video size for significant savings...480x480 looks as good on an sd tv usually..[test it yourself] and can reduce bitrates needed by half...
i wouldn't go below 352x480 tho...you'd lose interlacing..[and look blocky]

just saw that you wantto put these on dvd? if so then you're a bit more constrained...it only allows certain resolutions/bitrates..
typical dvd video is 720x480, but you can also use 352x480 for size savings..480x480 is better but not technically in the dvd spec..[sdvd] but does work in many players, but not guaranteed..
i wouldn't go below 4000 for 720 video...but 2500-3000 for 352x480 can look good...

a lot of it depends on how clean your input signal is...really clean input compresses better..

[Graham]

Murphy's Law says that you will regret it if you do not record at a high bitrate. If the recording is poor quality, then you can't go back and do it again.

Would you be better off doing transcodes to reduce the bitrate after the recordings?