[mythtv-users] Tutorial on Encoding (mostly re: file sizes)

[Tony McDowell]

i'm buying some of the parts I will need for the MythTV box in the next few 
days.  Our rig will use a primary hard disk for actually running the OS on 
and a secondary hard disk that will be exclusively for storing data 
on.  Since the main purpose of our machine is for recording / encoding 
video for playback *only* on our TV, what are some good encoding settings?

I am pretty sure that I will encode at 640x480 but don't know about any 
other settings or how they will affect file size.  For a normal 1-hour show 
(most of our favorites are this long), what kind of file sizes am I looking 
at?  This will affect the size of the hard disk I buy for the storage.

I'm not expecting folks to just hand out information here, but a good site 
for tutorials on this topic where I can research it myself would be greatly 
appreciated since I know little about how MythTV encodes and the official 
How-To was a bit slim on this topic.

thanks!
.tony