[mythtv-users] Yes, I know there are no known consumer-level component capture cards. What do the professionals do?

[Robert Kulagowski]

Yeesh, that's a long subject line.  I was asked by someone "Assuming 
that money is no object, how could you capture component 1080i or 720p 
output from a STB into an MPEG file, and can it be done in real time?"

Obviously there is professional equipment out there in use at television 
stations and big A/V production houses.  And since there are folks that 
spend $50k for a home theater setup, I would think that there must be a 
pro-sumer equivalent available.  Does anyone know for a fact that you 
can purchase widget Foo and connect it to widget Bar from ConHugeCo, 
plug it into a linux system and go on from there?  Googling shows a 
bunch of messages that reiterate "it can't be done"; however there 
appear to be cards for Macs and PC from http://www.ajavideo.com that at 
least allow component input (but don't create real-time MPEG-2 streams) 
and there are also component -> SDI converters.