[mythtv-users] Hauppauge HD-PVR: Photos and link to pre-order

[Craig Treleaven]

Am I the only one finding the gaga excitement about this device 
rather premature?  Unless I've missed it, we have no objective 
evidence of how well it works.  1080i is 1920 X 1080 pixels, 30 times 
a second.  At 3 bytes per pixel, that is 186,624000 bytes per second. 
(720P has about 11% less.)  Good quality H.264 is usually done in two 
passes and even high end PC's take several times live to give a 
tightly compressed, good quality result.

They say their $250 device encodes in real time.  Does the quality 
suck or the compression?  Or both?  Are they throwing away 3/4 of the 
pixels from the start to get the data rate down to something the 
device can keep up with?  Do they have to take shortcuts with the 
compression meaning that we'll be burning hard drive space faster 
than Paris Hilton goes through personal lubricant?

They've promised a lot and I hope they can deliver.  But I'll be 
skeptical until there are credible reports in from the field.

Craig