[mythtv-users] Bitrate/quality on PVR-150

[Daniel Kristjansson]

On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 06:29 -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> * Scott Traurig <straurig at comcast.net> [2008 Aug 12 05:33 -0500]:
> > I have done extensive testing of PVR-150 et al settings in the interests of
> > better quality. I can confidently say that you should run it at 6MBPS
> > avg/8MBPS peak for 720x480 capture. Any less and motion artifact gets bad.
> > Any more and no improvement can be noted. The best way to test this is to
> > watch the crawl line on CNN et al followed by some sports like basketball.
> 
> Thanks for the tip.
> 
> > Quite frankly encoder quality for Myth sucks compared to Tivo or STB DVR
> > appliances. It is Myth's biggest weakness (after the fact that mere mortals
> > need not try to set it up!)
> 
> Is this due to the state of Free Software not being able to implement
> patented or otherwise encumbered algorithms or due to the consumer
> grade hardware we have access to?

No, the compression is all done inside the PVR-150 hardware. If you want
more compression you need to either buy a frame grabber card and have
MythTV do the compression in software or buy a more expensive device
like the HD-PVR which uses MPEG-4 AVC rather than MPEG-2.

-- Daniel