[mythtv-users] Playback of HDTV, HDHomeRun

Roger Heflin rogerheflin at gmail.com
Thu Jul 17 23:18:46 UTC 2008


Eric (MythTV) wrote:
> Roger Heflin wrote:
>> Eric (MythTV) wrote:
>>> Sorry for jumping into this thread, but is there anywhere I can 
>>> download a sample file from a HDHomeRun?  Nothing done to it, just a 
>>> straight-up recording?  I'd like to be able to see if my setup can 
>>> play it back without problems or not.
>>>
>>> I downloaded some other sample high-def stuff, but its not in the same 
>>> format as what would come out of the HDHR...  and since I'm thinking 
>>> about getting an HDHR, it would be nice to be able to test a file.
>> Most of the ATSC tuners take the MPEG2 stream that the broadcaster/cable 
>> company puts on the air/cable and puts that on directly on disk, about 
>> the only change that the ATSC tuner does is it typically splits out 
>> multiple channel streams and only puts the one you asked for on disk on 
>> channels that sub-channels.
>>
>> Now the broadcaster/cable companies have a number of different formats 
>> that they deliver, currently most intensive one is 1080i (1920x1080 
>> interlaced), and you need a decent machine and video card to play that 
>> back.   The 720p stuff takes quite a bit less to play back.
>>
>>                            Roger
>>
> 
> 
> Roger  My bad, I misunderstood what I had read.
> 
> I guess my question should have been:  Where can I find some good 
> samples of OTA broadcast recordings (unmodified) in mpeg2 format, which 
> I can test on my machine, before buying a HD tuner.
> 
> I just want to be able to test that what I record can be played back on 
> the setup I have, without having to do any other computer upgrades. 
> I'll just be using it to record OTA local channels, some of which appear 
> to be 720p and others 1080i, mpeg2...
> 
> Sorry for my confusion. :)  It happens a lot ;)  heh.
> 

As a couple of others have said the files are quite large, the 1080i runs around 
8GB per hour of recording.    And even if your machine won't handle the content 
directly you can transcode it with various tools down to something that the 
device can play, so long as you are willing to wait for a while after the show 
is finished recording for the transcoding to happen.  I currently do this as 
most of my TV's don't support HD, and this also has the side affect of lowering 
the storage requirements quite a lot (from 8GB/hour to 1GB/hour).   And there 
are often a number of over the air SD channels (PBS seems to like having several 
of them, and a couple of the local channels where I am have second sub-channels 
that don't have analog equivalents) that can be played with more modest machines.

And has others have mentioned you probably find torrents with ATSC content on them.

And in Feb 2009 you will need an ATSC tuner or a decoder to front-end your NTSC 
tuner card to see almost anything OTA.

                                  Roger


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