[mythtv-users] OT: A question on the HD-PVR and non-HD content

[John P Poet]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> wrote:
> John P Poet <jppoet at gmail.com> says:
>> The HD-PVR understands 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i.  It always
>> encodes to H.264, and it will do it at whatever resolution the input
>> is.
>>
>> For recording, Myth checks what resolution the HD-PVR is reporting
>> and will tell the HD-PVR to use a user-defined bitrate based on that
>> resolution.  So, 480i can be configured to use a much lower bitrate
>> than 1080i, since the extra bits will not help the picture quality.
>
> The last time I checked my understanding was that people should set
> their cable boxes to output only 720p, as 1080i encoding had major
> issues. Has that changed, or is that only a problem stil with some
> people' setups, like jedi's?


1080i generally "works" now.  Recording, at least, works just fine.
However, VDPAU aside, it takes a BEASTLY machine to play it back --
assuming you want to use one of the nicer deinterlacers (yadif,
greedy).


> On that note, I've yet to see any 1080i sample HD-PVR clips. Anyone
> know of one publicly avalable?


I use timestretch too much to adopt VDPAU at this point.  That means I
am sticking with 720p, just because my 3.0GHz core2 cannot playback
1080i *and* deinterlace it.

I could create a 1080i clip and post it somewhere, if someone wants to host it.


John
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