[mythtv-users] Best PCI HD capture card?

[Robert McNamara]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Arthur H. Hamm
Jr.<badnewseveryone at izzy.net> wrote:
>>> I currently have a pair of WinTV-PVR-250's so I am used to having my
>>> recordings in MPEG compression. I understand the HD-5500 does not let
>>> myth
>>> control the pixel size or the bit rate of the recording. I have been told
>>> to
>>> expect HD recordings in the 15 GB per hour range. This uses much more
>>> hard
>>> drive space, more hard drive bandwidth and more CPU to play and record.
>>>
>>
>> I do not think any direct digital capture card does that. These just
>> take the network feed and save it into a file.
>
> Are you saying you don't think the WinTV-HVR-1600 built-in hardware MPEG-2
> encoder will allow the encoding of a HD source? Or is the 1600 the only card
> with a hardware encoder that will?


He's not saying either.  The HVR-1600 will allow you to capture a
digital signal (which can be SD or HD) unmolested, as all digital
tuners don't manipulate the signal is *any way*, it just tunes the
channel and dumps the stream to disk.  On the analog side of the
tuner, you can capture and compress an SD signal is *precisely* the
way the PVR-150 used to.  SD only.

If you want to capture HD from an *analog* source (component video
cables), the one and only choices is the Hauppauge HD-PVR, which will
be supported in the upcoming MythTV .22.

Robert