[mythtv-users] Non-HD recordings via HD-PVR are huge; can anything be done?

[Greg Woods]

On Sun, 2010-03-14 at 22:17 -0400, Matt Emmott wrote:
> My primary tuner on my system is an HD-PVR hooked to a Scientific
> Atlanta HD cable box (SA4250HDC, I think) via component cable. 90% of
> my recordings are through this tuner; the other 10% are through my
> HDHomeRun. Certain channels, like Comedy Central in this example,
> don't broadcast in HD in my area, so I record the SD stream. 

This doesn't directly address your question, but has your cable company
done the analog-to-digital switch yet? If they haven't, they will likely
be doing so soon. The reason this is relevant is that you may find that
lots of those "analog" channels will become available to your HDHomerun.
This is what has happened here. My PVR-500 is now pretty much useless as
only the OTA and cable "superstations" (WGN, TBS), plus a few local
access channnels (government, public, educational) are available in
analog (what Comcast calls "basic cable"). The good news though is that
what used to be analog for the PVR-500 is now available in the clear to
the HDHomerun. This is because Comcast in our area is using very cheap
DTA's (Digital-to-analog translater STB's). They are cheap so that they
can offer them for free (not even a monthly rental fee). These DTA's
have no smarts, meaning they don't do decryption, so all those
formerly-analog channels have to be transmitted in the clear.

The relevance of this should be obvious: if you can, or soon will be
able to, get all these SD channels through your HDHomerun, then you
won't need to be worried about transcoding HD-PVR recordings of these
channels, you would just record them off the HDHomerun instead. If your
cable company is not supporting DTA's but instead is forcing everyone to
get Scientific Atlanta or Motorola STB's, then this won't work for you.

--Greg