To echo what Ian said, the DCT-6200 (and I assume other Firewire
capable cable boxes as well) will downconvert HD channels and output
them on its S-Video output. These channels tend to have better
picture quality than their SD counterparts. This is especially
true of OTA broadcast channels. God only knows how many times
that content gets tossed around between analog and digital before it
makes it to your doorstep. <br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 1/14/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Ian Forde</b> <<a href="mailto:ian@duckland.org">ian@duckland.org</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Sat, 2006-01-14 at 15:58 -0600, Kichigai Mentat wrote:<br>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----<br>> Hash: SHA1<br>><br>> Hello. I once read the thread about the advantages of using a HD<br>> FireWire capture, even if you don't have an HDTV.
<br><br>You don't actually have to capture HD channels. You can also capture<br>standard-def channels.<br><br>> I'm curious, is there any way to make sure the captured stream is<br>> scaled down to standard def (or at least 740x480)? I am using an XBox
<br>> as a front-end unit in my house, and I'm a little worried about using<br>> it with an HD capture. I've heard that the XBox is incapable of<br>> handling an HD stream (though I'm pretty sure I managed to play a
<br>> downloaded HD video in XBMC), and I'd rather not have to build a<br>> whole new front-end box.<br><br>For HD recordings, you'd probably have to transcode the recordings<br>before playing them.<br><br>> At the moment, my back-end is a Celeron 650 MHz with 256 MB of RAM,
<br>> capturing with a Hauppauge PVR-150 off of an analog cable line. I'm a<br>> little bit of a quality Nazi, and I considered looking into getting a<br>> digital cable box (not just so I could get some of those digital
<br>> cable channels, but simply to clean up the incoming signal), and I<br>> remembered the FireWire/HD thread.<br><br>If you're going to get a digital cable box, but not watch HD channels,<br>just run coax or RCA cables from the box to your PVR-150 instead.
<br>That'll probably get you what you need...<br><br> -Ian<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</a>
<br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></blockquote></div><br>