<b><i>Billy Macdonald <billymacdonald@gmail.com></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> On 7/8/07, Pete Cap <peteoutside@yahoo.com> wrote:<br>> List,<br>><br>> I recently set up a really lo-fi Myth box. It's in an old dell beige box,<br>> hooked up to a pretty small standard definition TV, and it has one capture<br>> card pulling down analog broadcasts (before the latest move it was recording<br>> S-Video from a cable STB).<br>><br>> The analog broadcasts are really not all that bad, but all the stations are<br>> simulcast in digital. I understand that with digital, either you get the<br>> signal or you don't--there's no snow or static. It would be a significant<br>> improvement!<br>><br>> However, I do not understand if I would be "restricted" to HD broadcasts--or<br>> if I need a new capture card. I can play widescreen HD recordings
(from<br>> bittorent) and apparently Myth resizes them on the fly to fit the SD 4:3<br>> screen. If this would work with broadcast as well that would be excellent.<br>> But will I need to get a new card to tune in the digital signal--or will<br>> Radio Shack have one with component out?<br>><br>> Thanks in advance,<br>><br>> Pete<br>><br>><br><br>Yes you need a different card to tune digital stations. Most digital<br>channels that have any HD content always broadcast in 720p or 1080i,<br>just letterboxed. So your recordings will be much larger in size and<br>will likely show up postage stamped be default in Myth (which you can<br>zoom. But they will be clear.<br><br>To see if your system has the umph, you need to find some 1080i mpeg2<br>recordings to play. Look in the same places that you found your other<br>ones, but the files will be much much larger. The widescreen HD<br>recordings you download are likely not full resolution and are
much<br>easier on the system to decode.<br><br>To your advantage though, the decoders only decode what's needed. So<br>if your resolution is 800x600, it takes less to decode and play 1080i<br>then on a 1920x1080 resolution.<br><br>Good luck,<br>Billy<br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br>mythtv-users@mythtv.org<br>http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users<br></peteoutside@yahoo.com></blockquote><br>Billy,<br><br>Thanks!<br>I think the system should decode the MPEGs just fine--I have an nvidia 7 series to do all the heavy lifting. And they'll be playing a ~640x480 so hopefully there won't be too much of a performance hit.<br><br>I see the new pcHDTV cards are only $130. I'm ordering one of those up today and hopefully get it up and running this week. Thanks again!<br><br>--Pete<br><p> 
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