[mythtv-users] Can a pcHDTV record standard definition?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Tue Dec 12 23:44:33 UTC 2006


On Dec 12, 2006, at 3:54 PM, brad at bradandkim.net wrote:

>> I don't yet have an HD TV but hope to in the near future.  In the
>> meantime, I need another capture card.  If I get a pcHDTV card  
>> will it
>> record standard definition now and allow for the HD upgrade or do  
>> I need
>> to buy a card that will be obsolete for me in the coming year?
>>
>
> I think I answered my own question.  pchdtv.com states that the  
> HD-5500
> supports NTSC.

Quite correct, but it supports it only as a "dumb" frame-grabber card  
- the Video must be compressed/encoded by your CPU.

The commonly-used PVR cards have a hardware encoder on the card so  
their output is an MPEG stream, thus requiring no CPU power to encode  
the video.

So as long as you don't try and use the card for NTSC on a low- 
powered machine it will work.






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