[mythtv-users] HD-PVR Max quality settings?

[Christopher Meredith]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 5:06 PM, John P Poet <jppoet at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 3:40 PM, Christopher Meredith
> <chmeredith at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm not entire sure how to test how recording profiles work because
>> I've never used them, but I want the HD-PVR to record at its highest
>> possible quality setting. I am doing lossy commercial cutting so I
>> need the source to be as high quality as possible. Because I wasn't
>> sure what I was doing, I went into all the recording profiles and
>> moved all the sliders to max. This did make the resulting recordings
>> larger and some were noticeably better quality, but it seems to be
>> inconsistent. For example, I recorded the pilot of Caprica off Syfy
>> and it was noticeably blocky in dark scenes and accroding to
>> mediainfo, the video bitrate was a paltry 4617 Kbps, which seems to me
>> to be about 1/3 of the box's capabilities.
>>
>> Is there a "right" way to make the HD-PVR go balls to the wall?
>
> Using CBR will give you higher bitrate than VBR.  To get CBR, set the
> peak to be *less* than the average.
>
> That being said, the quality is also highly dependent on the source.

Thanks John. Would this produce different behavior than having the
peak and average set to the same value?