[H-GEN] now cable capture

[Greg.Lehmann at csiro.au]

Depends what you mean by "record". I have a beyonwiz PVR which can record from av inputs and other beyonwiz owners use it for this. I have a TV card for my PC that can do the same. I bought the latter to get some home videos off 8mm video tape, well before I had the PVR. I have also digitised old VHS tapes that were never brought out on DVD. The trouble is you are limited by the resolution that you can capture and the image quality will not be as good as the device foxtel supplies (digital -> analogue -> digital.) I have yet to hear of a capture/TV card that's cheap that takes HDMI input. That would probably be close enough for you? Whether or not MythTV can handle AV input from a TV card is another matter. Google knows all?

Cheers,

Greg 

-----Original Message-----
From: general-bounces at lists.humbug.org.au [mailto:general-bounces at lists.humbug.org.au] On Behalf Of Tony Bilbrough
Sent: Wednesday, 6 October 2010 4:15 PM
To: HUMBUG General List
Subject: [H-GEN] now cable capture

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

G'day All,
just wondering if there is a 'roll your own' system to record foxtel?
Say something along the lines of Mythbuntu?

I know that similar systems to Myth in USA seen to be able to record and 
display cable.

I have a preference to own that which I use - an aversion to rent.

cheers Tony

On 06/10/10 09:01, Greg.Lehmann at csiro.au wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> >
> Just a comment on video conversion in general and how it often doesn't work or work well enough. There are so many different encoding programs that use so many different algorithms. They don't all implement things properly either, so what you get from somewhere could be seriously challenged by some default video conversion process you have set up to happen automatically. You may find you don't get this proposed approach of yours to work for everything. If you are a fanatic about image quality you may hate what you get thrown up on the screen. Also consider that as you say what TVs can actually handle can be limited. If you want automatic I'd be tempted to go for a cheap media player like the popcorn hour c200 which can handle just about anything, until the TV's catch up to that sort of level of capability and then you won't need to worry about conversions anyway.
>
> I'd be tempted to do the conversion on a PC and review results. Not automatic, I know, but you end up with better results. Also consider using a GPU if you want truly fast conversions, but again image quality can vary as the GPUs are a bit of a black box as far as the SW provided goes. I have tried the ATI GPUs and the speedup is truly fantastic. I believe the Nvidia GPUs come with more flexible SW. Since you are building your own NAS (I'd call it a server since you are doing stuff on it besides file serving) you could put a GPU in it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Greg

-- 
Q: What did Heisenberg say about sex?

A: If you've got the position
..... you haven't got the momentum
And if you've got the energy
...... you haven't got the time!
_______________________________________________
General mailing list
General at lists.humbug.org.au
http://lists.humbug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/general