Finally

[digdugm]

Well it's taken me awhile, but I finally got my computer all up and recording HD. Had more problems than I should have installing the hard drive(120gb) and with antenna issues. But thats a thing of the past (knock on wood), I do need to work on the rotator, but thats just the icing, since once installed I'll be getting all (except faux of coarse) of the milwaukee digitial stations and all but CBS of the chicago digitial stations. I was having some problems with recording, the cpu was cycling to high it would max out in a matter of minutes, then I installed a new sound card (M-Audio Revolution). That was it, surprised me, but I'm not going to argue though. This is great I'm recording Waterboy and after that the Hitler thing, yesterday was Charlies Angels, tomorrow is the Tonight Show, now they need to get more programming so I'm forced to buy another hard drive. I'd just like to say that if I can do it any one with a half descent computer and average computer knowledge can do it. A broadcast is know good if it can't be time shifted.

[Skipjack]

I'd just like to say that if I can do it any one with a half descent computer and average computer knowledge can do it.

My biggest obstacle is getting a cable line up to my bedroom to connect the video.  

What sort of capture card are you using?

Also, how big are the video files for say a 1 hour program?

It might be worth it to back up some stuff to CD-R (if they'd fit) and save them until HD-DVD-R (how's that for an acronym!) is available.

[digdugm]

I'm using the MyHD mpd-100 card to capture. The files are about 7 to 9 GBs, thats about 16GBs per movie, so if you plan on archieving, you really need to encode (I'm not there yet).

Maybe by the time theres some real content out there I have that down to, but not a lot of time to play in the summer.

[FreQi]

You're kind of getting into the last week of the TV season here, so I don't know what lies ahead for the next couple months, but come next season, I'd expect a whole lot of HDTV programming.  Personally I like to get whole sets of tv shows, but it can be pretty hard when the stations do things like broadcast bad audio or simply forget to broadcast the HD signal all together.

I've been encoding HDTV to XviD for a couple months now and I've gotten quite proficient at it.  I'd be happy to help with any questions.  My current project is learning how to encode for DVD's, complete with menus and such, but that is proving to be quite a bit of work, and I'm still stumbling around with it.

[digdugm]

hey FerQi, so how big are the files once encoded with XviD, and what programs can you watch them with?

[FreQi]

With XviD it is really easy to pick the target file size that you would encode to.  As a general rule, you want to have your encodes somewhere around 900 to 1,000 kbit/sec, and you'll have really nice picture quality.  I encode shows to be 175megs for a 30min show (22mins w/o commercials) to fit 4 per CD, and 350meg for a 1hr show (44min) to fit 2 perl CD.  Shows in 4:3 get encoded at a resolution of 512x384, and 16:9 is at 640x352.

and what programs can you watch them with?

What do you mean?

[digdugm]

Do you watch them with a dvd player (ei. WinDVD, PowerDVD) or a program like Real Player or Windows Media Player?

[FreQi]

When I watch the XviD's I actually play them on my Xbox using Xbox Media Player.  Otherwise most people simply use Window Media Player on their PC's or any other video player should work.  There's no expensive software needed or anything like PowerDVD.