[mythtvnz] Freeview in SD?

[Jason Haar]

Steven Mulvay wrote:
> Hi all, 
> Is it possible to get Freeview in SD, or is it only avaliable in HD?
> 

I was wondering the same thing. I'm a tight so-and-so and my nice 
VIA-based frontend is not fit for retirement yet - but there's no way I 
can play anything non-MPEG2 on it (VIA board have built-in MPEG2 
decoders - but otherwise have "slow" CPUs).

Wondering out loud, could I transcode HD content down to MPEG2 (my 
backend is Intel dual core) - so that it would play nicely on the weak 
frontend? Could I possibly even do it "lossless"? i.e. take a 2G HD 
program and convert it into a 30G MPEG2 version? Backend disk is cheaper 
than below-TV real estate ;-)

Thanks

Jason