[mythtvnz] Help spending my brothers $5K on MythTV

[Steven Ellis]

Steve Hodge wrote:
> On 2/23/06, Steven Ellis <mail_lists@stevencherie.net> wrote:
>   
>> What are you capturing at resolution/codec/bitrate wise.
>>     
>
> 576x576 MPEG4 @ 4400 bitrate (quality min/max 15/2). Interlaced DCT
> and motion estimation on. Audio is 44.1kHz MP3 quality 3.
>
> I find the picture acceptable. It's not as good as Sky direct (not
> suprising given the extra A->D->A conversion), though not far off.
>
>   
Given the way that sky don't always honor the correct resolution on
their DVB-S streams to save on bandwidth I don't blame you.
>> Personally I've never been happy with the RTJpeg based captures.
>>     
>
> I thought MPEG4 looked better and went with that. I haven't tried a
> PVR-150, but I can't see it making a huge difference. Recording off
> Sky or FTA analogue is always going to be pretty average quality-wise.
>
>   
Whats the CPU loading like with on the fly MPEG4 encoding. I did live
MPEG4 capture a couple of years ago on an athlon 2k, and would get
occasional frame drops which really annoyed me.

Done some recent comparisons of Analog FTA on the PVR-150 on the Default
settings of 4.5M average and 8M max against some FTA DVB-T streams that
average around the 4-5M mark and I must admit they are reasonably close
quality wise. The biggest benefit with the DVB-T stream is the lack of
ghosting. Mind due my TV1 & 2 reception is excellent as I have great
line of sight of the transmitter.

DVB stream issues are they don't let the bit rate peak enough on high
motion, and the low audio bitrate.

Watching shows off the DVB-T stream or PVR-150 sure beats VHS, and in
the case of the DVB-T stream almost comes close to DVD quality. Sadly I
don't think DVD is close to good enough as I mentioned earlier.

Still overall i'm happy with the PVR setup again because it sure beats
using a VCR.

Steve