HDTV vs SD

[kandiman]

I was wondering if there's any difference or any point in capturing HDTV over normal SD, if your main purpose is to only playback on a cpu monitor instead of throwing it on a dvd for tv viewing?

And does capturing in HDTV take more cpu usage than normal SD?

Any helpers will be nice

[yoda313]

Hello,

I have no experience in hdtv, just what I've read. I would have to assume that capturing in HD would result in MUCH better picture quality. If your only going to view it on your pc you could stick with standard but then you'll still have lower quality.

I believe the hdtv capture card requirements are quite steep. I would imagine having a 2ghz or faster pc would be essential (along with ram, I'm just guessing on those numbers but I have a feeling that recording hdtv would be a heavy burdern).

https://www.videohelp.com/capturecards

That link will give you a list of capture cards and user comments to go with them. I'm sure there must be some hd cards included in the list.

Kevin

[gshelley61]

HD res is 1280x720p or 1920x1080i, so file sizes would, of course, be much larger than for SD (640x480) or ED (704x480). There are actually 18 different ATSC digital television transmission formats.

Here's a real good link to some in-depth ATSC info:

http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

[DeadLamb]

yeah HDtv looks night and day better then SD and unless you have a HD ready TV showing HDtv signals, it's even going to look way better on a good monitor that can show the res then down sized to 720x480 and put on a dvd and played on a TV.. I mean you can't just "throw HDtv" on a dvd in the first place..

plus as I said, it's not even close as far as how much better HDtv looks... It like super model Vs crack whore

not sure how you are thinking of capturing HDtv.. I would guess a HDtv card for the cpu?

It's not the same as encoding SD TV with say a wintv card.. you don't encode HDtv, you "capture" the stream... As I have said else where on the this board, it's like being handed cans of soda over and over and over, you just put them some where and they never change.. Where as encoding tv is like a hose with soda in it, you have to change it, put it some where, "convert it" from the hose to being held in a bucket (think of the bucket as a codec format)...

so even digital TV that is not HDtv, like say the normal news or show, is still a stream capture, just as if it was a real HDtv program.. Zero encode.. you get the big file size etc no mater what. Only way to get SD tv would be to record off say cable or a none digital signal.. then it's the same as any other encode with say a wintv or whatever card..

as for cpu power.. I'm recording a show in HDtv right now with a fusion HDII card as I type this. It's taking up between 14-22% of my cpu power.. I'm running a p4 3.2..

[DeadLamb]

ah ok here we go.. in at the start of Lost the local station did an overlap on the screen, cutting the HD feed, dropping to SD and then bounced back to HD when it was over.. Now clearly this SD is almost worse then true digital tv ment for SD res but it does at least show some what how it's different..

the sd vidcap is still 1280x720 being that was the size I was playing it on the monitor and as I said before the signal comes in the same size wise..



then back to HD


here is the game last night.. blocked out the score just in case there is one person out there who might think it's a spoiler.. even if odds of that are close to zero..



as you can see, even at a cpu monitor size of 1280 wide it's WAY better then SD tv.. is even better of course on say a 50inch plasma tv.. ah some day, some day..... just too much $$$ to spend for me right now or I'd have a plasma too..