TV capture question about Hauppauge PVR-350

[rakan]

I want to make the best possible compression of TV episodes I can. I have a Hauppauge PVR-350 card that I use to record my TV episodes in MPEG-2 format. I then compress them using MeGUI and x264 but it seems that TV episodes I download online from EZTV (even though they are compressed in XviD) have better quality than the ones I make with my Hauppauge card and MeGUI. How do they do this? Do they have a better card? Do they record their TV episodes uncompressed or in HD? Should I upgrade my TV capture card to something better?

[jman98]

The PVR-350, which I also own, is a fine card. Perhaps you are not recording at a high enough bit rate. The better your source before compression, the better the final result. I recommend recording at a setting of 8000 or maybe even 8500 CBR. Do NOT use VBR recording as you have no need for it because you are going to re-encod anyway. VBR is only good to save space and you don't need to save space at this point. You need as good a source to re-encode as you can get. Set your audio bitrate to 256 Kbps or more.

Divx/Xvid can give great results with good quality input. I know nothing about EZTV, but they might be starting with HD TV input and resizing it and re-encoding it with Divx/Xvid and if you have HD TV input, the final results should look fantastic if you set up the encode correctly.