Max bitrate digital tv is capable of sending ?

[WinSpecToR]

I was wondering if there was a max bitrate that SD is capable sending so I can just set my tuner to record at that bitrate and not waste any extra space ?

[jagabo]

What are you recording from and what are you recording with? If you're recording from an analog source or via an analog cable (composite, s-video) there is no bitrate. The bitrate required to maintain quality will depend on many factors including the video itself and amount of noise in the signal.

[edDV]

SD digital television (704x480) can use similar bit rates to DVD or higher if they want to (19Mb/s max). It is the choice of the broadcaster.

Typical would be 4-5 Mb/s CBR or VBR but 480i subchannels can go as low as 2.38 Mb/s.

Cable typically chops 25% of horizontal resolution (~524x480i) before encoding MPeg2. Bitrates vary locally.

That doesn't mean you use the same bitrate for analog capture. Analog video contains a large amount of high frequency noise that either needs to be captured at full channel bandwidth, or low pass filtered prior to A/D. Post A/D noise will greatly affect motion detection for interframe (GOP) compression quality.

When possible, capture digitally with an ATSC/QAM digital tuner to avoid analog noise. Since ATSC is MPeg2 already, you just save the broadcast MPeg2 stream to disk.