DirecTv Questions?

[leroygreen]

There is no discussion about capturing from Satellite Broadcasts? WHat is the DirecTV quality and resolution? How is it best to capture and convert to VCD, SVCD or DVD? Has anybody seen an article on this?

[woodman1445]

I have and do. The quailty is excellent. I capture @ 352 X 480 mgeg2 and burn onto a DVD Looks just like the SAT. Great sound and picture. I am using ATI 128 AIW.

[navarros]

Woodman,

Could you tell us more about your equipment? I am considering building a HTPC with an ATI AIW 128 RADEON at its core. What kind of software do you you to do the capture from satellite?

Thanks,
Santiago

[woodman1445]

Now I am running a PIII 650 512 ram 2 Maxtor HHD stripped together using Win 98 2nd with ATI MMC 6.2. With the old software well what came with it I have no trouble loading anything. As with a lot of other software updates they don't always work. I tried the new ones an it was a mess keep it simple. I then use Tempgnc to cut the ends . Author with Spruce-up and burn with nero. Very quick and easy and the picture looks just like the SAT. If you need more let me know.

[navarros]

Woodman,

How long does it take you to burn a DVDR with Nero? I am currently using Prassi Primo DVD 2.0 and it takes almost 20 hours to burn a single image made with Spruceup onto a DVDR. I tried putting more RAM (now over 700MB), but it still terribly sloooowww. (I am running a Celeron 1.3GB), but I plan to build a HTPC with an AThlon 1900+ and 1GB DDR SDRAM).

Santiago

[LanceSteel]

Navarros,

20 hours to burn a DVD? That is a very long time. A "full" dvd should only take around 55mins for a 1x DVD-R not 20 hours. I don't think RAM is an issue with your system but more likely the HD and bus speed. Depending on how old your HD is it may be transferring the data very slowly (but then I think you would get buffer under-runs.) Try putting your DVD writer on the other IDE channel (if it isn't already.) That may speed up your burns.

[navarros]

I believe it may have something to do with the ASPI drivers as well. I messed around with them and now I get an error message UNABLE TO INITIALIZE THE ASPI MANAGER whenever I open SpruceUP. The thing with these ASPI drivers is that to do an upgrade is not enough. It seems it is necessary to manually delete the old ones.....

[themichael]

If you get a DirecTIVO you can get broardcast quality video streams. Same quality as ripping from a DVD!

There is a TIVO community, a site selling the equipment needed for the mod, and a yahoo group on extracting the streams and encoding (extract stream, I think)

Mike