Pioneer DVR-220: MN21 or MN26 for Sat recording?

[Brent G.]

Is there any advantage to using MN26 (1.5hrs) to record a program off of satellite rather than the MN21 (2hrs) if the program is only 90 minutes?

TIA

[lumis]

no, they're the same thing..

just like MN32 = FINE

my favorite setting is MN31. 1 hour 5 minutes of recording time, 9mbps video bitrate, 256kbps ac3 dd 2.0 audio.

[gshelley61]

The bitrate does change at each MN setting, though. At MN21 (2 hrs) the average bitrate is 5.20Mbps, and at MN26 (1.5 hrs) the average bitrate is 6.93Mbps... so there is a difference. If you go to the Initial Setup section of the Home Menu and scroll down to the Recording tab, you can select Manual Recording, On (go to setup) and preview what the various MN settings will look like after your source is converted to MPEG2. Cool feature.

[steve2713]

Yes, there's a difference, you'll obviously have a higher bitrate as gshelley says. On my 420 I've got the advantage of a hard drive, so if I'm recording two hours of commericialized content I can record it at MN26 to the HD and edit out 30 minutes of commercials and it will fill out the entire DVD. Ideally any content you record will use up the entire capacity of the DVD.

Comparing MN21 vs. MN26 quality-wise, with some content it will be hard to tell between the two. But with tougher content to encode such as sports the difference will be more apparent.

[lumis]

hmm. i figured if the time was the same it was recording in the same way.

kinda like..

FINE = 8mbps video bitrate, 720x480, 1536kbps LPCM audio

MN32 = 8mbps video bitrate, 720x480, 1536kbps LPCM audio

[lumis]

i need to get one with a hard drive, i've been wanting one pretty badly.. but i've decided to hold off.. pioneer sells a mp4 dvd player in europe, and i'm guessing they'll do the same in america.. and i'm guessing they'll release a hdd dvd recorder that plays mp4 video.. that'll be sweet

[sync]

hmm. i figured if the time was the same it was recording in the same way.

But the time isn't the same.
MN26 = 1.5hrs
MN21 = 2hrs

[lumis]

wow, i totally missed that.. i thought the comparison was between SP & MN21.. my fault.