Digital TV to DVD

[bartman]

Hi all,

Well, Digital TV tuner cards have arrived here in Australia and the government has been nice enough to say that TV stations MUST broadcast a digital signal as well as the old analog signal. For these reasons I am looking into geting a digital TV card for my PC.

I have looked around a bit and apart from a Digital TV to DivX guide on doom9, there isn't much info on making a compliant DVD stream. My question is, is extracting the data from the captured .ts file enough (i.e. is the resulting mpeg "DVD compliant")?? or will I need to re-encode. Has anyone out there done this? (if they have, I haven't found any info on it).

I'm really interested in getting one of these cards and know that they have been out in the states for a while, but only if I am able to easily author the captured stream to a dvd. I figure that a SD signal at around 4mbps and at the right resolution is about enough to not have to re-encode (better that capturing analog TV, and a HD signal would need to be re-encoded anyway since the bitrate and resolution is beyond "normal" dvd)

[SatStorm]

I'm doing this 3 years now!
DVB /t/c/s is mpeg 2. In a matter of speaking, you can imagine that DVB is a "flexible" out of specs DVD.

Extracting DVB transmissions "as is" and burn them on DVD, is "as is" possible only if the DVB framesize is 352 X 576/480 or 720/704 X 576/480. On all other cases, you have to re-encode / re-size to those 2 valid for DVD framesizes.

There are many dvb cards allowing with 3rd party software DVB ripping to HD. A very good (and cheap) card for this, is SkyStar 2 from technisat. Other alternatives might be Hauppauge wintv nova (only FTA channels) or WinTV Nexus / DVB -s

Personally, the best solution I know, needs the nokia 9600/9500/9200/d-box reciever, capable to recieve any DVB transmission if it wears the DVB2000 firmware (www.no-access.de). With this reciever and the use of a program called "DVBRecorder 1.19d" you can grabb and multiplexx on the fly any DVB transmission on your hardisk. Then you simply burn it to DVD or you re-encode it to a valid framesize on 5 steps: Load the grabbed multiplexxed mpeg 2 to DVD2Avi, save the project, load then the project to TMPGenc plus, load a DVD template, and hit encode.

The only problems you migh have with DVB transmissions, are that they are really noisy and they don't have many intra frames. So, if you encode with TMPGenc, you might need to increase the minimum bitrate beyond 1000kb/s to gain good results.

[bartman]

Thanks for your reply SatStorm.

It's been a real bitch here in Australia because we use a different digital setup than the rest of the world (as far as I know anyway....I understand Germany liked our method but I'm not sure what happened there) and so hardware manufacturers have to make a card specifically for us. It isn't as simple as a couple of software tweaks, hence we have only just (last month in fact) received digital TV cards, Australia being the small market that it is (they recently made a big deal out of the fact that Australia wide, they have sold ~50,000 STB's since the introduction of digital TV here)...last count there were 3 on the market...2 have onboard MPEG2 decoding and cost over $300 and one is a bare bones receiver for $180 with MPEG2 handled by the software (which makes 1080i a pain to watch if you don't have a super beefy machine)

From my understanding, SD is the right resolution for DVD (720x576i) so I should be able to capture and author direct to DVD. For $180 it is worth a go....worst case, I should still be able to watch DTV, best case...I'll have some nice quality TV recordings

[The village idiot]

Well, I'm just waiting for my local broadcasters to start broadcasting digital. Any day now.

I know there are programs out that will convert the TS to DVD compliant mpeg, or .avi (not divx but whatever codecs you have). I don't remember where, but I think a google search did the job. If not do a search at AVS forums http://www.avsforum.com. maybe that is where I found it. At any rate, what you need is out there! There might even be a link buried in these very forums, I can't remember. Good luck. If you can't find them, I'll try to look around this weekend. Just let me know.

[bartman]

The software you refer to is called HDTVtoMPEG2

I found a link to it on the Digital Broadcasting Australia forums (http://www.dba.org.au/forums)[/url]

[SatStorm]

From the few things I know for the Australian market, is that for your DVB Satellite transmissions, you follow the DVB/S standard. This means that any DVB/s card is capable to grabb the stream and lead it "as is" to your PC. And I also know some people using Nokia 9600 with dvb2000 firmware there, receiving by satellite Asian/European even some west coast US channels and do 2 years now what you wish to do.

From what I know also, a subscription to Foxtel on Optus B3 at 156.0°E, might give you many channels to grabb "as is". This package is encrypted with irdeto, so with a DVB PC Card, an Irdeto Cam and a subscription card you can do receive this package easy and grabb it with the hardware I mention. Foxtel is Australian from what I know.

Or, if you want the free root, why you don't try the satellite reception of Optus B1 at 160.0°E? Plenty of Australian channels there: ABC TV Northern/NSW/Queensland/South/Victoria/Western, SBS, SBS World News Channel, 7 Central...
With a moving dish you can also recieve via various satellites channels like Win TV West, TVSN, Austar Games Channel, ABC Asia Pacific, etc

Don't mention the southeast english speaking channels (all receivable in Australia and FTA).

Just a thought...