Moving from analog capture card to digital. Focus on cards with DVB-C (US)?

[ColKurtz]

I have been running a Hauppauge PVR-350 in our home server for a few years. At this point it's primarily used to record cartoons and cut the commercials, which our kids then watch on their xboxes.

We're pretty sure we're going to jump into one of the bundled IP-phone/highspeed internet bundle deals, but that's going to break my PDVR, since it's analog and we'll probably be moving to digital. So I've been looking briefly, and am hoping somone can steer me in the right direction?

Assuming a digital cable signal from Time Warner in the US, should I be looking for cards that support DVB-C to record the new digital signal? Is it that simple? I read the FAQs and it mentioned that the EU made the DVB standards. Is this pretty adopted by the rest of the world, or does the US have their own Digital standards ("Cablecard" etc) that I should be focusing on.

TIA.

[Nelson37]

Good Luck.

SFAIK, this is not yet feasible in the US. Best bet is to continue with S-Video input from the cable box.

Cable-card tuner hardware just ain't there yet, only sold direct to system providers, and nobody seems to be able to get them working.

[jagabo]

We're pretty sure we're going to jump into one of the bundled IP-phone/highspeed internet bundle deals, but that's going to break my PDVR, since it's analog and we'll probably be moving to digital.

The cable box should still have an analog output port (s-video, composite) you can use with the PVR-350.

Assuming a digital cable signal from Time Warner in the US, should I be looking for cards that support DVB-C to record the new digital signal?

No. Cable usually uses QAM in the USA. So you'll need a QAM tuner. Unfortunately, you'll probably find that only your local broadcast channels and a few others are available unencrypted (clear QAM). The switch to digital is all about securing the system, not giving you better picture quality or service.

In theory, you can get a capture device with a CableCard which would allow you to view all the encrypted QAM channels. If it allows you to record them the recordings will likely be tied to the computer they were recorded on. In reality, cable companies are not interested in supporting this.

[Nelson37]

Something I should have mentioned is that there is still an advantage to having a digital signal, even though analog recording is used.

Starting with an HD signal, downsampled to S-video. the recording is Dramatically better than the same capture starting with an SD, or an analog signal.

Picture is cleaner with few to no artifacts. Resolution, while technically the same, is obviously better. Color is improved. IVTC is cleaner with fewer issues. Outside of blackmagic (either card or actual magic) or an OTA HD stream capture, this is about as good as it gets.

Also, true anamorphic widescreen captures are possible.

[jagabo]

Also, true anamorphic widescreen captures are possible.

This depends on your cable/sat box. My cable box always letterboxes widescreen content at the s-video output.

[vhelp]

To add to Nelson37's post, which is so true..

If you want to gain the highest (to match very closely or indistinguishbly) quality available in the routine he mentioned, you would set your PVR-350 to the CBR mode and set the bitrate to its highest which I believe is 12Mbits, though you can *hack* it to 15Mbits for even better or higher quality. And please don't say that 12 or 15 mbits is overkill. In terms of quality when trying to obtain the source as if lossless, you want every ounce of feature setup possible. And going these steps you should be able to obtain near lossless with this approach, and trying to obtain a direct-feed is not as criticle as needed.

As what jagabo mentioned about the aspect ratio, handling this is still dependant on your provider.

What you do with the obtained (or captured source, using the above setup) is another story. I think that most people going the direct-feed option are still re-encoding to another format.. be it AVC or MPEG. So, in theory you have just as great a chance in high quality results in any direction.

-vhelp 4828

[Nelson37]

What I was doing was using an ATI card, setting VBR around 7.75 AVG to 8.25 max to avoid bitrate spikes, using IVTC, and ending up with files ready to burn to DVD. Finally had the X-fi card recording 5.1 audio, all was sweet for about 6 months or so.

Due to certain domestic re-arrangements I am now recording OTA HD using a Hauppage 1600 card with a Terk indoor antenna. Numerous issues but good source for h264 encodings.