I tend to transcode everything just after it records to a higher 
compression.  That way my hi-def shows are taking more like 1.5 gigs per 
hour rather than 10 gigs per hour.  I do sacrifice a very small amount 
of quality, but it's better than having a hand full of shows completely 
eating up your whole hard drive and it's barely noticeable.

I tend to have several different quality categories for the type of 
shows that I'm recording, so stuff like Sesame Street for my kids, they 
don't care about quality, and I tend to keep those shows around for 
quite a while, so I tend to squish those shows down to about 250 Megs 
per hour.

I also have a delay in place so that it doesn't transcode the shows 
within the first couple of days, that way I can enjoy them in their full 
quality, which will be most of the shows that I really like.

I don't have an HDPVR yet, I am going to get one, but I can't image the 
quality being all that much different unless you have your encoding 
settings set wrong to begin with.

My thinking is, that if you are paying THAT close attention to the 
quality of the program, you aren't really watching the show... or you 
don't like it enough to pay attention to it, and if that is the case, 
why are you watching it in the first place.  You got a DVR so that you 
wouldn't have to watch stuff you don't like right? :)

Brian Cluff

On 08/26/2010 12:19 PM, Kurt Granroth wrote:
> There are two downsides to the HD PVR analog capture approach.  First,
> it can only record one thing at a time since it's using an IR blaster to
> change channels on the cable box (plus, analog capture) .  Second, there
> is going to be some degradation of quality in the re-encoding to
> digital.  How much is debatable.  AV forums like AVS are full of threads
> of people absolutely hating the quality... but they tend to be more
> extreme than most.  YMMV.
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