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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

If it's digital OTA, you don't have a choice of the format. It'll dump the whole stream to disk, without doing any downconverting. So you'll probably have to transcode to SD prior to watching. And expect 8-20GB/Hr for recording the file in the first place.

Alternately, maybe you could use an external converter (the ones for rabbit ear folks, with the coupons and such) and then record that (analog SD signal) via S-Video?

Hmm, forgot about that option. That is a good suggestion. If nobody recommends a digital option, I'll probably get another PVR-250 (unless a better analog option exists) and go this route.

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

The only problem with that option is changing the channels on the external converter box. I thought there was some problem with using a blaster with over the air channels, but I can't find that thread now.

Good point. That almost kills this option for me. I guess I'm back to the original idea of a digital tuner card. But which one...

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

One resource: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... CardYouUse

I personally use a Dvico FusionHDTV 5 Lite (currently for QAM, but also used it for OTA) in my R5F27 system, works great. I don't know if they are still available.

Thanks for the link. Lots of cards, including yours, are unfortunately discontinued.

I found some other threads such as: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14409&highlight=a180

Currently, I might be leaning towards the AVerMedia A180 card.

_________________
R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

Here's something that should also be considered: are local stations really broadcasting anything in standard definition digital?

Some of the sub-channels are certainly broadcast at a lower bitrate and may actually be 720x480.

But I have a feeling that the main channels are always broadcasting in high definition, and are upscaling any SD stuff to HD.

If that's true (and I'm not sure it is, maybe someone can confirm), then even though the program may appear to be SD, your recordings of the program via an ATSC tuner card will be HD in size and will require appropriate video hardware to playback in HD.

EDIT: This may have been what thornsoft was implying in his post... basically, you get whatever the OTA station sends you and it may well be HD. If your system can't handle the playback you'll need to auto-transcode recordings to something it can handle, as thornsoft suggested.

I've been wondering about this point. Can Knoppmyth down-convert my HD recordings to SD so my old slow machine can play it back?

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

Oops, you're too fast... I was just editing my post to mention that.

So the good news is yes, the MythTV box can transcode HD recordings to something else.

The bad news is that, if the box is too slow to play back HD recordings, it's probably going to be slow at transcoding too.

Hmm. Maybe its time to buy a new Core-2 box from Dell and do this thing right. (I've declared war on my cable company, as they failed to broadcast Sunday's local NFL game due to bickering with the CBS affiliate. My goal is to go OTA all-the-way)

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

Along these lines, will a slow Mythbox record HDTV, even if it won't play it ?

I have a spare 1.8 ghz Mythbox that records 'backup' TV analog OTA in SD. It becomes 'unemployed' in Feburary. Will it record HD with a HD card ? I'll conduct the experiment when it goes obsolete, but maybe someone has the answer now.

(I pull MythTV files over my internal network and watch them with Xine on a (fast enough) 3.2 mhz Pentium machine....) Works for both SD and HD....

Yes.

Certainly. Recording HD requires very little CPU.

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Grant

Personally, I recommand an HDHomeRun ethernet-attached tuner.

_________________
Grant

Certainly. Recording HD requires very little CPU.


Thanks.
Maybe I'll move up the 'experiment' before analog OTA goes away....
HD resolution beats SD resolution all hollow.... (except for the file sizes....)