Using my PVR-250 and an 1900+ to run knoppmyth. I need to understand what the best settings to capture to retail the highest video and audio quality. I have a 160 gig drive and will likely not save any shows after watching once.

I'm thinking 720x480 MPEG2 (DVD quality, no)?
What about for the audio?

32000 Hz is the default, but what is the standard analog cable sampling rate? Has it always been 32 kHz? Is it higher?

What is the standard resolution of the cable as I used to watch it on just a TV? Is capping to 720x480 like taking a 128 kbit mp3 and transcoding it up to 256 (i.e. am I just converting something to a higher quality format when if fact the source was not of high quality to begin with)?

Thanks for the info all.

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

Ok well the only thing that will actually make a difference in the quality is the bitrates. If you don't bump up the bitrates when you move it to 720x480 then you may actually get a lower quality recording, because same amount of bits but higher resolution. 480x480 at the default bitrate should be fine. I use 480x480 at a lower bitrate just to reduce the filesize and I can't really tell the difference. Standard NTSC is less than 480 lines of resolution anyways. The only time I've seen someone using the higher resolution and it actually making a difference was one person who was burning dvd's and their player wouldn't play them unless they were at the 720 resolution.

As for the sound If I'm not mistaken it doesn't make any difference what you set since the sound gets put in with the video in hardware before it reaches mythtv. I may be wrong on this one, but that's what I gathered from the discussions on the list.

So if I understand you correctly, I should cap at 480x480 since the parent video stream is only 480 lines anyway. I understand that. What bitrate did you say you used at that resolution? Below the default?

I know radio quality sound is 22 kHz, CD is 44, DAT is 48... what the heck is TV? What do other people use? It all gets compressed to mp3 by lame anyway right?

Thanks guys

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

yes I run at 3000/4500 bitrate at 480x480 and I don't notice a difference, but some people are more picky than others. All you have to do is go set your livetv bitrates and then watch live tv then repeat until you are satisfied with the picture then put those settings in the default profile to use them to record.


well you must have missed this part unless I'm mistaken the sound settings have absolutely no affect on anything if you are using a pvr250.

in the case of the pvr250/350 it does not get compressed by lame it gets put into the mpeg2 stream by the pvr250 card in hardware.