Audio Synch Issues

[sjj1805]

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Based upon your answers to these questions would determine whether or not it's worth the time, money and effort to record with a digital tuner card.

Here in the UK we are all switching over from analogue TV broadcasts to Digital over the next 5 years or so. Eventualy we will have to either get a new TV card or a Freeview box anyway.

Steve J

[rckowal]

Thanks for the reply PHD, it's appreciated.

Several factors to consider. Where do you live? Are you PAL or NTSC? Does your cable provider scramble all signals? Premium and basic. If they scramble all the signals including standard broadcast, a tuner card would be useless.

We're NTSC here. Cable provider only scrambles premium channels. I'm not sure what they do on HDTV channels but I know they are a digital format - but may not be scrambled. I think that because one of their digital STBs tuned to an HDTV channel just shows a blank screen where scrambled channels show a "Not authorized" message.

If the final destination for your files is DVD and your channels are broadcast in HD, you would have to down-convert to DVD quality MPEG files which will be time intensive and may reintroduce AV sync issues.

Am I understanding correctly that movies which are on digital channels (but are not HDTV) will capture & record ok in MPEG2 for DVDs? But those on HDTV channels would have to be downconverted from HDTV to MPEG2?

By the way, recording is not the only, or even primary, reason I'm interested in digital cable. There's also plain old TV viewing of digital as well as HDTV channels without the need for another receiver/converter. Our cable source charges an extra $7.00/month for each digital STB they provide - & $15.00 for HDTV. I can buy a card or usb tuner for less than what they charge during the first year - not to mention the extra clutter of another STB.

[phd]

I 'm in the US. I have a DVICO Fusion card. Unfortunately my cable provider blocks all the digital channels so I can only receive OTA digital.

If they are broadcasting SD Digital in standard resolution and the bitrate is within DVD specs, you can burn to DVD.

You may have to change the header bitrate to be DVD compliant. The video bitrate is actually low enough but they can have the header bitrate set high for transmission purposes. Also sometimes you have to split broadcast streams or select your audio track.

I use VideoReDo to decommercialize my TV shows and author with DMF without issue. There are quite a few people on the VideoReDo forum who are recording with capture cards. They may be familiar with what would work best in your area. Also they could recommend other forums to check out for additional information.
http://www.videoredo.net/msgBoard/index.php

[rckowal]

I 'm in the US. I have a DVICO Fusion card. Unfortunately my cable provider blocks all the digital channels so I can only receive OTA digital.

That's interesting. While "Googling" I came across that card & thought it looked like a good candidate.

There are quite a few people on the VideoReDo forum who are recording with capture cards. They may be familiar with what would work best in your area.

Thaks for the tip. I'll check it out.