TV Recording Quality - Vista MCE

me2_au · **2nd November 2007, 06:17 PM**

I treid search and didn't find much in one place, although I am sure this has been asked before.

When Vista MCE records a HD TV channel, what quality (resolution / bandwidth) does it record at, and is this adjustable.

If the Audio is 5.1, does it get recorded as 5.1, or downgraded to stereo.

Finally, if the TV is only normal std PAL, does it use a lower bandwidth recording to save space, upscale it somehow, average it, none of the above?

Is any of this dependent on the Video Capture card? (Hauppauge 500 in this case)

Thanx
Paul

AdrianW · **2nd November 2007, 10:18 PM**

First of all read this thread: Reducing the size of HD recordings.

But the short answer is - when recording HD (or SD) media centre records EXACTLY what is transmitted - it doesn't perform any decoding or encoding - it's just a bit for bit copy of the signal. It would take an extreme amount of processing power to re-encode an HD signal to something else in real time.

Same applies to the audio - so if it is 5.1 you get 5.1.

The TV type makes absolutely no difference to the recording - it only affects playback.

If all you have is a standard TV - there's probably not much of reason to record HD, you may as well just record the SD channels. That said, some of the channels (notably 7 & 10) are starting to occasionally transmit different content on their HD channels.

ach · **14th July 2008, 03:30 PM**

Sorry to dig up this old thread, but I have searched for hours without finding an answer to my question, which is very similar to the OP's question.

I have read in lots of places that VMC merely records the bitstream off the HD TV channel, and does not perform any re-encoding or resizing whatsoever. I take this to mean that if I am recording a HD channel broadcast in 1080, then my recorded file will be in 1080 resolution.

What I can't understand is, why does the resultant DVR-MS file show 704 x 480 in its file properties? If I play it in Windows Media Player, the video properties there show 853 x 480 resolution.

Are these figures bogus? How do I know if my recorded TV file is actually 1080 HD? I have read a lot of opinions, but no satisfactory answer. Does anyone here have any information to share?

logifuse · **14th July 2008, 03:44 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ach

What I can't understand is, why does the resultant DVR-MS file show 704 x 480 in its file properties? If I play it in Windows Media Player, the video properties there show 853 x 480 resolution.

Are these figures bogus? How do I know if my recorded TV file is actually 1080 HD? I have read a lot of opinions, but no satisfactory answer. Does anyone here have any information to share?

Yes, they're bogus. The figures that are automatically stamped on the file are the standard US SD resolutions. The reasons are:

1. It's MS, so what do you expect?
2. Up until recently, we were one of the few countries to do over the air HD. The US has only just started this, so they didn't add the HD resolutions as an option on the file tags.
3. It's MS.

If you're still not convinced (as the people posting the posts you're talking about weren't), you can run the file through VideoReDo & it will tell you the actual resolution & bitrate (that's not accurate either

).

Justin

ach · **14th July 2008, 11:20 PM**

Thanks for the info Justin. Yours is actually the most comprehensive set of comments I've read on the bogus resolution figures being reported.

Have you seen any official sources stating this information, eg an FAQ or KB article somewhere?

Not that I doubt you of course (I completely believe you), but it's just frustrating to have to search high-and-low for something that I think should have been publicly addressed by Microsoft, especially since MCEs are becoming so common now.