Petrol Posted October 18, 2005 Share Posted October 18, 2005 Since getting onboard with the whole HDTV thing a couple weeks back an issue has come up. I wanted to 'record' an Late Night with Conan O'Brien (dang VHS really sux compared to HDTV) and the whole ordeal sent me into a quagmire (sp) on what to do if / when I want to record anything else. I have No Idea... I have No Cable Box, I got a 'Cable-Card' in my Sony KDF-E42A10 1. If I get a DVD Recorder, how do I 'hook' it up so that it will record all those channels 2. If I go with a DVR, how do I hook it up? does the cable card need to be moved from the TV to the DVR? 3. Do I need to build Another TV stand the includes room for a 'set-top' cable box that includes a Dual Tuner And DVR ? if so, how much extra does Comcast charge for that? How well do they work? and is it worth it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wangdang Posted October 18, 2005 Share Posted October 18, 2005 Start by calling Comcast. I can't tell you about charges in Virginia, but the dual tuner box works great. it's worth the ext5ra $5 it costs me per month. I can't say about your new stand, but the dual tuner does get HOT (!!) and needs good ventilation or it will trip itself frequently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddvj Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 A DVD recorder wil not record in HD. If you did buy one, you would "hook it up" the same way you'd hook up a VCR. If you go with a DVR, you would no longer need the Cablecard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picky Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 I currently own a JVC HM-DH30000-U D-VHS (Digital VHS) recorder. When I bought it over 2 years ago, they touted that it records and plays HDTV. Well, it does.....and it doesn't. When playing pre-recorded D-VHS movie in it, the image quality and sound are truly state-of-the-art Hi-Def and 6.1 surround. Nothing I know of currently on sale in the US can compare to the quality of D-VHS. When it records, it records in MPEG-2 HDTV format. It will also record in S-VHS and VHS. The problem, is that the machine has component video Out jacks, but none In! THere is no way to get the Hi_Def info into the machine! They expect you to simply connect your Hi-Def cable box to the recorder using a coax cable and then record the HDTV directly off the cable via the decoder. While, that's just fine and dandy in theory, it doesn't work on mine! I get what appears to be a hi-def picture along with sound that is only 2-channel and the gain is so low that I can bearly hear it! As far as I am concerned, this machine was a waste of the $700 I paid for it. I do own a few D-VHS movies for it and they are nothing short of spectacular, most notably, 'U-571'. But, I am eager for Blu-Ray and DVD-HD to get off their butts and release a comonized format that I can also burn HD discs on. Let's hurry it up people! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 I can appreciate your frustration! But before you rush out to buy the next generation format, may I suggest that you do your due diligence and research the much enhanced (sic) DRM (digital rights management) schema for the new media!!! (and thus avoid disappointment) With perhaps a few exceptions, I suspect that you will find that DRM will severely restrict your (and many others') intended use if you are not producing your own completely original material! Hopefully you will prove me wrong (as few things would please me more), but please do the due diligence required to prevent encountering a similar situation, albeit not due to the limited input of the unit! - (And let's think about this for a secound! OF COURSE this doesn't matter if you are producing original material! DUH! But the majority of others are not (if I may take that leap!), and the new source material being generated will be using the new enhanced DRM which will place much greater restrictions on viewing as well as copying and archiving options! So if you happen to be among the majority who fancy recording OTHERS material, this will become a major issue, and the practices that you may be enjoying now will become more restrictive in the future! So do your homework before you assume the new format (along with the new format source material) will allow you to do what you hope to do! Don't make assumptions and then be disappointed. And I fear that this will indeed happen to many! ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 "The problem, is that the machine has component video Out jacks, but none In! THere is no way to get the Hi_Def info into the machine!" Yes there is. Through Firewire. That is the way it will record full Hi-Def with the DD 5.1 sound. To do this you need one of the few HD receivers that has (or was modded) to have a Firewire connection on it that will output the compressed transport stream from the tuner. I use a Samsung SIR-T165 with my D-VHS. " I get what appears to be a hi-def picture along with sound that is only 2-channel and the gain is so low that I can bearly hear it!" It isn't high def, just regular 480i if you are recording from any of the analog inputs. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMcGoo Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 Folks with Dish or Direct TV can buy a hard drive recorder for true HDTV. The problem is that HD takes too much space on the hard drive. The best way to record off of the hrd drive is with a DVD burner which is a major step down. All in all, High Definition TV is the most fouled up technology I have ever seen. The content owers are paranoid about piracy and the equipment manufacturers try to placate the content owners while they do not cooperate with other manufacturers. My advice is stay away till it all gets sorted out by the market. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 "Folks with Dish or Direct TV can buy a hard drive recorder for true HDTV. " There are also OTA HD-DVR recorders available too. Sony has a couple of models and LG has one as well. They are combined OTA HD-Tuners and DVRs all in one. With a Firewire equipped OTA tuner you can record to D-VHS as well as to a computer. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picky Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 I can appreciate your frustration! But before you rush out to buy the next generation format, may I suggest that you do your due diligence and research the much enhanced (sic) DRM (digital rights management) schema for the new media!!! With perhaps a few exceptions, I suspect that you will find that DRM will severely restrict your (and many others') intended use! Hopefully you will prove me wrong (as few things would please me more), but please do the due diligence required to prevent encountering a similar situation, albeit not due to the limited input of the unit! - Point well taken...and that would be true if what I am trying to record is copyrighted material. Actually, I should have stated: I am interested in recording my own video productions that I shoot and edit myself using my Sony HDR-FX1 Hi-Def movie camera. The JVC restricts me from doing so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picky Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 "The problem, is that the machine has component video Out jacks, but none In! THere is no way to get the Hi_Def info into the machine!" Yes there is. Through Firewire. That is the way it will record full Hi-Def with the DD 5.1 sound. To do this you need one of the few HD receivers that has (or was modded) to have a Firewire connection on it that will output the compressed transport stream from the tuner. I use a Samsung SIR-T165 with my D-VHS. " I get what appears to be a hi-def picture along with sound that is only 2-channel and the gain is so low that I can bearly hear it!" It isn't high def, just regular 480i if you are recording from any of the analog inputs. Shawn Very true! The unit does have Firewire. Guess what? I connected my Pioneer Elite VSX-49TXi Reciever and my Sony HDR-FX1 High Definition camera to the JVC using Firewire: It WILL NOT pass anything to the recorder through the Firewire but Standard Def output! The damned thing down-converts the HD output into SD!! GRRRRRRR!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 Can't help much there. Have you looked to see if there were ways of tricking the camera to pass the high def. to the D-VHS? Have you tried transferring the HD on to your computer and then streaming it back out from there to the D-VHS? Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picky Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 The camera has a setting for outputting HD and SD via Firewire. Even when set to HD, the JVC ignores it and then down-converts the signal to SD. It's not the camera's fault. This leads me to the fact that if sending the HD from a computer via firewire, the JVC would still insist on downconverting to SD. PHOOEY! I can capture HD from the camera to my PC via firewire all day long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 " Even when set to HD, the JVC ignores it and then down-converts the signal to SD. It's not the camera's fault." I'm not so sure about that. The camera is the equipment that has the MPEG compressor in it, the deck doesn't AFAIK. IOW the D-VHS deck likely can't down convert like that and store the data as a compressed MPEG file. Since the Sony has a switch on it to change what it outputs via firewire obviously it does have the ability to down-convert what it spits out over firewire. "This leads me to the fact that if sending the HD from a computer via firewire, the JVC would still insist on downconverting to SD." Nope, try it. You can go from the computer to the D-VHS deck via Firewire and keep the signal in HD. See here for one way a guy was able to get HD from the Sony onto D-VHS. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=543740&highlight=Sony+FX1 As far as other sources of HD I feed my D-VHS HD from my OTA tuner and it records it in full HD. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickB Posted October 19, 2005 Share Posted October 19, 2005 Sony has a couple of HD DVRs, the DHG HDD250, and DHG HDD500. I've had the 250 for about 6 weeks and really like it. It records in DD 5.1 if that's the signal it gets, and the HD picture is just as good recorded as it is live. It takes cable card but I have Dish so I'm just using it for OTA HD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddvj Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 Folks with Dish or Direct TV can buy a hard drive recorder for true HDTV. The problem is that HD takes too much space on the hard drive. The best way to record off of the hrd drive is with a DVD burner which is a major step down. All in all, High Definition TV is the most fouled up technology I have ever seen. The content owers are paranoid about piracy and the equipment manufacturers try to placate the content owners while they do not cooperate with other manufacturers. My advice is stay away till it all gets sorted out by the market. Bill Great advice, buddy. If I'd listened to people like you I'd have missed Thousands of hours of HD programming already. When is the last time you looked into this "fouled up technology?" Five, Six, Years ago? Get with the program, HD is here, and anyone who is a Home Theater buff should already have it, there really is no excuse not to have it anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
el jopez Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 Save for the fact that formats and standards are just as prevailing as clothing trends; there is hardly a constant anymore. I havent heard this mentioned, however has anyone looked into a Windows Media Centre PC? The newer revisions MS is releasing to the market within the next two months is phenomenal in regards to how they want to have the PC the center of your "media experience". ie: Having the ability to control your 300 disc DVD changer from your keyboard and mouse. With a HDTV tuner card from ATI in your PC Im sure you can rip your movies in HD. I would have to look into it further, and I'll report my findings. Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffDurbin Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 I currently own a JVC HM-DH30000-U D-VHS (Digital VHS) recorder. When I bought it over 2 years ago, they touted that it records and plays HDTV. Well, it does.....and it doesn't. When playing pre-recorded D-VHS movie in it, the image quality and sound are truly state-of-the-art Hi-Def and 6.1 surround. Nothing I know of currently on sale in the US can compare to the quality of D-VHS. When it records, it records in MPEG-2 HDTV format. It will also record in S-VHS and VHS. The problem, is that the machine has component video Out jacks, but none In! THere is no way to get the Hi_Def info into the machine! They expect you to simply connect your Hi-Def cable box to the recorder using a coax cable and then record the HDTV directly off the cable via the decoder. While, that's just fine and dandy in theory, it doesn't work on mine! I get what appears to be a hi-def picture along with sound that is only 2-channel and the gain is so low that I can bearly hear it! As far as I am concerned, this machine was a waste of the $700 I paid for it. I do own a few D-VHS movies for it and they are nothing short of spectacular, most notably, 'U-571'. But, I am eager for Blu-Ray and DVD-HD to get off their butts and release a comonized format that I can also burn HD discs on. Let's hurry it up people! My situation is even worse. I have the older JVC D-VHS recorder with a built-in DISH decoder. It ONLY records the DISH input in D-VHS. Everything else is non-digital. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffDurbin Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 Save for the fact that formats and standards are just as prevailing as clothing trends; there is hardly a constant anymore. I havent heard this mentioned, however has anyone looked into a Windows Media Centre PC? The newer revisions MS is releasing to the market within the next two months is phenomenal in regards to how they want to have the PC the center of your "media experience". ie: Having the ability to control your 300 disc DVD changer from your keyboard and mouse. With a HDTV tuner card from ATI in your PC Im sure you can rip your movies in HD. I would have to look into it further, and I'll report my findings. Joe I was researching this just yesterday as a matter of fact. It will support multiple tuners so you can rip two channels while watching a third! (although if I remember correctly only one can be HD) I have an HTPC that needs to be updated. My ATI All-in-Wonder is the 8500DV. I do want to have DVR capabilities without paying for Tivo, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffDurbin Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 I can appreciate your frustration! But before you rush out to buy the next generation format, may I suggest that you do your due diligence and research the much enhanced (sic) DRM (digital rights management) schema for the new media!!! (and thus avoid disappointment) With perhaps a few exceptions, I suspect that you will find that DRM will severely restrict your (and many others') intended use if you are not producing your own completely original material! Hopefully you will prove me wrong (as few things would please me more), but please do the due diligence required to prevent encountering a similar situation, albeit not due to the limited input of the unit! - (And let's think about this for a secound! OF COURSE this doesn't matter if you are producing original material! DUH! But the majority of others are not (if I may take that leap!), and the new source material being generated will be using the new enhanced DRM which will place much greater restrictions on viewing as well as copying and archiving options! So if you happen to be among the majority who fancy recording OTHERS material, this will become a major issue, and the practices that you may be enjoying now will become more restrictive in the future! So do your homework before you assume the new format (along with the new format source material) will allow you to do what you hope to do! Don't make assumptions and then be disappointed. And I fear that this will indeed happen to many! ) I was looking at some of the HTPC posts at www.avsforum.com the other day to see what is new and exciting and there was a comment about a card that doesn't recognize the broadcast flag and therefore ignores the whole DRM thing. Things change so much it gets frustrating! My other problem is that I have to radically increase the size of my hard drives. I have 40GB and 100GB drives laying around but now any self-respecting media server has to have 300GB drives. Can you imagine having 1/2 terrabyte of storage for a few hundred bucks? Got to love technology! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougdrake Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 Glad someone mentioned using a HTPC. Not sure if you're up for the effort, but it can work out well. I'm using a DVICO FusionHDTV card (the new version) and it works great on over-the-air broadcasts. An hour of HD recording will chew up about 8gb IIRC. I run a DVI to HDMI connection from my ATI video card to my projector, and a digital coax audio connection from my Revolution sound card to my HT receiver to decode the DD audio. More info than you'll want to know at www.avsforum.com in the HTPC section. I believe some of the units can also record the HD output from a cable box (I'm only using OTA - I don't have cable/dish.) Keep in mind that the posters at AVS Forum are major video geeks who try to manipulate every last pixel. God love 'em, but I don't have the patience for that. So don't be put off by some of the frustration comments - they are so far deeper into the details than most of us Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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