Freeview / Freesat PVR question

[Daveyh]

I'd assumed these recorder store the digital data as is, however on a friend's spanking new Panny unit, there are a few quality settings... what gives?! Do they re-compress the signal?
thanks
DH

[ginettag27]

You'd assume wrong then!

They simply record at varying levels of MPEG compression... The more the video is compressed the lower the quality...

[Daveyh]

Oh that's terrible! Is already compressed plenty IMHO - can certainly see what's going on, bandwidth-wise. Is this the same with SKY+ boxes too?

[mackie1]

AFAIK Sky+ records the stream as-is without any transcoding.

[bigdods]

If you are using a normal CRT screen (mines 32" Widescreen which is very old hat now) then you can record at quite low quality without seeing any degredation. I use a quality setting called MN9 (no idea what this means) and can get around 140 hours of recording on my sony 80Gb PVR. I guess when I upgrade to a 42" screen I may need to up the quality a bit.

[Daveyh]

seems daft to me... the broadcasters spend some time & effort getting a decent balance of bandwidth & quality, and deliver it as a data stream, only for the digital recorder to further scrunch it. Massive hard drives are as cheap as chips these days.

[RedLeicester]

Daveyh said:

seems daft to me... the broadcasters spend some time & effort getting a decent balance of bandwidth & quality, and deliver it as a data stream, only for the digital recorder to further scrunch it. Massive hard drives are as cheap as chips these days.

Considering it's compressed to buggery before being transmitted, a little extra compression really doesn't make all that much difference....

[horacethefrog]

The Humax Foxsat HDR Freesat recorder does not compress the signal further and has no options to do so either. It's got a 320Gb disc which, IIRC, is good for 40 hours of HD (and it's relatively easy to upgrade to a bigger disk if required).

[ginettag27]

Daveyh said:

seems daft to me... the broadcasters spend some time & effort getting a decent balance of bandwidth & quality, and deliver it as a data stream, only for the digital recorder to further scrunch it. Massive hard drives are as cheap as chips these days.

Indeed they are cheap as, but once they're full, they're full!! Initially you always think you won't run out of space, but it soon gets gobbled up, especially if you record a series of something and a few films here and there...