I have a PC with a tuner card that can record high-definition
programs. I can watch these programs on my PC. I can convert these
programs, burn a DVD and play the DVD in my theater room. The
conversion takes about an hour for an hour show. Here is where a
Blu-ray burner would be useful. Is there an easier way to record an
HD program without buying a DVR for the theater room? My PC and
theater room are not in close proximity. I can use my old VCR which
still works great, but it is not high definition (are there
inexpensive VCRs that record high definition?) Got to keep under $500
on any solution. TIA
"Phisherman" <noone@nobody.com> wrote in message
news:flrrs3tig6tvl7ba99q8s8pep0nh8qouc2@4ax.com...
>I have a PC with a tuner card that can record high-definition
> programs. I can watch these programs on my PC. I can convert these
> programs, burn a DVD and play the DVD in my theater room. The
> conversion takes about an hour for an hour show. Here is where a
> Blu-ray burner would be useful. Is there an easier way to record an
> HD program without buying a DVR for the theater room? My PC and
> theater room are not in close proximity. I can use my old VCR which
> still works great, but it is not high definition (are there
> inexpensive VCRs that record high definition?) Got to keep under $500
> on any solution. TIA
Phisherman <noone@nobody.com> wrote:
> I have a PC with a tuner card that can record high-definition
> programs. I can watch these programs on my PC. I can convert these
> programs, burn a DVD and play the DVD in my theater room. The
> conversion takes about an hour for an hour show. Here is where a
> Blu-ray burner would be useful. Is there an easier way to record an
> HD program without buying a DVR for the theater room? My PC and
> theater room are not in close proximity. I can use my old VCR which
> still works great, but it is not high definition (are there
> inexpensive VCRs that record high definition?) Got to keep under $500
> on any solution. TIA
VCRs aren't HD. Period.
Blu-ray burners for the PC are about $400-600, but blank Blu-Ray discs are
still about $20 a piece.
Burners are also quite slow, so it will take you longer to burn the show
to a BD-R than to a DVD-R.
You might want to consider getting a small PC with a large hard drive for
the theater room, and hook that up to your TV. You could then use
wireless to copy the program(s) to this PC, or dump them onto a thumb
drive or external hard drive, and carry that to the theater. (aka "Sneaker
net") I wouldn't try streaming the show via WiFi - just not enough
bandwidth.
In article <13t0i5o3ppjn239@corp.supernews.com>, Doug Jacobs <djacobs@shell.rawbw.com> wrote:
>Phisherman <noone@nobody.com> wrote:
>> I have a PC with a tuner card that can record high-definition
>> programs. I can watch these programs on my PC. I can convert these
>> programs, burn a DVD and play the DVD in my theater room. The
>> conversion takes about an hour for an hour show. Here is where a
>> Blu-ray burner would be useful. Is there an easier way to record an
>> HD program without buying a DVR for the theater room? My PC and
>> theater room are not in close proximity. I can use my old VCR which
>> still works great, but it is not high definition (are there
>> inexpensive VCRs that record high definition?) Got to keep under $500
>> on any solution. TIA
>
>VCRs aren't HD. Period.
A few JVC and Mitsubishi D-VHS models were.
>Blu-ray burners for the PC are about $400-600, but blank Blu-Ray discs are
>still about $20 a piece.
>
>Burners are also quite slow, so it will take you longer to burn the show
>to a BD-R than to a DVD-R.
>
>You might want to consider getting a small PC with a large hard drive for
>the theater room, and hook that up to your TV. You could then use
>wireless to copy the program(s) to this PC, or dump them onto a thumb
>drive or external hard drive, and carry that to the theater. (aka "Sneaker
>net") I wouldn't try streaming the show via WiFi - just not enough
>bandwidth.
>
Phisherman <noone@nobody.com> wrote in
news:flrrs3tig6tvl7ba99q8s8pep0nh8qouc2@4ax.com:
> I have a PC with a tuner card that can record high-definition
> programs. I can watch these programs on my PC. I can convert
> these programs, burn a DVD and play the DVD in my theater
> room. The conversion takes about an hour for an hour show.
> Here is where a Blu-ray burner would be useful. Is there an
> easier way to record an HD program without buying a DVR for
> the theater room? My PC and theater room are not in close
> proximity. I can use my old VCR which still works great, but
> it is not high definition (are there inexpensive VCRs that
> record high definition?) Got to keep under $500 on any
> solution. TIA
Without even shopping around, for about $470 (including upgraded
CPU and video card) one can buy a DELL inspiron slim PC. Also
check out geeks.com for refurbs, but it's harder to determine
quietness for these and the price per pound is not that much
better than DELL's.
I'm using DELL Dimension C521s, which were about $500 each a year
or two ago. If your video capture card is low-profile, you could
install it in one of these slim PCs, but you can also simply
write MPEGISO files to DVD from your capture PC and play directly
in any PC with enough horsepower to play HDTV, which isn't very
demanding. About 42 minutes of HDTV fits on a DVD5 - almost as
if there was some thought put into bit rates for HDTV, eh? This
means you'd spend maybe 5 minutes editing captures, 5 to 10
writing the edited version, and, if necessary, maybe 8 to 15
minutes burning to reusable media.
The DELL Dimension C521 (with AMD 3800 dual-core 2 ghz CPU) is
completely silent, even while simultaneously capturing and
playing HDTV, or playing Blu-Ray discs. I'm assuming that the
newer DELL slims will be equally quiet.
Be sure to select the customize path which enables you to choose
WinXP.
Tarkus <karnevil9@atlantabraves.net> wrote:
> Even the new N standard (serious question)? Seems like if you could
> buffer a certain amount, it would be doable.
If you've buffered enough, then it won't be a problem even at slower
speeds. However, who wants to wait several minutes before being able to
start watching the movie?
A HD signal is going to need roughly 120-150Mbps, which puts it into the
gigabit ethernet range if you're talking streaming. I guess if you had a
really strong, stable 802.11N signal, you might be able to do it, but you'd
pretty much saturate the connection - and even then we're talking about the
theorhetical maximum here which assumes a pristine signal, no walls or
interference, etc.
Current "HD downloads", like the ones offered for AppleTV, the Xbox 360 or
Playstation3 use a highly compressed codec so that movies are a more
reasonable 4-6GB instead of >20GB you find on blu-ray discs. These will
obviously require less bandwidth to stream, but at the same time, aren't
quite the same quality of a blu-ray disc either.
On Mar 6, 3:40*pm, Doug Jacobs <djac...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote:
> Phisherman <no...@nobody.com> wrote:
> > I have a PC with a tuner card that can record high-definition
> > programs. *I can watch these programs on my PC. *I can convert these
> > programs, burn a DVD and play the DVD in my theater room. *The
> > conversion takes about an hour for an hour show. * Here is where a
> > Blu-ray burner would be useful. *Is there an easier way to record an
> > HD program without buying a DVR for the theater room? *My PC and
> > theater room are not in close proximity. *I can use my old VCR which
> > still works great, but it is not high definition (are there
> > inexpensive VCRs that record high definition?) *Got to keep under $500
> > on any solution. *TIA
>
> VCRs aren't HD. *Period. *
>
> Blu-ray burners for the PC are about $400-600, but blank Blu-Ray discs are
> still about $20 a piece.
>
> Burners are also quite slow, so it will take you longer to burn the show
> to a BD-R than to a DVD-R.
>
> You might want to *consider getting a small PC with a large hard drive for
> the theater room, and hook that up to your TV. *You could then use
> wireless to copy the program(s) to this PC, or dump them onto a thumb
> drive or external hard drive, and carry that to the theater. *(aka "Sneaker
> net") *I wouldn't try streaming the show via WiFi - just not enough
> bandwidth.
>
> --
> It's not broken. *It's...advanced.
I use two wified pcs to stream HD-quality video to a wified xbox 360
and have no problems with bandwidth. The only time I experienced
playback problems was when I tried the beta media server programs
tversity and winamp remote but quickly went back to using wmp11's
media sharing functionality. I'm also in the process of buiilding my
own Media Center PC to expand on this HD-quality delivery method.
Recording HD 
Linear Mode
