[mythtv-users] Can a pcHDTV record standard definition?

[Brad]

On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 16:44 -0700, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Dec 12, 2006, at 3:54 PM, brad at bradandkim.net wrote:
> 
> >> I don't yet have an HD TV but hope to in the near future.  In the
> >> meantime, I need another capture card.  If I get a pcHDTV card  
> >> will it
> >> record standard definition now and allow for the HD upgrade or do  
> >> I need
> >> to buy a card that will be obsolete for me in the coming year?
> >>
> >
> > I think I answered my own question.  pchdtv.com states that the  
> > HD-5500
> > supports NTSC.
> 
> Quite correct, but it supports it only as a "dumb" frame-grabber card  
> - the Video must be compressed/encoded by your CPU.
> 
> The commonly-used PVR cards have a hardware encoder on the card so  
> their output is an MPEG stream, thus requiring no CPU power to encode  
> the video.
> 
> So as long as you don't try and use the card for NTSC on a low- 
> powered machine it will work.
> 

Ahhh...that's good to know.  The backend is an AMD 64 with a Gig of RAM
and has been fine, but I would be adding a tuner and often playback to a
second frontend as well.  I better be careful about that.

Thanks for the tip,

Brad