[mythtv-users] Encoding

[Raymond Wagner]

Rich West wrote:
> I have a couple of (dozen) DVD's of TV shows that I was putting on-line
> for my mythtv setup, and I began to wonder: if these episodes are 2GB
> each and approximately 43 minutes, why is it that some of those unnamed
> on-line download places have these same episodes at approximately
> 300MB?  How do they do it yet still retain the picture quality?
Simply put, they don't.  MPEG4 AVC (h.264) was only designed for double 
the compression efficiency of MPEG2.  MPEG4 ASP (divx/xvid) is somewhere 
in between.  You might consider them to be of acceptable quality, but 
they are absolutely not of equal quality.