[mythtv-users] Non-HD recordings via HD-PVR are huge; can anything be done?

[Matt Emmott]

My primary tuner on my system is an HD-PVR hooked to a Scientific
Atlanta HD cable box (SA4250HDC, I think) via component cable. 90% of
my recordings are through this tuner; the other 10% are through my
HDHomeRun. Certain channels, like Comedy Central in this example,
don't broadcast in HD in my area, so I record the SD stream. The
problem is, these recordings are the same size as my 1080i recordings
- A half hour Daily Show episode, for example, is about 2.7GB. All
attempts to transcode thus far have failed, and from what I can tell
from searching the mailing list archives, this is the norm.

Is there anything I can do to shrink these files, either during the
recording or after the fact? In addition to shrinking the files for
general sanity, I'd love to get mythexport working so I could export
some shows to my iPod but if transcoding is a no-no at this time, I
guess that functionality would not work at this time, correct? Is
anybody else watching HD-PVR recordings on their iProducts?