Windows 7 Media Center (recording question)

[maxinflixion]

On a lark, I picked up an Asus USB Stick Tuner ($20 after rebate) during the Black Friday Frenzy. I had the idea to toss it in my Ubuntu box, but had initial issues w/ drivers and plugged it into my Win 7 (64 bit) PC, and it runs great. I am highly impressed with the Media Center in Windows 7 so far.

I was wondering though, is there a way to change the filetype or recording settings in Windows Media Center? It appears that two hours of HD will take up 25gb of space with the stock settings.

If not, what other Media Center Software would you suggest? The software that came w/ the tuner card looks promising in theory, but in practice, it freezes my system up left and right, so I uninstalled it.

 

[ambientZ]

I dont believe there are settings like that because its just copying the compressed video that is broadcast directly to disk.

The solution is to get a 1tb+ drive for video. They're only about $100 nowadays.

For smaller video files you would have to re-compress to a lower bitrate mpeg2, or a fancier compression scheme (mpeg4, h264, divx, etc). I dont believe media center supports this, some other dvr software does i believe. And its not done in realtime, does them in batches when otherwise idle.

I'm against lossy compression when the source material is already lossy-compressed - makes it looks tons worse. Broadcast HD is already bit-starved and it really shows in complicated / fast moving scenes. Video is big, so i dont think you are looking at a ton of space savings no matter what you do.

I thought it was more like 8gb/hour - but i can check my files when i get home.

you could look at sagetv or beyondtv, they are media centers competitors in the windows world i believe. Ive never used them, media center + xbox360 as an hd extender does everything i want.

 

[maxinflixion]

Thanks for the reply. I actually have tons of storage space, but all my drives are FAT and Media Center wouldn't write to them. I can just re-arrange some stuff and create a new NTFS partition later on.

I'm just using over the air signals and doing this more for fun than anything (a $20 toy to waste some time). I have Uverse for all my TV and DVR needs already, so this is kind of overkill.

If I am not careful, this could lead to an HTPC build though . I am kind of liking this interface and it could be a fun and convenient way to get all of my backed up media to the bedroom tv.

 

[ambientZ]

FAT files are limited to 2/4gb, which is why media center doesnt like it.

 

[tgrimley]

In the tv recording settings you can specify the quality of the recording..

 

[CrimandEvil]

In the tv recording settings you can specify the quality of the recording..

That's just dumb and doesn't really answer his question. The first poster was right but it depends all on which tuner it actually is.

I bet it's an ATSC HD tuner. MC records content into MPEG2 and uses the filetype .WTV so it can add in meta data so MC can easily have episode number, show description, etc on hand for display.

If you want to lower the file size then, don't lower the record quality but instead convert the video into something smaller.


Check this out about converting the WTV file into something usable which will let you convert it into a smaller file format (as well as cutting out commercials).
http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/03/automatically-convert-wtv-files-for.html

 

[maxinflixion]

Thanks for the input guys. It appears my tuner doesn't allow me to adjust quality settings. No biggie, as I don't plan on recording all that much TV and won't need to save it for prosperity for the most part anyway.

The files I do want to save, I will convert.

I do have the bug to build somehing now, so I have resigned myself to build a front end media box for the bedroom. No tuner needed since I get every channel back there and can already record two at time.

I'm thinking I'll stick w/ Ubuntu and toss Boxee on there. That way I'll have a full PC setup and can just pop into the Boxee Media Center as well.