Re: New Xtreme X38HD Multimedia Player

[Kim Wall <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marcus Warrington wrote:

>> and saves each program as a separate mpeg as usual.
>
> That's good.. GBPVR leaves them as .ts files, I guess it must be
> possible to transcode to .mpg or something. Does MythTV actually
> create the Mpeg as it records or convert it afterwards ?

MythTV's DVB[1] recordings are straight-off-the-tuner MPEG2 transport
streams too (as opposed to MPEG program streams, which is probably what
you're thinking of when you say "MPEG").  Obviously MythTV can
play
these back directly, as can a number of other media players (VLC's
handy, if your favourite player can't), but many can't.

You can set MythTV up to convert recordings to MPEG2 PS or DivX or
something else (mp3 audio is a useful one) automatically, either using
the built-in transcoding facilities or an arbitrary script.


In practice, I don't find the relative obscurity of transport stream
files to be a problem - I watch almost everything through the mythtv
frontend (which I have installed on the desktop PCs as well as the
dedicated media box), and VLC is perfectly adequate for the odd
occasions where I want to play back on Windows.  One major advantage of
TS recordings is they maintain the alternative audio and subtitle
streams, so you can switch subs and audio description on and off during
playback.


Kim.
--
[1] MythTV can also record from analogue encoder cards, which typically
create MPEG2 PS recordings, or raw capture cards where you can select
the software encoding format.  The frontend can play everything, of course.

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