Maybe OT: Advice on HTPC card

[Deleted]

I've had a home theatre PC made up, mostly to store all of my ripped dvds. I have tried capturing my Sky box output (RGB,component or S-video) but I'm not achieving quality as good as my Panasonic DVD HDD recorder was giving. I don't really have space for both so can anyone suggest a video card and software that would do a good job? I don't need TV capture facilities as I'll be copying only from Sky box output.

Thanks, Juke

[tg]

Juke,
I'm no expert in this area, I dabble a little in video editing and vhs archiving but that is about it, oh and I always watch TV on my 'puter - the screen is bigger than my (CRT) TV which is used as a monitor when editing
Since no one else wants to have a try I will make a couple of observations and ask a couple of questions.
AFAIK digital TV whether satellite or terrestrial is already encoded as an mpeg stream (same as used on a DVD) - mpeg is, like jpeg still image format, a lossy compression scheme, this compressed stream is rebuilt in your TV (or in your case since you say it outputs video as RGB etc your Sky box) creating the display, if this display is captured and recompressed to mgeg stream format for HDD or DVD storage there will be quality loss. Rather as you would get from playing a DVD and recording the output from the player on a VHS machine or recapturing the video output.
The best quality capture will be from the direct mpeg transport stream - then there will be no degradation.
To give an audio example, if you take the analog out from your CD player and record it on your PC at Redbook standard 16/44 you would be unlikely to achieve as good quality as you will from ripping the CD in the computer, if you substituted replaying even a high bitrate 320kbps mp3 and re-recording the analog out your results would be even less satisfactory.
So, to the questions, what input does/did the Panasonic HDD recorder use?
How do you use the output from that ? eg replay from HDD only or can it burn DVD discs ?
How do you envisage using the recorded material from your Sky box ? replay from HDD only or burn DVD discs or both?
What format is this, standard definition 4:3 PAL or HD ? if HD any additional parameters like 1080i or 1080p?
How is the HTPC set up? eg what operating system, Vista, XP, XP Media Centre, does it have a keyboard and mouse etc or only a remote and the TV display ?
Does the Sky box have an aerial/cable passthrough connection?

[Deleted]

It appears that many PC DTV cards, can record and playback transport streams , but only support Composite, S-Video and Component (480i ~ 576p) input.
e.g. Compro VideoMate Vista E900F Dual D/A PCIe is a dual DVB-T and analog TV/FM tuner card, with the dual hybrid TV tuners providing flexible D+D, D+A, or A+A tuning at the same time. The on-board NXP (Philips) dual-channel multimedia processor comes with real-time hardware MPEG-1/2/4 encoders, PAL & NTSC 3D Y/C Separation, and Hardware Noise Reduction, which offers crystal clear pictures. The VideoMate Vista E900F is bundled with a Microsoft certified remote control for Windows Media Center which gives user the control of Windows Media Center and ComproDTV 4.
www.comprousa.com/en/dvb-t.html

SandyK

P.S.
I realise that this doesn't answer the questions asked, but was given partly in answer to why the quality wasn't as good as from the HDD recorder.
BTW, what was the input for the HDD recorder ?Terrestial DTV, or
something else? Perhaps Sky HD is HD only in picture size . e.g. 1080i. It has been my experience that cable HD such as MTV transport streams, are the right HD resolution, but have a soft look about them, and aren't much clearer than SD. That was also my impression of Foxtel via satellite.
U.S. Terrestial HDTV is much sharper looking, as is Australian HD TV.
However sharpening up HD MTV in a program such as TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress can improve matters.

[Deleted]

Thanks for your replies tg and sandyK
I understand that you don't get digital from the Sky box but when using its best outputs into my Panasonic and either storing and replaying from the hard drive of the Panasonic or transferring to DVD it produced very pleasing pictures. HD source from Sky box of course doesn't transfer as HD but was still excellent. When using the new HTPC it doesn't come close. I'm using an inexpensive capture card which I'm fairly sure is the cause of the problem. I play HD and BD purchased DVDs fom my LG HD/BD player and they are very satisfactory.

I'll follow up on sandyK's suggestions and then decide to go that route or else get a new Panasonic EX88 and use the PC as a large store for my ripped movies (all legit!). I have 2 * Tb drives so they should hold quite a few. Again thanks, juke