RE: 169time streams

I have directv and 169time mod. Because the 169time guys engineered it to
work with the jvc 30k dvhs deck, anything else is gravy to them. The world
is changing and archiving to tape is not going to last much longer. They've
been told many times they need to more fully support recording to disk, but
I think because of a lack of pc expertise on their part, they haven't done
much. The basic mechanism works pretty well for me, although the lack of
scheduling, easy format conversion, and weak tools is a big downside. Even
with those issues, I'm still happy with my purchase. The issue of whether
it's the source material or the captured stream has been the crux from the
beginning. There hasn't been a good scientific test done with multiple
people capturing the same data at the same time in the same format, both to
hard drive and to jvc then to hard drive. There's a method that could be
used to at least isolate it, but as far as I can tell, it hasn't been done
yet. From reading the myriad AVS postings, as soon as the group thinks they
have it figured out, someone injects a contradictory data point, and we're
all left with our hands in the air.

There's also been some debate as to which channels it happens with, and it
seems to happen more with non-OTA channels.

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dave Dodge
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 5:43 PM
To: Roku Tech Mail List and Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [Roku-tech] Roku-tech Digest, Vol 7, Issue 27

On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 03:26:54PM -0700, Travis Clayton wrote:
> Dave Dodge wrote:
> >On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 09:34:05AM -0500, Clay Collier wrote:
> >>I have the 169time unit and DirecTV but the .ts files I have recorded do

> >>not play smoothly on the HD1000.
> >
> >Just FYI, if you have a [short] sample clip that demonstrates the
> >trouble, and can put it up on an FTP server or website somewhere,
> >someone might be able to take a look at it.
>
> I can't say for sure but I would suspect the fact that Direct doesn't 
> use MPEG2.

He said they "do not play smoothly", which implies to me that they at
least play to some extent.  If they weren't MPEG2 transport streams
I'd expect them to be _completely_ unplayable on the HD1000 -- just a
black screen and no audio.

Also, 169time is intended for use with DVHS recorder, so I'd think
that it would have to emit an MPEG2 transport stream to be useful
there.  But perhaps 169time is doing some processing up-front that
leaves the stream just "good enough" for the typical DVHS machine but
not the HD1000.

That said, I believe you're right that at least one of the satellite
or cable companies has been talking about using some other format
(such as MPEG4) to get better compression.

                                                    -Dave Dodge
_______________________________________________
Roku-tech mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rokulabs.com/mailman/listinfo/roku-tech