need hd screenshots-- hardware advice?

[disgust]

I'm working on a Lost site. I need to capture high def screenshots to have on the site. right now I have a standard PVR-250. however, right now I'm just set up to recieve standard def signals.

here's an example of one of the screens (direct from source, I didn't change the dimensions, etc):



at first I was mostly content with this quality, but then I saw the screens from another site.



how are they achieving that sort of resolution? I thought "true" hd capture wasn't even possible? are they just upscaling the resolution of images?

in short: if I want to get the highest quality possible, should I be looking at hardware to capture in hd? can hardware capture in true hd-- ie, will I have a video that's 720/1080 pixels tall? what kind of hardware would you suggest for that? how much would I be looking at?

[stanger89]

Grabbing screenshots out of a transport stream is trival. Just get yourself an OTA HD card, record the show, and grab some frames.

http://www.pcalchemy.com/index.php/c...e59d2a26081394

-edit

FWIW, I don't think either of those is HD.

[disgust]

what is a "transport stream"? and "OTA"? sorry, some of this may be over my head.

if I buy one of those cards, will the quality of the screens improve significantly? can I record true hdtv with them, at the native 1080/720 resolution? how big are episodes like that?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by disgust

what is a "transport stream"? and "OTA"? sorry, some of this may be over my head.

Transport Stream - a holder for MPEG-2 video and audio. It's like the MPGs Sage records, but designed for broadcast.

OTA - Over The Air, broadcast TV.

if I buy one of those cards, will the quality of the screens improve significantly?

The quality will be better, I'll leave the qualifiers up to you:

Ignore the combing, this is video so better than film sharpness wise (Lost would be Film), the combing would be cleaned up by the deinterlacer.

can I record true hdtv with them, at the native 1080/720 resolution?

Yes you can record the full 1080i/720p.

how big are episodes like that?

About 9GB/hour.

[ToxMox]

Looks to me like they scaled it up. I scaled your original file up to roughly the same size as the second image and the one I scaled looks a little better than the larger one from the other site.

[disgust]

thank you both. I'm still a bit torn on whether or not it'd be worth updating to an hdtv card.

another question: I don't have an hdtv capable tv. if I get an hdtv card in my htpc, is that enough? or do I need additional equipment?

[Wheemer]

What are these screenshots for? Seems like a lot of work, when that screenshot you grabbed looks pretty good to me.

[disgust]

for a lost fansite I realize it's a decent bit of work, but considering that I'm doing all this work, I'd like them to look as good as possible

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Looks to me like they scaled it up. I scaled your original file up to roughly the same size as the second image and the one I scaled looks a little better than the larger one from the other site.

Plus it's 1.33:1, not 1.78:1 like an HD capture should be. It really should be 1280x720 if it's a true HD capture from ABC.

Originally Posted by disgust

thank you both. I'm still a bit torn on whether or not it'd be worth updating to an hdtv card.

another question: I don't have an hdtv capable tv. if I get an hdtv card in my htpc, is that enough? or do I need additional equipment?

It's enough to record HD (don't want to use the term "capture"*), and grab screenshots. But without an HDTV, you won't be able to watch it in HD (unless you're watching on your monitor).

*Capture, to me implies the grabbing of raw, uncompressed video from an external source. Capturing HD is completely impractical at the moment.

[Wheemer]

Make sure you post a link to the site when it's ready... I love lost.

[clmolnar]

Yes, looking for link!