Will HDHomerun work with SD Television?

[davephan]

I do not own a HDTV yet, but I will probably purchase my first HDTV set in a year or two. I am considering purchasing a HDHomerun unit now if it will work with a SD television. The reason I would use the HDHomerun to receive digital HD over the air signals, record them, and playback the recordings on my SD television. The over the air TV would also serve as a backup when the cable TV is down.

The reason that I am thinking about receiving and recording digital over the air signals is because the analog TV signals are not absolutely clear picture quality at my location and I think the digital signals will be clear. The HDHomerun unit would also provide me two tuners for local over the air television. I would continue to also use my PVR-350 to record non-local channels from my cable TV set top box.

When I replace my HDTV sets in the future, then my SageTV system would already be setup for HD. I watch SageTV with two Hauppauge SD media extenders.


Dave

[waynedunham]

The simple answer is yes, it will work.

The more complicated answer is...... *IF* your server is robust enough because by using the Sage SD media extender all your HDHR recordings will have to be transcoded on the fly down to SD resolution so the extender can display it.
You need a fairly decent processor to transcode in high quality. My P4 2ghz can't do the high quality transcoding without a lot of stuttering, but can handle the standard quality as long as the server isn't also using ShowAnalyzer to mark commercials on my recordings at the same time I'm trying to transcode.

I hope that helps some.

[kevine]

I am not sure if the picture would be clearer. I do not use OTA. However, I will comment about QAM. Maybe the same. They are clearer over QAM then tuning with any other tuner I have. You can see my sig for the list.

That said HD will need to be transcoded to playback to and SD TV. Make sure your rig can handle that. Also, I get clear QAM SD channels over my HDHR. You could record those if you get them with no transcoding. Just a thought.

[davephan]

I suspect that my E6850 dual core 3.0 gig, 1333 meg fsb CPU will be able to transcode HD to SD on the fly. I also have 2 gig RAM which does help because sometimes my system is consuming a bit over 1 gig of RAM. I can easily run Showanalyzer and transcode Mpeg2 into Xvid AVI files at any time without effecting the playback of AVI files on my Hauppauge SD media extenders.

I have talked to some people in my local area about the differences between analog verses digital TV reception. The overall conclusion so far has been that if the picture quality isn't perfect, such as some snow, fuzziness, and/or ghosting, it clears up when switching to digital over the air reception. I have a bit of fuzziness and some ghosting with my over the air reception because I am behind some higher terrain between my house and the 1300 foot high television towers about 15 miles away from me.

Dave

[davephan]

If I record HD programming with the HDHomerun, and play it back on a SD television with an MVP, how will the aspect ratio be displayed? Will it display in 16x9 with black top and bottom margins? Or will it chop off the right & left sides of the display? Or will it try to squeeze the 16x9 picture into a 4x3 picture?

Dave

[derringer]

I am currently doing this, without a HDTV, and let me just say that you will be *amazed* at how good the quality of the picture is just by getting a fully digital OTA HD signal through the HDHR and letting Sage downconvert it to display on your standard definition television.

I had a friend over who thought I had an HDTV when I switched to the new channels that are coming OTA through an HDHR, it is so much clearer than the others.

So, in short, *yes* the picture will be, in my estimation 2-3x clearer. Not only is it the HD signal that does this, but also think of this: The signal is purely digital and unmodified by *any* tuners or converters. It is just being laid down in a stream from the HDHR... the picture is visibly better by orders of magnitude. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed, I promise you!

(p.s., I do not have an MVP, so I can't comment on that, but on the server the picture quality is absolutely amazing.)

[davephan]

Thanks for your response Derringer.

When you playback the HD recordings, how are they played back onto your standard definition TV without a MVP? I have a Hauppauge PVR-350 that has TV out. I used to use it until I got my second MVP unit. Do you just use a card that has TV out?

When the HD recordings are played back, what happens to the aspect ratio? As I understand it, all the HD content is 16x9 and SD is 4x3. Does it make black margins on the top and bottom of the SD screen? Or does it cut off the right and left parts of the 16x9 screen? Or does it squeeze the 16x9 image into 4x3? Or, does it some how turn into normal SD 4x3?

Dave