How do you record HD?

[rwtomkins]

Are there any DVRs or PVRs currently available in the UK that are capable of recording high definition? The only one I know of is the Sky HD box but it's ruinously expensive - £299 plus £10 a month for the box alone, plus another £10 a month for the PVR functionality, and that's before you've even begun paying for any channels!

[Automan]

I think the answer is no, none on the market.
This is cool as I have no money left to buy one :)

Automan.

[Maclynn]

I record from a Humax HD onto a mode 0 Tivo and, although it is only SD, it is very good.
I can't see it being long before someone launches a HD PVR as the Sky box shows it is possible.

[sanderton]

There is none, nor will there be for the foreseeable.

Sky+HD and the Teleport take the only viable approach - recordinga pre-encoded bitstream.

Back of an evnelope calculation about the data rates required for a TiVo style device which captures from analogue HD suggest its a way off yet.

Even a really high end PC can't do it - analogue encoder cards cost over a grand for the very cheapest and produce uncompressed video data which would require a high speed hard disk array to capture because of the data rate, and a big one too!

Cards which digitise and encode to MPEG in one go are still the province of broadcasters right now.

It will come in time, but it will be a long time before it's considered affordable if £299 + £10 a month is "ruinous". (TiVo was £399 + £10 a month when I bought it!)

[cwaring]

Apropos of nothing, but as an addendum to Stuart's point, the Telewest TVDrive has a 160gb hard drive and can record 80 hours in SD or only 20 in HD, which gives you an idea of the amount of data needed to store HD programming :)

[rwtomkins]

That was my next question - anyone know how many hours the Sky HD box can record? And if it's not very many, is there any way of increasing the capacity? It's more curiosity, really. I'm not thinking of giving the TiVo up yet, though it will presumably start looking a bit dated to say the least once HD goes mainstream.

[pauljs]

Maybe when Blue Ray and HD DVD recorders are here they will allow analogue HD recordings via component. Then the original Sky+HD with Component output will be quite useful. They threaten to take that connection away from later units

[sanderton]

Apropos of nothing, but as an addendum to Stuart's point, the Telewest TVDrive has a 160gb hard drive and can record 80 hours in SD or only 20 in HD, which gives you an idea of the amount of data needed to store HD programming :)

Actually, it doesn't. :) Uncompressed HD is IIRC about 50 times the size of the compressed video.

[sanderton]

That was my next question - anyone know how many hours the Sky HD box can record? And if it's not very many, is there any way of increasing the capacity? It's more curiosity, really. I'm not thinking of giving the TiVo up yet, though it will presumably start looking a bit dated to say the least once HD goes mainstream.

About 20, but it depends on the transmitted bitaret. I've seen someone has added a 500Gb drive already, and someone else was thinking of trying one of the new 750Gb drives.

[sanderton]

Maybe when Blue Ray and HD DVD recorders are here they will allow analogue HD recordings via component.

No, they won't. The will record precompressed digital inputs only.