dvd record

14 years ago

i want to record a dvd from noncopyrighted material. i have an external dvd recorder but it only has composite inputs so the resolution is 300 lines or less. i have a notebook with a dvd burner. can i make a slightly higher resolution disc with this burner? perhaps close to 480i or is that not possible? i am using the hd output from a cable hd tuner. the tv show is not protected. i am making a dvd for myself. not for resale. this is just a technical question. i am not interested in making a\ bluray disc now. just a\ higher resolution SD disc.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (5)

yosemitebill
14 years ago
joe,

Contrary to what you are thinking about in the way you wish to record, the weakest link in your chain is not the analog composite or DVD format, but the actual HD digital signal from your cable provider.

The standard resolution DVD format is technically capable of of 540 lines of horizontal resolution, and can easily be supported by the NTSC format in a non-broadcast environment. Although, low pass filtering usually brings this down to 500 lines of horizontal resolution.

In analog terrestrial & cable broadcast, bandwidth is limited to allow for the audio program material within a 6MHz frequency assignment. This results in resolution limitations of around 330 lines.

If your cable provider, or upstream services, have stomped all over the original signal, whether analog or digital, to reduce digital bandwidth requirements, it's going to look bad.

You need to remember that all video signals from a camera start in analog, the camera sees analog and it's what our eyes see. The digital portion allows for compression of the analog signal for transmission and storage purposes.

The composite video signal from your STB to your DVD-recorder will produce the best results. Just keep the DVD-R in the best quality setting mode.
yosemitebill
14 years ago
Just want to add - please don't mix up the number of vertical lines - 480i/p- 525/625 - 720p - 1080i/p - with horizontal resolution.

Simply put, horizontal resolution is the number of vertical lines that can be seen (or resolved) across the screen on a horizontal line whose distance is equivalent to the height of the screen.
Related Professionals
Topeka Interior Designers & Decorators · California Interior Designers & Decorators · Nashua Interior Designers & Decorators · Twin Falls Interior Designers & Decorators · Ogden Interior Designers & Decorators · New Orleans Carpenters · Cherry Hill Carpenters · Ithaca Carpenters · Fort Collins Carpenters · Wenatchee Carpenters · Madison General Contractors · Grand Island General Contractors · Portsmouth General Contractors · Westerly General Contractors · Dickinson General Contractors
joe_mn
Original Author
14 years ago
i watched a concert on hd cable. the pic was awesome using the hdmi thruput. tuner to tv. than i output the hd cable box using composite into the dvd recorder and the image on the same tv was crap. or non-hd as you would expect. the cable box has many outputs. 1 is hdmi and another is composite. if i hooked up each output at the same time and watched 2 different hd tv's, the picture quality would be sd on 1 tv and hd on the 2nd. thats if both outputs work at the same time. maybe they don't
joe_mn
Original Author
14 years ago
Ok. I get the SD and HD stuff. I used to follow a few AV websites before but have been out of it for awhile. Seems there are no DVD recorders with hdmi inputs. Security reasons mostly. So my composite input SD stuff is probably as good as it gets for SD.
yosemitebill
14 years ago
While I've had a few stand-alone Blu-Ray DVD video recorders in my lab, they have all been for the Japanese domestic market only.

Although you can author an HD Blu-Ray on a PC and burn it to a Blu-Ray disc, using an SD signal source, it will not look any better than a standard DVD.

It sounds like either your cable company is supplying a very degraded SD signal (helps sell the HD), your DVD recorder does poor MPEG encoding, or your television does a poor job of up-scaling SD video for display.