DigitalTV capturing. Few questions.

[Episodio1]

Ive been trying to search in this forum for capture cards for digitalTV but I didnt know what to type exactly in the search box. :(

So... could you link me to a post which lists a few models for DigitalTV (or DigitalTV+Analogue) ?

And if i buy one of that DigitalTV cards (it captures the mpeg-2 stream as is) could it be possible to capture MPEG-4 AVC when fully available?

Thanks.

[CWR03]

You can capture in MPEG-4 directly with some cards, but it's not advisable. For one, if you had to edit the file you'd need to re-encode, which will cost quality. For another, the better capture cards encode in chunks directly to your hard drive without using system resources, which can't be done in MPEG-4. Depending on what you plan to do with the file, there are two common encode types, DVD format MPEG-2 and something with a .ts extension. I'm not familiar with the latter, but I believe it's basically raw data or uncompressed video from the digital signal which is extremely high quality and resolution - I've seen 1080i capures that were so good, comparing them to DVD would be like comparing DVD to VCD. Only the most high-end cards or USB 2.0 devices can capture that.