Any difference between Sky HD and regular sky when recording?

[simon1967]

I have been busy recording with my Archos 705 - some with DVDs and some with sky.

However, I have noticed that sky broadcasts look a little soft compared to the DVD rips but wondered whether recording in HD would sharpen up the pic? When recording, does it make any difference by recording in HD - after all, if the res of the screen is 800 x 480 and it appears that sky is recorded at 640 x 368, would the HD material be recorded at 800pixels wide?

Cheers

[MarkTaylor]

No, the Archos cannot record from an HD signal, only SD.

Your 705 has no way to get an HD input anyway so you don't actually have an option, but on the newer 5 or 7 models which have a DVR able to record from component, it is unalbe to sync to the signal if it is set above SD levels.

640x480 is the maximum resolution for Archos recording at the moment and no sign that it will change with current models.

[simon1967]

Thanks again with your knowledge Mark - much appreciated.

Is there any reason why the sky recordings look slightly soft compared to DVD recordings - I'm guessing as they are recorded at a lower resolution and sized to fit the screen? Not that that helps at all, I'm just happy that I can record from sky now after all my teething problems.

One last question (which may or may not be able to be discussed on here), is there any simple way of making the sky files smaller? A regular 2.5 hour film is close to 2 gb - at this rate, my 160gb will be filled in no time! If it makes any difference, I'm on a Mac so most conversion programs don't apply here. At present, I'm using Handbrake but this seems to throw the sound out of sync? I guess I'm not asking anything illegal as it is legal to record - all I'm trying to do is make the files smaller?

Any advice is gladly welcomed and have a happy and peaceful Christmas (impossible in my house with 2 small children).

Cheers

[MarkTaylor]

Originally Posted by simon1967

Is there any reason why the sky recordings look slightly soft compared to DVD recordings - I'm guessing as they are recorded at a lower resolution and sized to fit the screen?

With Sky a lot depends on the particular channel as the bit-rate they use varies a lot.

Anything you record directly on the Archos will be 640x480 maximum but as least with recording from a DVD to the Archos you are not dealing with any of the bit-rate limits or resizing that may have been done before broadcast.

Best quality will be found using something like Handbrake to take the movie direct from the DVD so you can use 720 x whatever fits the aspect ratio.

Re files size; if you need to reduce the size you can do it by dropping the bit-rate you record at in the first place, or post-processing to increase compression. I'm not a Mac user so I'll let others make suggestion on post-procesing applications.