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MCE and creating DVDs

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ErikD

Member
Joined
May 6, 2004
Location
NYC
Can anyone who uses WIndows MCE help me out a bit here. I have a Media Center PC setup for myself. I only really use it to hold TV shows I miss because of work, never really want to store them to DVD, so I don't even have a DVD recorder in my setup.

Anyway I am thinking of building one for my parents for the holidays. I want it to be as quick and easy as possible, so I will most likely be using Windows MCE again. The one sticking point is if they will be able to use the CD/DVD creator that is built in to create a DVD that will play in a regular DVD player. I am not talking about anything copyrighted or protected like movies. But if they record a TV show on the MCE can they burn it to a DVD as a regular MPEG or whatever that will play on a regular DVD player, or is the only format available the proprietary Windows TV format?

Thanks.
 
Maybe not with MCE, for it contains some content protection stuff in it. You can try BeyondTV, SageTV (commercial)

or you can go linux and get the MythTV going... which is great but hard to setup. Also the video capture card requirements are tough... the card I suggest bellow doesnt have Linux Drivers (yet... I hope)

I recommend going to my other home...
http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?act=idx

Great advice on what to buy, how to setup, etc.

For instance, you might hear that the Hauppauge is the best TV tunner available, but they changed stuff in it and it now kinda sucks. I would recommend the NVidia Dual TV. But that has problems with other PCI based Video Recorders (and doesnt have linux drivers). So if you want to include HDTV, you will have to buy a PCI-E card (which just came out).
 
I have a PVR at home that I built and use to record TV shows and later burn them to DVD. It's not a simple process because the format that basically all software uses to record TV is different than that used on DVDs. Both use MPEG-2 compression, but the layout is quite different. The general overview is:

1. Record your TV show. A two hour show will result in a roughly 4GB file for me (recorded using GB-PVR on medium quality) as an MPEG-2 with with a .mpg extension.
2. Use an MPEG editor to remove the commercials (optional).
3. Use a conversion tool to turn the single .mpg file into a DVD-Video compatible format. DVD-Video is laid out in Video Title Set (VTS) and Video Object (VOB) files. A further restriction is that a VOB file can be no larger than 1GB, otherwise it won't be fully compatible with stand-alone DVD players.

This whole process takes patience and a certain level of computer savvy. As an alternative for family and friends that aren't very computer literate, I have set them up with a stand-alone DVD recorder. These work just like a VCR. Insert blank disc and hit record, or schedule a recording. Depending on the circumstances that can be a preferred solution because it's just so simple. The downside is there's really no way to edit out commercials and the end result is pretty unrefined.
 
Myth TV and Beyond TV have DVD burning built in...

There is another HTPC software I forget about, and their is a HTPC open source app for windows. Though they need to port MythTV to windows...
 
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