Wide World of Women

Guys, Im thinking of getting a PC in the next 6 months or so....mainly to record video from direct tv......some questions:

1) on my DVR I can choose 5 recording speeds from 4.7GB per hour to .78GB per hour...I was told a PC doesnt do this .....does a PC hard drive capture perfect pictre quality every time?

2) how many hours of TV will it record on say a 100GB drive? does it vary by the show quality and bit rate?

3) does the PC playback have fast foward and reverse speeds and slow motion?

4) how good of editing features does a PC have?

( I know these questions vary by PC brand and price)

5) any suggestions on which PC and brand to buy? Ive been impressd with the HP pavillion PC's in the $600-$1100 price range..

THANKS!...

1) It depends on what kind of software you use. I've got a Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP Deluxe and the software it came with is pretty good in choosing what codec, bitrate, resolution, etc you want to capture in.

2) Yes, there's really no standard amount. It depends on what kind of codec and bitrate you use. MPEG2 at 8Mbps will take up 3.6GB an hour. A 120-160GB harddrive (which are quite cheap these days) will hold a lot of video if you go that route. Personally I cap with an MJPEG codec that uses about 12GB an hour for shorter stuff and MPEG2 for longer stuff.

3) Depends on the software player you're using. Most support it for MPEG2.

4) This is where it gets a little messy. You can use something basic and free like VirtualDub or you can pay for a more expensive program.

5) I'd stick to Dell. If you're going to cap you should get at least a 120GB hard drive. A 2GHZ or better CPU is best for capping and encoding and 512MB of RAM is absolutely necessary for Windows XP. You'll probably want a DVD burner as well, make sure it supports both + and - formats. And I suggest Nero 6.6 as a buring program, it has some basic video editing and DVD mastering capabilities.

THANKS for the info!....

james a computer is not all that great for recording video dvd
i thought u already have a couple stand alone dvd recoreders?

my stand alone is much better and eaiser

backrate still havent decided n a computer yet,but I like the idea of adding on relatively cheap hard drives to increae capacity, but your right its a lot more difficult than my stand alone units...