Playon!DVR TV Recordings

In this Blog article,
- Files of recorded video for you to check
- What file types and specs of the recordings
- Putting TV recordings to Internet
- Recording direct to USB

One of the advantages of Playon!DVR TV as compared to traditional DVDR / VCR is your video recorded with Playon!DVR TV can go “outside” your box easily. Copy via network to your PC, copy it to an external harddisk, and best of all, copy it to a USB stick. Now you may wonder why you would want to copy your recordings onto USB stick? Well, USB is so popular these days that many players are able to play audio/video from USB sticks – incl. the traditional DVDR, DVD players, Car DVD players, Portable Media Players, Mediaplayers, Mediastreamers etc. the list goes on. Cool eh? considering that if you have recorded with most DVDRs / Set-top box DVRs, your recorded video is often just stucked in the box.

We’ve received user requests asking us if we could provide recorded video files for them to test if it would play with their DVD players. So here they are:

Analog TV and A/V-In recordings are recorded as .MPG files.

Most players these days can playback .MPG, let us know if it does or does not play on your players. It will be cool to know and helps us help other users.

Analog TV and A/V-In recordings can be set at 5 different quality settings – HQ/SP/EP/LP/SLP with different quality and filesize. All the recordings here are 1min recordings so you can compare the filesizes. Technically, HQ / SP / EP records at the same quality of 720x576 (DVD resolution) but uses different compression ratio for smaller filesizes.  LP / SLP records at a lower resolution of 352x576 great for squeezing that extra hours eg. weeklong non-stop recording :). What does all these number say? Best way is to download them play them back on your screen and see if you can tell the difference. Choose the smallest filesize recording setting where you dont see a decrease in quality on your screen.

1. Recording quality setting : HQ / duration : 1min / filesize : 68.7mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

2. Recording quality setting : SP / duration : 1min / 35.8mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

3. Recording quality setting : EP / duration : 1min / 24.4mb
Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

4. Recording quality setting : LP / duration : 1min / 17.7mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 352x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

5. Recording quality setting : SLP / duration : 1min / 12.3mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 352x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 192Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

** These AnalogTV recordings are made with Playon!DVR TV, the same information / files apply also toe AV-In recordings of Playon!DVR TV and Playon!DVR.

How were these files made? And how to get them onto Internet?

• They were recorded using Playon!DVR TV connected to analog cable TV (in The Netherlands).
• In the Playback function, you can choose Title Edit in the top menu and then Copy to FAT32 to make the recordings available on your harddisk readable by Computer.
• Turned on NAS so my computer can see the DVR TV files from computer browser.
• Opened up Windows Live Sky Drive in internet browser, dragged and dropped the files from computer browser onto Windows Live Sky Drive in internet browser. Click upload. Done.

Windows Sky Drive has a limit of max 50mb per file. There are other services, other internet uploads you will find useful. Great for blogging about TV programs, blogging about news isn’t it?

DVB-T recordings are recorded as .TS files

.TS file formats are newer, some players may not yet support it. Well, our Playon!HD certainly does play it :) Well give it a try and let us know if your DVD player etc plays the .TS recordings.

With DVB-T recordings, the TV signals are digital, and the recordings are digital. So unlike Analog TV recordings, DVB-T recordings has no quality compression settings.

Here we have 2 recordings, one recorded to internal Harddisk, one recorded directly to USB stick.

1. DVB-T Recording to internal HDD
Video: MPEG2 Video 704x576 (16:9) 25.00fps 15000Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 160Kbps [Audio]

2. DVB-T Recording to USBstick (Diskje)
Video: MPEG2 Video 704x576 (16:9) 25.00fps 15000Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 160Kbps [Audio]

Record to Harddisk and Record direct to USB gives the same formats and quality

As you can see, there are no difference in recording format, we did this just to show users who may have questions about whether recording to USB and recording to Harddisk is any different.

The advantage of recording direct to USB is that you can skip the step of transferring files to FAT32. The recordings are directly and immediately on your USB stick, ready to be taken anywhere.

Record to USB

All recordings (DVB-T, Analog TV, AV-In) can be done direct to USB stick. When using Timer record, you can set the recording medium as HDD or USB. For instant live record (by pressing record button on remote control or front panel), you need to pre-set the default recording medium to HDD or USB in the Setup.

Well happy recording and enjoy the freedom to take your recording anywhere, everywhere.

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footnote [self-advertising haha]: Speaking of recording to USB… Have you checked out our cool cool merchandising product – the Diskje? the smallest USB disk, waterproof and shockproof. It’s so small, you can slide dozens of them in your pocket and still have no weird lump sticking out of your jeans. Available now in 4GB / 8GB / 16GB. The Diskje? are available as AC Ryan merchandsing promotion and come with a small small price (as small as the Diskje :) You can purchase them in our OUTLET (in Rotterdam or online), or buy them with your Playon!DVR TV / Playon!HD purchase. We use them much personally and also with our Playon!DVR TV, Playon!HD as recording and playback medium. Disk-je? ;)