Captain Walrus

Hi everyone

Thought I would add my experience. My main criteria was for a stand alone system - it was just too much bother to use a computer. I started off with a 4 way splitter where at least outputs 3 and 4 were non-hdcp. This came from a firm in Cardiff. I then got (on recommendation) an Avermedia Game Capture HD II which has facility for an internal drive up to 2 Gb and an external one as well from Amazon UK. This goes to 10 to 15 Mb/s. An hours prog produces an MP4 file between 4 - 8 Gb at 1080/30 - I then found the cheaper £79 Amazon UK Avermedia EZRecorder 130? which is the same but does not have an internal drive port - it goes to 20 Mb/s and has a timed recording facility which is really useful. The same remote works for both.

All this allows me to archive my SkyHD box in HD. And other HD streams as well. With USB 1Tb USB3 drives coming down to £35 it is cheaper than using DVDs or Bluray discs and both my TV's read USB MP4's directly.

Something else comes to mind - when I was backing up my Sky box a lot of the stuff was in SD. I want to copy this as SD to a DVD from an HDMI output. The DVD only has an RGB input (I guess analogue). You can get HDMI coverters to VGA, Composite (rubbish) and Component YUV (digital RGB??). Has anyone seen an HDMI to RGB converter???

Well I bought a 4 way HDMI splitter from a firm in Cardiff and output 3&4 are unprotected. I actually spoke on the phone to check this. Then I bought an Avermedia Game Capture HDII. My requirement was for a stand alone device which did not need a computer. It takes an internal drive up to 2 Tb formatted as NTFS. It saves as mp4 with rates of 10,12 and 15 Mbit/s. It also allows you to up load TS to YouTube but I haven't used this feature. You can also put in an external harddrive. I am not interested in Game Capture so I then bought an Avermedia Ezrecorder which was much cheaper through Amazon at £79 - it is also standalone but does not have an internal drive but does allow for timed recordings which is what I missed - it also allows rates up to 20 Mbit/s. My Sharp AQUOS TV plays mp4 directly from the Harddrive.

What I have never been able to do is find a file format which is acceptable to my Panasonic FreeviewHD Bluray recorder. Anyone?????