Recording and Storing Matches.

[Pie eyed]

Many of us are interested in recording and keeping matches in the long term.
Some of us have been discussing the recording and storage of matches on another thread so I thought I would start a new thread dedicated to just that.
Discuss hardware and software here at your leisure.

Last season I was using an LG 240GB HDD recorder which enabled me to record every free to air game for the year. I discovered certain limitations and inconveniences with this setup.
Firstly I had to record from the HDD Recorders built in digital tuner which while described as High Definition is not "True High Definition". This was not a great inconvenience as the vast bulk of games were not broadcast in HD anyway. I understand this season will be broadcast in True High Definition.
The other limitation are the backup options. If you wish to "save" a game and free space for future games the only option is to burn the HDD data to a DVD.
This presents two problems. One the copy process is slow and ties up the recorder for many hours and two in order to get a full game on a single DVD in a reasonable definition you have to use expensive Dual Layer DVD's.
($8.00 each approx).

Since then I have found two suitable other options.

1. A purpose made 500GB HDD recorder/player storage device.
2. A dual band True High Definition TV Tuner card for my laptop.

Both of these have their own limitations but together they provide the ability to watch and record the games in True High Definition while being flexible in the way the resulting huge files are saved, edited, moved and stored. I can edit direct from the HD on my laptop, change file format and save to any NTFS hard drive I can plug into a USB Port.
Sitting on my desl as I type I have each of 500GB, 280GB and 110GB USB drives. It is pheasible to simply buy a drive for each new season and just write the year on it and put on the shelf like a DVD. In fact they are smaller than a DVD in the standard case.

One very important point to remember in any setup for storing large files is to make sure the drives you are using (all of them) are formatted to NTFS and NOT Fat32. Fat32 formatted drives can only recognise and handle files of LESS than 4GB-1 byte. You can argue it is possible to get around this but you would be wasting your time.

If you want to store video in any format then do not buy anything formatted in Fat32 no matter how good a value it appears. It is not worth the drama's associated with file splitting etc.


So who else would like to add something...software perhaps.

 

[RRRooocccaaa]

For the Mac, I've been using the Eye TV software with the Elgato USB stick on MacBook Pro 17". Works an absolute treat - I've recorded matches in Melbourne and in Geelong on 7 and 10 on HD and had great results.

Eye TV lets you edit out the commercials v. quickly, but I'm sure I could use iMovie and then iDVD to save out if I needed to.

^ Yer right about storage - the newer 200GB drives are the business. There's a La Cie black one that's barely larger than a pack of cards and is completely USB-powered so it's _very_ portable. And has a retractable USB cord so it's stylish, too

 

[Bloben]

I bought a HD tv tuner for my laptop which was only a small device which slotted into the USB port. It wasn't very expensive however the recordings I made seemed to be incredibly large in file size however being quite poor quality. The picture looked great however the movement seemed to be quite choppy.

I know that the settings are probably off and I could play around with it to improve it but I'm at the stage where I can't be stuffed with it anymore so I just watch the game then get the torrent off facebook the next day and download the SD version.

Reading this thread has given me an idea. I want to see what the quality of a game is like on an iPod nano 4th gen so I can watch footy anywhere I go LOL. Has anyone tried this?

 

[jefffff34]

VHS.

 

[beez]

Reading this thread has given me an idea. I want to see what the quality of a game is like on an iPod nano 4th gen so I can watch footy anywhere I go LOL. Has anyone tried this?

I just download every game through torrents and just watch them on my laptop whenever I want. I've watched a couple of games on the iPod and the quality is fine, even though the screen is a bit small.

 

[mdc]

I have no experience with HDD recorders, but shouldn't you just be able to transfer the files over from the recorder over to your PC? Given a 1 terrabyte hard-drive goes for about $170, I wouldn't have thought storage would be a problem if this is possible.

Also, Pie eyed, you can get 25 Dual-layer DVD's for $28 from MSY.