Thread: Tata Sky+

Originally Posted by just4kix

As far as I know, you cannot take a video out of TS+ box. They have deliverately prevented such an option because they wish to protect the content.

You can trasfer it to a PC in a long drawn way:

a) Have a Video Capture Card installed on PC - the TV tuner card can do the same job
b) Connect via Composite (Yellow-White-Red) cable
c) Start the Video Capture software such as WinDV
d) Start play on TS+ and hit record on Video Capture software
e) Picture will be captured in Windows RAW AVI format (not to be confused with DViX/XVid AVI) - 5 minutes video = 1 GB file. So have that much space ready on your disk.
f) Using softwares (paid or freeware) you can convert the Windows AVI to any format you like - MPEG1 (VideoCD), MPEG2 (DVD), MPEG4, etc.

TS+ and Widescreen TVs: Yes. There is a problem but this is not a TS+ problem. The problem is because source video is in 4:3 (normal TV) format. If you watch 4:3 video on widescreen (16:9) format, the picture is stretched to fit the screen and all objects will appear as fat. However, most Widescreen TVs have multiple format options:

a) 16:9 - Native widescreen. If source video is 16:9 WS then picture is displayed without distortion
b) 4:3 - Available for viewing 4:3 source as is. Black bars appears on Left and Right side
c) Zoom: Meant for 4:3 source. The picture is zoomed to fit the 16:9 screen. Picture on all edges is cropped and center is zoomed to fit the screen. No distortion appears. Recommended method but there is some loss of source.
d) Just: Again meant for 4:3 source. The picture is fit to the 16:9 screen in such a way that the center part of the video is not distorted at all but pictures on all four edges is distorted.

thanks a lot ... very well explained. oops - cant repo you ... i wished to ...

but 1gb for 5min?? wont the quality detoriate if i compress the video to about 50mb for 5mins ... ???

Thanks saurav.

Originally Posted by saurav_kataruka

but 1gb for 5min?? wont the quality detoriate if i compress the video to about 50mb for 5mins ... ???

What I was talking about was RAW Windows AVI format. Raw AVI is a direct capture and hence the size is mind-boggling. Raw AVI is in the format 640x480 (VGA). It is like millions of bitmap files attached together to form a sequence.

When you covert it to:

a) MPEG1 or VCD format: The picture itself is reduced to 320x240 and AVI is converted to MPEG1. This is one of the most lossy formats for video. Audio is relatively unaffected. The video quality is reduced by a ratio of 26:1.

b) MPEG2 or DVD format: You can select two modes - High Quality and Low Quality. The picture is preserved in 640x480 in HQ but reduced to 320x240 for LQ. The audio is converte to PCM. AC3 audio conversion can also be done but need special codecs and licenses for that. The max (best quality) video compression is 6:1 at highest quality but the average is more like 14:1.

c) While it will be possible to convert the raw video to near-HD (720p/i) or True-HD (1080p/i), since the source itself is not HD, it will be pointless to do so. The standard rule (crap in = crap out) applies.

Thanks a lot for the info