How to record satellite broadcasts in this digital world?

[starkjs]

On iTunes, there are HD streams that I am certain are of a higher quality. Not sure which other ones are as well...

[kbgunn]

I wanted to do the same thing. At the end of last year, our Stake bought the "Toshiba DR570 DVD Recorder with Built in Tuner" from Amazon. It was $154 at the time which is very reasonable. I can set the timer and have it tuned to channel 4 (which is our satellite channel) and it works great. NO more VHS!

[StevePoulsen]

Our stake presidency has asked me to replace our old VHS VCR with a DVD recorder so we can record church satellite broadcasts directly to DVD. A few years ago this would have been fairly straight forward, but in today's all digital world I am not sure there is a good solution available at a reasonable price. I need something with an old fashioned analog tuner, and a DVR with a hard drive would be nice (like the old Philips DVDR3575/76 units).

Does anyone have a reasonable solution in today's market?

I don't have any recommendations per say, however depending on how the DVR is wired into the system you may not even need a tuner. If you go down this route two things need to happen first;
1) Let your FM group Know so they can at a minimum be aware of the changes you are making to the system.
2) Post instruction in your rack so that whom ever is operating the system knows of the changes, and if they have problems, can inform those that they will call for help about the changes.
That being said... If you want, you can wire the DVR inline with the language channel that you want to record. for example assume that you want to record the English broadcast. the video and audio feeds would route to the DVR first, and then the video and audio outputs of the DVR would feed to English modulator. in this way, when it comes time to play back the DVR, you simply put the disk into the DVR press play and the recorded broadcast comes up on the English channel.

[lajackson]

If you go down this route

Our FM Group became very nervous about this method because it inserts the DVR into the meetinghouse broadcast line. If the DVR is not on, or is put into play during a normal broadcast, the normal broadcast will fail.

This method also restricts you to recording only one language.

Granted, it does make it easier to playback a Video Disk through the meetinghouse broadcast system.

[StevePoulsen]

I imagine that depends on which download you use. Can you indicate which ones are as good if not better then a satellite broadcast?

Files when they are made available are listed here: http://lds.org/broadcasts/archive/index?lang=eng
Note however that the quality of these files will also depend on the format of the device used to play back the files. The satellite system uses a composite video output to feed the rest of a building's video systems. Since composite video is limited to 640x480 pixels. So regardless of how high the quality of the files in the beginning, if you play it out over a Composite Video connection it will appear no better than what you already have over the satellite system.
I believe the files listed here are however 1080p, so if you have a 1080p player, 1080p cable (HDMI, or VGA), and a 1080p display source, the difference will be very noticeable.

[StevePoulsen]

Our FM Group became very nervous about this method because it inserts the DVR into the meetinghouse broadcast line. If the DVR is not on, or is put into play during a normal broadcast, the normal broadcast will fail.

I would be worried as well. hence the importance of the notes to whom ever uses the system.

This method also restricts you to recording only one language.

Actually it will let you record up to 2 languages, One on the left stereo channel, the other on the right stereo channel



But I will concede, if you or the FM can get the funds, a dedicated TV channel is better for playback, and if that is not the issue, then a simple audio and video DA solves the problem, and "relatively" cheeply too