What are the ways to record AC3?

[William Eng]

Right now, my AC3 comes out of the Fortec Classic optical output and directly into my Sony stereo system. Is there a way to recorder the AC3 output? onto a DVD disk?

[wejones]

Originally Posted by William Eng

Right now, my AC3 comes out of the Fortec Classic optical output and directly into my Sony stereo system. Is there a way to recorder the AC3 output? onto a DVD disk?

I'm sure that other people have different ways to deal with this, and this is why I haven't been happy with my new Mercury.

With my Fortec Lifetime and Fortec Ultra, I had been running the coaxial AC3 output to my Soundblaster extigy, which generates line level audio that I send to one of my TIVOs. My TIVOs are old series 1 standalones, and I can extract digital .ty files which can be converted to .mpg files, which *CAN* be put into DVD format. I myself, just put them on a DATA DVD as .mpg files, and play them that way rather than in a DVD player.

However, with my new Mercury-2, which has an optical output instead of coaxial, for some reason the Soundblaster Extigy doesn't decode the AC3, even though it decodes the regular mpeg audio through the optical line. So I'm not able to do what I do above. I have gotten the AC3 to play through a small stereo with optical input, and I've been able to feed the earphone output of that into my TIVO, however it's quite an in-efficient way of doing things, ie requiring me to have an 800Watt stereo turned on all the time in order to watch or record satellite. I've been looking for something similar to the Soundblaster that will decode the AC3, but I haven't found anything yet.

However, what I really do, when I want high quality recordings, is to record directly onto my PC. I have a Twinhan 1020a slaved to my Fortec receivers. There are several programs that will save directly to a .mpg file, without going through D/A and A/D conversions, which is involved with using the TIVO. The Twinhan program itself will record, as will 2 or 3 other programs I have, however I generally use TSREADER, however I think that the free version of TSREADER has a short time limit for recording, so that may not be the best option for some. However, the PC receivers are so cheap, particularly if you get one off Ebay, that it is really the way to go.

I also use a program called VideoReDo, with which I can edit out commercials or extra recorded space at the start and finish, etc, plus VideoReDo can also change the bitrates, etc of the saved file to save disk space, and to make the file more compatable with DVD format.

Anyway, I recommend getting one of the PC receivers. I really recommend the 1020a that's only available on Ebay now, however the 102g is almost as good. If you need a USB version, I'd stay away from Twinhan.

[boroda1]

Originally Posted by wejones

....

With my Fortec Lifetime and Fortec Ultra, I had been running the coaxial AC3 output to my Soundblaster extigy, which generates line level audio that I send to one of my TIVOs. My TIVOs are old series 1 standalones, and I can extract digital .ty files which can be converted to .mpg files, which *CAN* be put into DVD format.

Now, I can do that too!
But, because Tivo gets just downconverted stereo input, it's no longer AC3 format.
Question is, can any computer software record unmodified AC3 track?
To use it later with multi-channel speakers?

[wejones]

Originally Posted by boroda1

Now, I can do that too!
But, because Tivo gets just downconverted stereo input, it's no longer AC3 format.
Question is, can any computer software record unmodified AC3 track?
To use it later with multi-channel speakers?

Yeah. When you record via any software, from one of the PC receivers, like the Twinhan, it records the raw audio tracks, so whatever comes down on sat, that's what you're recording. If it's AC3, then that what you record. With TSREADER, I can choose whether to record a specific track if there are more than one, or I can record both or all of them, and let whatever program plays select the track.