A basic capture question...

[archaeo]

I've been using the WinTv program for a couple weeks now, and really enjoy the features.
However, I'm a little confused about what actually is being fed through to my hard drive.
I am using a HD antennae and its feeding ATSC (digital) signals to my Hauppauge 1250 PCI card. I record these signals via WinTV capture.

Question: In WinTV I'm seeing config adjustments to record default ANALOG capture quality as either fair, good, better, best..
However, it is my understanding that these are for capturing analog signals, NOT digital, as almost all antennae based signals are digital now.
Am I correct that therefore I really can't adjust the quality (bitrate levels) on my captured digital signals?

The reason i ask is that I am capturing recorded HDTV shows to my hard drive, then moving them onto a 16Gb flash drive, which I hook up to my Western Digital TV Live media player. What I'm noticing is that fairly frequently these playbacks are suffering from terrible pixelation, and skipping problems... They become almost impossible to watch. I'm thinking that perhaps the bitrate is too high, and it's overloading the ability of the media player to play these large files. Sometimes a one hour show will be 7+ Gb. I've started to autoconvert to MPEG, which lowers the overall bitrate some, but I still ocassionally get these bad pixelation problems on playback.

I'm hoping answering these questions might help me to solve the issue.

Thanks for a great tool

[TheNewGuy]

When it comes to digital, WinTV just records the broadcaster's bitstream. In effect the broadcaster is deciding the bitrate/resolution/etc.

Periods of pixelation during playback on your WDTV could be it's player, or it could be reception glitches cause by weak signal. If the same file played back in WinTV shows no sign if the pixelation, then it is most likely a WDTV problem.

[archaeo]

When it comes to digital, WinTV just records the broadcaster's bitstream. In effect the broadcaster is deciding the bitrate/resolution/etc.

OK, that's what I thought. Thanks for clarifying. I think from the documentation I've read there's a recommended max bitrate for the WDTV player, somewhere in the range of 15-20 mbps. Some of the HD captures I've done are close to that range.