TV on the Zune 80

With my recently rebuilt desktop PC, complete with a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1250 TV Tuner card it was time to use Media Center to start recording and syncing TV shows. So far I have come across two issue:

1. The file format and size from Media Center is unique and large.
2. The Zune software converts the files before syncing them.

At the Zunes highest quality it takes up 3GB of space for each hour of TV. Considering that I am recording 640 x 480 broadcasts this is a lot. More than a DVD. The unique file format is a problem because the Zune desktop software must convert it before syncing with the Zune 80 player. Consequentially, it takes a long time to sync Media Center TV shows with the Zune. Leave it to Microsoft to allow the Zune to sync with Media Center, but have to convert it first. Thanks!

There is a good side to it. Once converted and synced, the files get down to about 400 MB per hour. That means I can store a lot of TV shows in the Zune 80.

I may have to use the software that came with the Hauppauge WinTV to record shows. I’ll experiment with that and report about it in a later post.