Chris Lanier's Blog

I'm still waiting for Microsoft to get rid of DVR-MS and just create WMV directly (or do the conversion automatically, behind the scenes, on-the-fly), then there would be no need for a conversion program. Yea, I've heard all the reasons (or excuses), but I really don't care. If WMV is a great as Microsoft claims it is, their own product--MCE--should make better use of it.

I'm still going to give you a reason, even if you have heard them all: No TV Tuners have hardware WMV encoders. As soon as hardware comes, the software might be able to correcty be developed. We can't have dual tuner (or more) systems if we have to encode in software. :)

Clearly I'm blind; I cannot seem to find the price for the darn thing?

Not blind, they just seem to want to hide the price until you select how you would like to pay. It's $19.95. Not too bad for what it offers, but does it do what it says good? DVR 2 WMV is free along with other 2' desktop intrerface utilities.

I don't really think it's that much of a great price, considering that there's publicly available source code for doing the conversion from dvrms -> wmp. And having to enter your personal information before you get the price is a bit on the nose, IMHO of course :)

Think I'm more tending towards getting a hardware mpg4 converter once MCE supports them.

best program out there now is GraphRenderer, which allows you to convert from dvr-ms to mpeg AND cut out the commercials. I have been using this for about a month now and love it! Only thing missing is a MCE interface, but that is really no big deal.

What about dCut? It lets you edit out commercials and compress things to WMV in the background. It also lets you set up auto-filters so that it can compress shows automatically. Want to always compress South Park to WMV? No problem. Note that it also has a 10' interface. It's a great peice of FREE software.

(I have no affiliation with the product; I just use it a lot).

Yes, I forget about dCut!! http://www.inseattle.org/~dan/Dcut.htm It's actually developed by a guy from Microsoft. It's a good start, but needs some work to make it "ready for primetime".

I'll give the folks behind Power Compress a "B-" for effort -- actually trying to market something that MCE users have been clamoring for. Unfortunately, they're a bit late out of the gate as there are many freeware apps that perform the same functions. Add to this, the timing of the release of the software after the many Directshow articles about DVR->WMV/AVI were released -- Coincedence?

On a related note, does anyone have a suggestion for creating a profile for archiving about sixty 30 min. TV shows with Very Good quality? I'd like to recover some much needed hard drive space, but still have the shows look good on a 50" screen. I've used dCut and even the WMV Transcoder plugin with great success, but even an encoding session with the quality at 80 takes forever and the files are still pretty big.

Has anyone actually tried the product? Even if it's late to the party, does it do what it claims to do? Are the file sizes/quality/etc good?

Isn't this the first utility that compresses it so significantly though? If not, what others are out there?

If it's stable, I'm pretty sure the quality and size will be as stated.

As for other utilities, read the main post for a number of applications that offer the same functionally.

I bought Power Compress last night for $19.95, and it is FANTASTIC! Easy to use and it works GREAT! I've been going around and round, looking for a program like this... No bull.

i bought this power compression to convert ms-dvr into avi format. and so far, i think i should rename it to junk compressor. the reason i say this is because, it took almost 18 hours to compress a two hour show. little bit over six gig. then the next one errored out and it was only an hour long. my system isn't the problem. But just in case u want to know i have a p4 2.6 hyperthreaded 800 fsb, 1024 ddr400 ram running dual channel, on a gigabyt 865g pro board. sound blast audigy running 5.1 surround sound. dvd and dvd dlL burner, ect.....ect...the rest is pointless.


i want to take advantage of my money back for dissatified customers

i found a free program to do the job better than junk compressor "power compress" and that is win dvd, it has ms-dvr comverters to all kinds of formatts like, vcd, svcd, dvd, divx, and u cant choose pal or ntsc, lots of other extras like being able to cut commericals and fade in and out. Intervideo windvd creator 2

a previous question up on top was is there any programs that will crunch the movie smaller and still provide good quality for a 50" television. and the answer again is intervideos windvd creator 2, it took a 6.3 gig show and converted it to meg 2 for a small 650 meg of space on my hard drive on a 53" television looks good.

You need to talk to Power Compress about getting your money back, I have no connection with the company. As I basically said in my post, wait until they offer a trial before buying into it!

InterVideo WinDVD Creator costs $50 for the Gold version and $100 for the Platinum version. It's not a "free program"

Can anyone recommend a program that turns ms-dvr to Mpeg2? Please email me @ Smoke_Dawg_187@hotmail.com

I have used DVR2WMV and it works great.

I would use DVR2WMV but for some reason it flips the video upside down. Anyone else had that trouble.

I would prefer an app that converts dvr-ms directly to mpeg.

I think your harddrives have just as much to do with the re-compression
as does the rest of ur pc specs, i use a 3.2GHz machine with an ultra 160
contoller and seperate 15K rpm drives for the OS / recording / compression.
Reading from the same drive and compressing back to it will be slooowwwww.
Mine Works great :) w00t

I bought PowerCompress, even after using dCut and loads of other shareware software, but at 29.95 (yes it's 29.95 now) I figured i was worth a go.

It does do what it claims - compress files to 1/10 the size, but it also suggest you install a whole load of new codecs and updates and something in this lot screwed up my MCE TV causing it to crash. When I deinstalled it, MCE TV was unwatchable. I couldn't even roll back as somehow all of my Windows System Recovery dates mysteriously don't work anymore. PowerCompress tried to be helpful, but couldn't suggest why this would happen and could offer no suggestions other than a rebuild.

Anyway, I needed to re-install the system and not keen on trying it again. Dissapointing considering I'vehad no problems with dcut, or any of the other tools that are out there. I was very much looking forward to having something run within MCE though.

The company's website, is actually that of one individual who has tried to make it looks like a large company.

Links don't work on their site ( as of Sept 29, 2005, which is today ), they can't even spell properly, and don't get back to emails, eventhough they say they do.

Don't buy the program if you don't want it, as your money will not be refunded, as many have never even receieved a return email.

Sad but true, there are too many websites like this out there, that are very unprofessional, and with a few fancy graphics on a page, and "professional" layout are luring people in who waste their money

Thanks for all the great info. I was looking for some way to convert the DVR-MS files on a new MCE laptop. Little did I know WinDVD Creator would do the job & it came preloaded! I started playing with it today & it seems to work great. I can edit out the commercials while the file is still in the PVR-MS format & I have many options for my output file type. I just turned 1 hour of recording time into 8 without giving up any content. Nice.

I don't think it is too much too ask of MCE...I'd like to record TV programs and burn them to a DVD. Currently all I can do is record them and watch them on my computer with the DVR-MS format.
Can someone tell me the easiest way (ie program) that will take my recorded DVR-MS files and let me burn them to a DVD?
Thanks

Dwayne, you can currently convert a dvr-ms file to DVD video format and burn them to DVD all in one step if you have installed update rollup 2. You just go to other programs and open the burn dvd utility. It uses a Sonic plugin. You can also do it by hitting the info button on the file you want to burn. I have done it and it works however it is awful. For a 4+Gb HD file, which is approx 45 minutes of HD video, it compresses it in to half the size but the video quality is unacceptable. The worst part is there is no way to control the level of compression. I will mention that the new files look fine on an old 4:3 NTSC TV but if you watch them on a monitor or an HDTV they are complete crap when compared to an HD program played back from a dvr-ms file. I cannot understand why it is so bad. It is actually worse than a commercial DVD and it has just as big a file size if not bigger for the play time. Why is this?

Direct comments to http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2006/10/10/168082.aspx.

Thanks!