I recently reviewed SnapStream's Beyond TV 4.3, which among its large feature set includes the ability to save (or re-encode) recordings in a wide variety of formats. The review contained just a few before-and-after screenshot examples, but I actually ran a number of other High Definition encoding tests. I thought the results would be useful to those of you trying to decide which format is best for HD recording. Why is it important to worry about compression options for the HD video file format? The answer boils down to how much money you want to spend on hard drive space and how much content you want to have available without having to resort to archiving to DVD. OTA HD tuner cards generally output MPEG 2 in Transport Stream format that requires an average of 10 gigabytes of hard drive space per hour of recorded programming. At 10GB per hour, a 400GB hard drive is going to fill up with HD recordings in about 40 hours. Considering that the average TV viewer watches 17 hours of TV per week, you would fill your hard drive with HD content in a little over 2 weeks!

Toms Hardware Guide