The Daily Show and Colbert Report changing video capture tech for the switch to HDTV

That switch to HD for The Daily Show and Colbert Report has more results than just a sharper image of their star hosts, but also the problem of capturing HD versions of the news clips presented for skewering daily. To achieve the goal of archiving more than 30 HDTV channels daily, the show is upgrading from the bank of TiVos it previously relied on to SnapStream Server, the business option from the guys behind BeyondTV. No word on exactly how it's pulling in the channels, Dave Zatz suggests ClearQAM, Happauge's HD PVR or component capture cards as possibilities, but it looks like a couple of years of development have reduced starter costs from $6,000 to $2,000, just in case your YouTube clip show needs a little more oomph.

[h666 Posted Dec 24th 2009 2:08PM]

so now we'll get to see colbert's screwed up ear in hd!

[FarmerBob Posted Dec 25th 2009 1:30AM]

@h666

Colbert has been in HD for some time now. 4:3 HD, that is. Or the little (who am I kidding) ComedyCentralHD logo in the lower right has been lying to us. Stewart has been SD 4:3. So is it actual 16:9 HD or just up to 16:9 for Colbert and both for Stewart?

[calvin8714 Posted Dec 24th 2009 8:05PM]

great news, but bad news as well... still waiting for comedy central to come to time warner in cleveland...

[Jason Murray Posted Dec 25th 2009 10:01AM]

This might go some way to explaining why we've waited SOOO long for these shows to go HD...

[Ethan Posted Feb 3rd 2010 8:44AM]

@Jason Murray I think it might have something to do with that these shows only go on very short breaks too, and this stuff takes a while to do.