Can I select a lesser quality (bit rate) for my Orb TV recordings to decrease their file size?

You cannot configure the bit rate of your Orb TV recordings at this time. Depending on whether you use an MPEG-2 tuner or a software-based (non-MPEG-2) tuner in Orb, you will get different bit rates and resolutions for your Orb TV recordings which will result in different file sizes:

a)  For MPEG-2 tuners: whereas some PVR applications like Media Center offer multiple levels of recording quality, from "Fair" to "Best" each of which producing a different file size, Orb does not alter the DVR-MS file output by the tuner. Therefore, with an MPEG-2 tuner, you will get in Orb the highest recording quality, at a bit rate of roughly 7000 kbps, and a 640 x 480 resolution, thus producing approximately a 3GB file for one hour of recording.

b)  For software-based, non-MPEG-2 tuners: Orb does re-encode the raw video data into an ASF file, at a bit rate of roughly 1270 kbps, and a 320 x 240 resolution, thus producing a file of approximately 1GB for one hour of recording.

Note: there are several utilities (like “Crunchie”, see Crunchie Version 1.1 Released! on the Australian Media Center Community forum for more info) which can extract the MPEG streams from DVR-MS files and convert them to much smaller DivX AVI files.