[PaulHarald]

Thanks people, I'm still learning. I have some more philosophical questions: My TV signal (regular cable TV, not digital TV) will, in all likelihood, have come from a digital source nonetheless, so I am in effect capturing a digital broadcast transitted in analogue.

I have learned that NICAM is 'digital', but as it is decoded at the user end, it is broadcast in analogue format, not digital - it only becomes 'digital' after it has been decoded by my TV and/or DVD recorder (thanks to Inabsentia at Dime).

So now my main question is this: How compressed is the audio at max in the lineage from cameras and mics to the TV set in my living room? In other words: The digital source, produced by the TV company, is probably better than 256kbps AC3. Or is it?

Like FM versus DAB: DAB is usually 128kbps but FM is not that compressed even if it was recorded digitally in the first place. If a radio station does a high bitrate digital audio recording, and air it on DAB radio it will be compressed to 128kbps along the way. Not good. When they air the same show on regular FM it's better, it's "FM compressed" but that's not that much.

So if we compare this to TV-land: Is a DIGITAL TV stream (audio) usually 256kbps? Or is it better? And for the non-digital TV with Nicam stereo: May the NICAM stereo signal be less compressed? In that case, the freq analysis of my LPCM audio capture would look better. Why would standalone recorders have the options of 384kbps AC3 and the best ones even LPCM - the user manual says "for recording uncompressed high quality audio..."

It would all boil down to how the TV network operates, and I guess there will be different answers from different countries etc. I think I'll do some freq analysis myself now, and check it out. And maybe even send an e-mail to NRK and SVT.