TV Capturing?

[jaybert]

I just want a basic tv capture card with both coax and RCA inputs as well so I can capture from my ReplayTV. I would like to spend about $50 or less and I'd be running in win2k for now and winXP when its out. Thanks!

 

[CandyKid]

for win2k and under 50 bucks i got a card made by phoebe called tv master with fm and remote control.

It uses the same hardware as most tv tuners in it's class but it's software in my opinion is crap. But luckily it comes with WDM drivers for win2k which allow you to use it with other software.

So! Buy that card and get a program called ShowShifter and the final result is good quality video with PVR timeshifting functions and remote control interface.

 

[jaybert]

i dont want to use the software to work like a replaytv...i have a replaytv I want to hook up to the tv capture card and rip the .mpgs of shows I have stored on the player to make room. Does the card you mention have RCA inputs?

 

[CandyKid]

It has a composite aka RCA in for the video the audio must be done with your sound card but it comes with a cable that connects the line in of your sound card to the capure card and off the cable a rca sound cable is attached... kind of hard to explain but it basically connects your card to the sound card and also allows you to plug in a rca sound line

the software does allow you to capture it allows you to choose video codecs etc to get the compression you desire.

 

[CandyKid]

god dude i'm really helping you out... heh if you just want high quality video capturing from your replay tv but don't want to add tv tuner capabilities to your computer pinnacle makes a card called dc10 go to www.pinnaclesys.com and look under home products then it's dc10 it's like the second product...

Anyway it's 70 bux if you look on pricewatch and it offers really good analog video capture for the price range.

Pinnacle is a leader in this field and instead of putting on a tv tuner and using mediocre video capturing hardware they left out the tv tuner part and upped the video capturing hardware and kept the price low.

 

[jaybert]

great, thanks a bunch...i really appreciate the help. I dont want to buy some card and then have it give really bad quality rips. I want to have as high quality Iron Chef rips as possible

 

[kgraeme]

When the ReplayTV records to MPEG on the drive it compresses the video. Then going from the TV to the video card over RCA will reduce quality again, and the video card will then recapture and recompress the video again. This is called generational loss.

Compression causes a loss in quality.
RCA cables cause a loss in quality.

The loss in quality from your ReplayTV to the TV screen isn't noticed because the TV has very poor resolution, and is very forgiving of on-screen artifacts. But it does add up. The more generational loss, the poorer the image even on a TV.

The only way to avoid the generational loss is to make the first generation MPEG be the one on your computer hard drive, and the only way to do that is to take the ReplayTV out of the equation. One easy way to do this would be to upgrade one of your systems with generic video to an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder. This card has the same features as ReplayTV but for your computer. Just plug the cable TV into the video card and set the record time and quality.

If you really, really want to keep the ReplayTV, you could get a card like the Radeon 64MB VIVO (Video In, Video Out), or possibly one of the ASUS GeForce2/3 cards with video in. These cards would do exactly what you had described. They don't have tuners so you have to plug RCA into them. Then they can record to MPEG whatever is coming in. I know the ATI card can even be set to record at a certain time. It can't set the channel, but if you have a spare VCR that is connected you could pre-set the channel on that. The only loss with this setup will be from the RCA cables. However, with a ReplayTV the video will suffer from generational loss.

So what are you planning on doing with the MPEG files once you get them on the computer? Make a VCD perhaps? Those files get pretty big to just keep around.

 

[kgraeme]

BTW, the DC10 isn't compatible with Win2K.