Recommended TV Tuner Cards, please

[Tevern]

I am new at this, but would like to be able to capture TV video to my hard disk and, on occasion create DVDs from it. Am running Windows 2000 on an AMD Athalon 1800+ processor with 1GB of memory and 2 120GB & 1 160GB 7200rpm hard drives.

I have purchased (but can still return) an AverTV Studio TV Tuner card, but am not impressed with the quality of the received video. I have a 9" TV next to my computer, and it gets a much better video off the same cable. I don't mind spending a couple of hundred for the card, if that's what it takes.

Would appreciate recommendations on TV Tuner cards, and software for creating DVDs.

Thanks for any help or advise you can offer.

[ImaWeTodd]

I have an aver card and have been pleased with the results. Are you just viewing TV or actually capturing? I capture / clean / burn to dvd. It looks quite good to me.

Here are some comments/opinons/experiences I have:

- Your monitor will be much less forgiving than the TV. Bad source will look bad.

- Your monitor colors are not the same as your TV. Be careful when comparing source on different devices

- I believe analog capture cards have can 3 important components (drivers, tuner, Ana2DigConverter). The better drivers give you more options, you can skip the tuner by using a S-VHS dec, many cards use the same ADC chips

- The aver card I have is quite generic and allows me to use many other sw packages. It was also cheap.

- If I wanted to watch tv on my monitor, I'd probably look into the ViewSonic NextVision products

[leebo]

ImaWeTodd breifly mentioned something that I think is pretty important in your case.

A computer monitor and a TV monitor display images very differently. Doing a side by side comparison is impossible.

What your device is doing is converting signals designed to be displayed on a TV monitor into signals for a computer monitor. It will not look great on your computer monitor.

If you can capture video and then play if out from your computer to the TV monitor, that will give you a much better idea of what quality the tuner card is capable of.

[Xtasy2002]

Visiontek Xtasy Everything

Does everything you want at high quality and is very affordable.

[bpjenn]

Nothing beats an ATI All-in-Wonder card, in my opinion. I've have used them for years and their current drivers and software works great!

[andkiich]

I second the ATI nomination.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use a VCR as the tuner and connect to your PC with composite because it will usually give you a better picture.
I third the nomination for ATI AIW,I have a AIW 7500 and use PowerVCRII to capture.

[FulciLives]

I have an AverTV Stereo capture card that I bought from CompUSA for $49.99 or something like that. I think it is mostly identical to the "Studio" version sans radio reception.

Anyways when I first got it I had the cable hooked up to a VCR and then the Video and Stereo Audio outputs conected to the capture card. The image was very clean and of high quality.

Then I thought I might want to capture on a timer and doing so would be easier I figured if I hooked the cable directly up to the cable card.

The quality of the image was UGLY and then some ...

Now I'm back to feeding it through the VCR and the image quality is most excellent and this is with a standard composite video cable (it is actually a S-VHS VCR but I don't have an extra S-Video cable and it looks mighty fine with the standard composite type cable).

I see no reason to replace the AverTV capture card UNLESS you want something other than AVI capture capabilities. For instance if you wanted to capture to DV for extensive editing then get a Canopus ACVC-100 or DataVideo DAC-100. If you want to capture direct to high-quality MPEG-2 then get a WinTV PVR 250 or the ATI RADEON AIW/VIVO cards or if you have the money and want MPEG-2 then the Canopus MV whatever it is called (although it is like $600 or so but it sounds like a fantastic capture device).

But nothing is really wrong with the AverTV and the AVI method unless you can't stand the utter slowness of software MPEG-2 encoding

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

*** EDIT ***
I just wanted to add that I've tried both HuffyUV captures as well as PICVideo MJPG captures. The quality is excellent either way and for saving HDD space I mostly use PICVideo MJPG at the 19 quality setting. At first I liked iuVCR best but after some experimenting I think VirtualVCR kicks ass with the way it can keep audio synch using the dynamic resample feature.

You have more than enough CPU power and HDD space to capture using HuffyUV so give it a try with a cable feed that uses a VCR for a tuner (or the video/audio outputs of a cable box) and try VirtualVCR. I think you will be surprised by the quality.

Also I would like to point out that MOST capture cards with built-in TV tuners (for RF cable connections) tend to have a poor quality tuner so most people use a VCR or a cable box that has video/audio outputs.

[DrWafer]

most of the cheap tv capture cards have the same chipset,connexand`s
bt878.
so in a sence they are all the same.
i had a chronos capture(bt878) for many months,now i have a winfastTV 2000XP(bt878)
they are identical in picture quality and capabilities.

im very happy with what i can do with them and i think that is not worth
to spend more money for anything else.

if you have a fast computer you can make real time mpeg2 capture with
theese cards and powerVCR.

[Tevern]

I want to thank each of you for your help and suggestions.

Last night I captured a movie of about 1 1/2 hours in length and was going to create a DVD with it -- then view with my DVD Player on my regular TV.

I used Adobe Preimer 6.5, and it crashed about 9 minutes into the process.

I used Ulead Movie Factory 2, and it crashed about 9 minutes into the process also.

Then I switched to Pinaccle Studio 8, with just a 15 segment of the captured segment, and it worked fine -- created all the DVD files. Then I started up the process with the whole movie, let it run an hour or so and went to bed -- expecting that it would be finished in the morning. This morning it was basically setting in the same place, and the CPU was only about 2% busy. I exited the program (no crashes).

Any suggestions on what program to use to convert the MPG files to the VOB files, and make the DVD image?

Thanks,
Ted

[Pepperkorn]

Use a VCR as the tuner and connect to your PC with composite because it will usually give you a better picture.
I third the nomination for ATI AIW,I have a AIW 7500 and use PowerVCRII to capture.

Now why didn't I think of that

Tevern I use Ulead DVD Workshop to author a DVD, a bit slow but the results are good without a steep learning curve.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Having 3 programs crash at the same point encoding sounds like a RAM or OS problem,before encoding reboot your PC and run scandisk.Although both of your programs(Studio & MF2) are notorious for encoding problems you might try TMPGEnc DVD Author or Ulead Videostudio .

[FulciLives]

I want to thank each of you for your help and suggestions.

Last night I captured a movie of about 1 1/2 hours in length and was going to create a DVD with it -- then view with my DVD Player on my regular TV.

I used Adobe Preimer 6.5, and it crashed about 9 minutes into the process.

I used Ulead Movie Factory 2, and it crashed about 9 minutes into the process also.

Then I switched to Pinaccle Studio 8, with just a 15 segment of the captured segment, and it worked fine -- created all the DVD files. Then I started up the process with the whole movie, let it run an hour or so and went to bed -- expecting that it would be finished in the morning. This morning it was basically setting in the same place, and the CPU was only about 2% busy. I exited the program (no crashes).

Any suggestions on what program to use to convert the MPG files to the VOB files, and make the DVD image?

Thanks,
Ted

Ted ...

How did you capture?

Did you capture to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 or did you capture to one of the AVI codecs such as HuffyUV or PICVideo MJPG?

Also what program did you use to capture with and and what resolution and frame rate etc.

With this kind of information I and/or others might be able to offer some help

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Markus_Karma]

I wrote this in anoher post...

... " can also try the TMPGEnc DVD Author, they claims u can author ur mpeg2 and dont re-encode to VOB.

I author 1 hr of mpeg2 and then clic in "create folder", then TMPGEnc DVD takes about 7-8 minutes to create VIDEO_TS folder, i think these 7-8 min are used to "normalize" or so the mpeg2 files as long as convert it in VOB...."

Also remember what ur card its inside in a fancy signal noise generator, yes, its ur comp chasis.

So i have some cheap recomendations...

1.- Winfast 2000XP in 2 flavors:
Deluxe Edition Expert Edition
Chipset Fusion 878A CX2388X
Video ADC 8 bit 10 bit

2.- Leadtek TVPro, this one have a external conectors case, so u can avoid these signal noise..

3.- Leadtek Cinema

Just my $0.02

[Gritz]

Using my VCR as a TV Tuner sounds interesting. At the risk of sounding dumb what would be decent software to use with my capture card to display TV programs on my LCD screen? OS is WinXP. I'm not concerned with the capture since this system will be installed in a travel trailer.

[ImaWeTodd]

Using my VCR as a TV Tuner sounds interesting. At the risk of sounding dumb what would be decent software to use with my capture card to display TV programs on my LCD screen? OS is WinXP. I'm not concerned with the capture since this system will be installed in a travel trailer.

Although it is frowned upon to hijack a topic. I'd thought I'd comment because the VCR as Tuner was mentioned above. Interestingly, many people find the composite actually gives a better picture than s-video (although the tuner in an svhs deck may be better). As far as programs, DScaler has loads of fans.

[Gritz]

ImaWeTodd,
Thanks for the info on DeScaler ....... just downloaded. Appreciate.

[Markus_Karma]

Interestingly, many people find the composite actually gives a better picture than s-video

I guess this happend cuz composite impedance in the cord its native for the VCR output signal... just a guess.

[rkr1958]

Any suggestions on what program to use to convert the MPG files to the VOB files, and make the DVD image?

Thanks,
Ted

I too have an Aver TV Tuner / Capture card. I've had it for a week and a half now. I got it basicly to capture cartoons and make DVDs for my son and to capture (record) other TV programs. I just successfully made a DVD containing two epsiodes of "Clifford The Big Red Dog", two epsiodes of "Dora The Explorer" and two epsiodes of "Blue's Clues". Here is what I did.

1. Captured at "Best" Setting (Using the Scheduler). (352 x 240, 3200 kbits/s (Video), MPEG-II, 224 kbits/s (Audio)).
2. Used TMPGEnc Plus, MPEG Tools to Multiplex the captured video. <The next step was possible without doing this but much much more cumbersome and time consuming>
3. Used TMPGEnc Plus, MPEG Tools to cut out the parts of the captured video I didn't want.
4. Used Dazzle DVD Complete to Author w/menus (i.e., build) the DVD VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders. I found that DVD Complete reencoded the audio but left the video alone.
5. Used RecordNow to burn the DVD.
6. Played it tonight for my son. <I only let him watch one epsoide (30-minutes) of the 3-hour "CARTOON COMPILATION DVD".

By the way, the resulting DVD looks much better on my TV, because it's lower resolution, than on my computer screen, which still is acceptable.