Is this a faulty capture card?

[slow]

Hello all,

I've recently bought an Avermedia DVD EZMaker 7 USB capture card. I'm not entirely sure but I think it might be faulty, but as I don't have much experience in this sort of thing I thought I'd see what others make of the problem.

When I capture video there's an area at the bottom middle of the image that's blacked out. I've tried via svideo and composite using a DVD-recorder and a WDTV Live box as the source, but the artifact is still there. I used VirtualVCR to capture with, but it displays the same in VLC when I go to open capture device. The artifact is also present when capturing with VirtualDub. I've attached some screenshots showing what I'm referring to. The screenshot of the DVD-recorder's menu was done via svideo and the black area shows up clearer on that (I tinkered with the contrast/brightness and saturation).

Please let me know what you think the problem might be.

[usually_quiet]

It isn't unusual for there to be defects on the four edges of a picture, as broadcast. The defects are usually not seen when watching TV because they are in the "overscan" part of the picture, which TVs are designed to hide from us.

[slow]

Thanks for replying. So would the defects be coming from the analogue sources rather than the card?

[jman98]

Thanks for replying. So would the defects be coming from the analogue sources rather than the card?

Yes.

Broadcasters have to do this because most consumers don't know anything about it or how overscan has hidden it from them over the years. If most consumers could see how their TV feed really looks around the edges, they would completely flip out and blame their TV provider for being "crap" and nobody would ever be satisfied with their TV service.

[slow]

Thanks for the explanation, you've both saved me the trouble of returning the card for an exchange and then finding the same "problem" again.