best tv tuner software

[trugamer79]

Hello I just bought a sabrent usb 2.0 tuner to play my ps2 games and 360 games on my laptop. I use component av cables to play. I don't like the quality of windvd dvr software. It makes my games look dark. Is there any better software out there that can make my games look descent on my laptop? Also is s-video out better than a/v component?

[machf]

I suppose that's "composite video" rather than component? Or do the XBox 360 and PS2 really have component outputs?
The video quality goes from lower to higher as follows:
lowest: RF video The old consoles that used an internal RF modulator and a switch box to send a signal into your TV set via the antenna connector did this, as well as VCRs connected to the TV set via the antenna input. The signal is modulated to duplicate a TV station signal, meaning that audio and video will be mixed together, the audio modulated in FM and the video in AM, and for example in a NTSC system using channel 2 the signal will go from 54 to 60 MHz.
slightly better: composite video. This is what you get when you use an A/V cable with RCA connectors (usually, a yellow one for the video, red for the right channel audio and white for the left channel audio) connected to the A/V inputs of your TV. Here, the audio and video signals are being transmitted separately, and they are using baseband instead of a channel frequency (meaning that the audio will go from 0 to ~20 kHz and the video from 0 to ~5-6 MHz. The video is said to be "composite" because the luminance (B&W-compatible) signal and the chrominance (color info) one are still mixed together and transmitted over the same wire.
better: S-video (or super-video). Here you use an S-video cable for the video with a 4-pin mini-DIN connector. Two of the wires are used for the luminance signal, and the other two for the chrominance one (one of each pair is the ground line for its corresponding signal). Still, both the luminance and chrominace signals have been derived from the original RGB signals, and have to be processed by the circuitry on the inside of the TV to restore the original RGB signals in order to "light up" the corresponding pixels on the screen.
best: component video (or RGB video). Here you use a cable with three BNC connectors, a red, a green and a blue one, that transmit the original red, green and blue components of the picture to the corresponding inputs on the TV set (if it has them). Studio (analog) cameras use this type of connection to transmit their image to the control room, as well as computers to connect with VGA monitors. The sync signal can sometimes be transmitted with the green component, or you can use two additional lines (one for horizontal and one for vertical sync). Modern (domestic) DVD players and TVs use a variation of this, where instead of the R, G and B components they use Y (luminance), Pb and Pr components, which are derived from R, G and B with a simple transformation matrix, with the sync being transmitted with the Y signal, and RCA connectors instead of BNC ones.

[redwudz]

How are you getting the game video to the laptop? I'm assuming composite as I don't imagine you are using the tuner to convert them to your video input.

For a good software player, you might try the freeware VLC Media Player. It has many adjustments and you should be able to adjust brightness, etc., fairly easily. It will also play just about any video format out there without needing installed codecs. Well worth having for other uses, also. It also plays DVDs.

And if your gamebox has S-video out and your PCMCIA video card will accept that S-video, use it. Much better that composite. S-video separates the video brightness and the color, making for a better picture.

As an additional note: Most videos will look darker on a computer monitor than they will on a TV. If so, just adjust the brightness with the software player settings.