Best (cheapest) TV Tuner Card for playing Playstation

[bubernak]

Not sure if I'm in the right forum or not, but I'm looking to add a cheap TV Tuner PCI card to allow my son to hook up his Playstation to his PC. Ease of installation is another plus. He's running Windows XP on a faily new Dell E510 3.0 GHz PC with a 18 inch LCD display. One that I'd seen was the Hauppauge WinTV-GO TV Tuner Capture Card. I realize its old, but for $16 shipped seemed like a decent card. Any suggestions or other things I should be considering? Thanks, Mike

[edDV]

A tuner card will allow recording of the Playstation but the computer will cause too much delay to play the games while watching the computer monitor.

For fast play you need a TV or a computer monitor that will directly accept the Playstation output (e.g. LCD-TV or computer monitor with a TV input).

[bubernak]

Thanks for that tip! I wouldn't have thought the PC would have done anything with the output from the playstation except pass it through to the monitor, so I wouldn't have expected any delay. His monitor has the standard video input, DVI input as well as a couple USB inputs...any cabling I could get that would allow him to hookup the playstation up to that? Thanks

[edDV]

Thanks for that tip! I wouldn't have thought the PC would have done anything with the output from the playstation except pass it through to the monitor, so I wouldn't have expected any delay. His monitor has the standard video input, DVI input as well as a couple USB inputs...any cabling I could get that would allow him to hookup the playstation up to that? Thanks

Which model Playstation?

[bubernak]

Playstation 1

[edDV]

Composite video and audio probably. No VGA or DVI-D.

[yoda313]

but you're going to have lag with capturing on a computer from a video game system. You're probably either better off getting a settop dvd recorder and then rip it to the pc to edit or do the standard of hooking up to a vcr and then dubbing that to any old capture card (the cheapest you could find for vcr dubbing). Then you'd have to playback the tape and capture it after you have played your game.

OR I suppose as an alternative you could hook it up to a vcr to play live on a tv and have the output from the vcr go to your capture card - that way you'd have realtime playing on the tv through the vcr and the capture would come out of the vcr. Would that be a good alternative? Because I don't think any capture cards are good at live videogame capturing that I know of.

[bubernak]

yoda313 - I'm not trying to "capture" any of the gaming video, just be able to use the monitor to "play" the games on instead of a TV. Does that make any difference?

edDV - I wasn't sure what the response "Composite video and audio probably. No VGA or DVI-D." was meant to indicate?

Thanks

[mats.hogberg]

It means it can't be connected to a PC monitor, and a capture card will introduce more or less delay in the picture making game play impossible. Forget the idea. It wont work. There are some hardware gadgets that will allow it, but I think it'd be cheaper (and better) to buy a new TV instead.

/Mats

[edDV]

I agree with what Mats. said. A TV is the best solution.

Alternate is to return the computer monitor and buy one that also accepts composite video and audio.

Like this computer monitor that also has a tuner and video inputs.
http://www.nextag.com/NEC-MultiSync-LCD2335WXM-23-69943521/prices-html
http://www.nextag.com/lcd-monitor-with-tv-tuner/search-html

The other approach is to get a LCD-TV that also has computer inputs like these. These are a TV first but have a computer input.
http://www.nextag.com/lcd-tv/search-html

[deckard8]

I run an Xbox through an old PCTV rave using video composite input & Powervcr II software for my daughter - PC is an old Duron 1.6, no delay, not crystal clear, but perfectly playable.

[edDV]

I run an Xbox through an old PCTV rave using video composite input & Powervcr II software for my daughter - PC is an old Duron 1.6, no delay, not crystal clear, but perfectly playable.

Most of this depends on the display card and how overlay and RAMDAC is done. The path to DVI-D is likely to have longer processing delay than than VGA.

[dphirschler]

Try one of the Playstation emulators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emulators#Sony_systems


Darryl

[deckard8]

Most of this depends on the display card and how overlay and RAMDAC is done. The path to DVI-D is likely to have longer processing delay than than VGA.

ATI 9600 pro.

[dphirschler]

You could get this, which comes with the cable.

http://www.linuxplay.com/about.html

The connection on the back of the ps2 is the same as the Playstation. But I don't guarantee it to work. However, I remember back in the day, that developers had their Playstation connected to VGA monitors. It could have been a special Playstation (indeed it likely was, weren't the Dev PSXs blue?) with a special connection on the back for VGA. But I bet they had the same ordinary connection on the back and they used this special cable.


Darryl

[dphirschler]

Woops... just read this:

The monitor cable adaptor is exclusively for use with the PlayStation® 2 console, and cannot be used with the PS oneTM or the PlayStation® console.

Darryl