Video Blaster Digital VCR Owners, Please Post Your Reviews:

[X4]

Alright im looking at getting this card.
I want to record TV for later watching, like TIVO (I read/heard this works great for that).

I also want to edit the .mpg, cut out the commercials and record the .mpg to SVCD/VCD. (I read/heard this doesnt work to well).

Is this still the standings for this card?

Anyone who has this card please post your experiences with it.
PS - Please input what your video source is also (Cable, Digital Cable, Satillite, ect.)

- Thanks...

[Roginator]

I have the card. Some people think this card works great for TIVO-like recording and watching later. Maybe I have a dud card, but my picture is awful.

Captures are another matter. You can get some great looking captures. I wouldn't go back to my old STB PCTV BT848 card. Editing is a convoluted process, but can be done -- either by re-encoding or getting a sophisticated MPEG-2 editing program. I run my analog cable into my VCR and then from that into the Creative card using RCA cables. I've found the signal is somewhat cleaner than using a standard cable TV cable. It may have something to do with the loose nature of cable connections or maybe a ground loop problem.

The only glitch that I've found in converting these videos to other formats is this -- if your signal drops during capture, or you try to capture from a Macrovisioned tape, the audio and video get out of sync. The only simple fix I've found for this is a program called PVAStrumento.exe. It looks for bad spots and aligns the video with the audio. Sometimes if the problem areas are large, it will just delete that part. Sometimes it cuts out critical scenes...eek! Fortunately, this program is rarely needed with normal capture from cable since the signal is fairly dependable.