Pinnacle PCTV Studio Rave Card - Poor Quality?

[Blueboy808]

Hi,

I bought this card just to experiment with video capturing. I have hooked it up using the RF input on the card and an arial coming straight from the second output of my Sky Reciever (cable). The resulting picture is really bad! I mean it's grainy the colours are awful, it's like it has alot of interference, yet when I plug it into a normal TV using the same lead, the picture is perfect.

Can someone tell me if this is the just the poor quality of the card, or is this the case with all capture cards. I was going to upgrade once I was used to the capturing methods, but this seems pointless if the results are like this.

Thanks for your help

[Gutcher]

It would also depend on your video card. What kind of video card do you have besides PCTV.

[Blueboy808]

It's an Nvidia Vanta. It's not the greatest but it seems to work ok when playing back any other video media. The capture doesn't hang up or drop frames, but it's like - well I guess it's one of those - you'd have to see it - type things. But it's like it's an awful signal u know?

Plus I just tried hooking up the scart from a video to the composite on the card and I can't get a picture. Do you know if you can do this?

Thanks.

[markvints]

I have this same capture card and cannot complain about the results. I'm not sure whether you're talking about TV capture or camcorder capture, but both work for me. Check your settings.

Mark.

[Blueboy808]

I've checked all the settings - maybe I'm missing something. How do you "tune" in a composite arial? I thought they were like aux channels on a televison and broadcast on 1 frequency. Again - I have a scart lead from a video recorder going into the composite socket. Has anyone achieved any results with this. If so, I assume they had the input set on composite, but did they have the dearching for stations on Antenna or cable and do you have to search for stations? The problem with the grainy picture I think is a weak signal, tho the TV seems fine. All the settings seem OK - I just cant figure this one out. Any help is really appreciated.