AvertTV Stereo vs I/O Magic

[gowrygabriev]

Hi,

After reading this forum I decided the best card for
capturing laser discs and VHS to VCD or SVCD was
the AVerTV Stereo, I/O Magic, or the Hauppauge
Win TV Go.

I purchased the AverTV Stereo and installed the btwincap
drivers. I have the following issues though:

1. The software that came with the card doesn't work
anymore Also, DScaler locks up my computer
when I run it. DScaler worked fine with the AverTV
drivers. However, the software that came with btwincap
does work.

2. Picture quality--Picture quality seems to be just ok. Even
just watching TV through the SVideo input, there seems
to be noise. Is this normal?

I've read that the I/O Magic is supposed to have really good
picture quality. So I'd thought of returning this to compusa and
getting the I/O Magic instead. However, the I/O Magic doesn't
have stereo which I really want.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[thegig]

Do a search for Aver here in the forum, there is some discussion about different steps/options you can take.

[taliyev]

I have AverTV Stereo. I also have tried btwincap driver... I guess we all go through the same search.... My recommendation is to use driver supplied by manufacturer. Just get the latest copy of it from their web site. DScaler gives the best picture quality if you want to watch TV. I’ve also bought Power VCR II just to try and see if it would make any real difference in my life…... No biggie… The only thing that bothers me in the manufacturer’s driver is the fact that I cannot use custom resolution formats when I capture video….. Power VCR II allows me to go to custom resolution but what I get is not what I would expect… Anyway it looks like it does not worth it to do custom resolution…. I think that most likely you/we will not be able to get much better results with any of available cards. What we get with Aver is probably pretty close to the best in this kind of hardware….

[LanceSteel]

gowrygabriev, I got the AverTv Stereo about two months ago and this is what I do...

Since I'm of the cap to AVI then convert to mpeg2 using tmpeg camp, I use the btwincap drivers and virtualdub to capture which allows me to use custom video formats. I think the noise issue you are dealing with is normal. I've tried the tuner, composite and s-video ports and found that the s-video port is the best for noisey captures. The composite port looks good (no noise) when the signal is clean.

If you want stereo sound just input the audio to the audio-in on your sound card.

[gowrygabriev]

Thank you all for replies...I plan on
doing some caps this weekend. I'll
do a search and read about some
more AverTV setups. Anyone know
if the iulab drivers are better/worse/
the same as the btwincap drivers?

I'll likely try to capture some to AVI
straight using virtual dub at 752 X 480.
I'm not sure I have enough diskspace
atm...might have to get another drive

Who knows...maybe I'll cap straight to
MJPeg...does it look much worse? Or maybe
Divx/Pro?

Thanks