ATI TV wonder vs. WinTV PVR

[bidiak]

I'm Building a new machine and up until recently have been using Ati TV Wonder card to do my capturing. What I want to be able to do is capture DVD quality movies off of TV, edit them and then bring them to work where we have a DVD burner (both Mac and PC based). My issues with my ATI card have mainly been with encoding quality and size (max 320x240 capture size regardless of file type) as well as little compatibility issues with windows XP. Is it at all possible that with a better equipped machine (faster processor more RAM) I'll have less problems or should I look to buy a card that has hardware based encoding (like a WinTV PVR)?

Here are the specs on the new machine:

P4 2.4GHz
1GB RAM
120 GB HD
Built in USB 2 and 1394

[zumran]

I tried both setups and ati gives better picture than hauppauge. It can capture in mpeg2 and let you burn straight to dvd, my machine is less than what you have and I am very satisfied with ati aiw 7500. Wintv has several issues with their drivers and software, if you have p4, than hardware or software encoding is not an issue. My software encoding with ati mmc 8.5 has better capture quality than hardware mpeg. In ati you can make resolution better by hooking up your tv with s video.
Just for example I have attached a still pic from live tv today

[zumran]

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[macleod]

My issues with my ATI card have mainly been with encoding quality and size (max 320x240 capture size regardless of file type) as well as little compatibility issues with windows XP

You should be able to cap with that card at 720x480. Do not use the ATI drivers, first off. Buy a copy of powervcrII and do a hack that will enable to to cap above the stated resolutions (do a search for powervcr). You can also buy a copy of IUVCR and cap avi for conversation later at 720x480.

I dont use the sourcenet(or whatever they are called) drivers as it caused me a lot of pain. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that you can cap at way above the 352x240 limit using your ATI card (I have the pci ATI-tv wonder)

[bidiak]

Thanks Mcleod, thats what I was hoping. where can I get info on the hacks needed to get powervcr 2 to capture at that size?

[SHS]

With the WinTV PVR 250 you don't need a fast system and dose capture at 720x480 with ATI card you need a fast system and I wouldn't count on capture at 720x480 with ATI card or any AVI capture few few get lucky with 720x480

[Bradskey]

ATI TV Wonder also works great with Intervideo WinDVR (very similar to PowerVCR). They just came out with WinDVR 3, and its very nice. I get great capture quality on an Athlon 1.2 GHz 256 SDR and an Athlon XP 1700+ 512 DDR at high resolutions and high bitrates.

[macleod]

do a search for powervcr or powervcrII on this site. The post was from last year sometime. All it is is directions to go into your registry and change the presets to whatever resolution you want it to be (I use 352x480, which wasn't one of the original resolutins in the out of the box powervcrII)

[Jayhawk]

I capture with the Hauppage PVR250 (hardware encoder onboard). I'm running XP and have experience no driver problems at all. Am capturing at full DVD (720 X 480), VBR up to 8000, with zero dropped frames. The load on the machine is so light you can use it for other things while capturing. Not bad for a $100 card. The output looks great and feeds right into MovieFActory2 for authoring (if required).