capturing digital cable TV

[scsmith]

I recently let my cable company talk me into digital cable. I would like to be able to record a few TV shows to VCD, and I thought I'd try the digital cable and see what the quality's like. My current setup is awful, though, and I'll need a new capture card. Since my hard drive space is limited, and so is my budget, I definitely want one that will do MPEG compression on the fly, preferably for $120 or less.

At the moment I'm using a Video Highway Xtreme I bought in '98, and the software is so godawful that I think they deserved to go out of business. Even VirtualDub is having some problems with it. I can't get its RCA input to work - it never really has - which leaves me with composite cables from the cable box to the card (since the box for some reason has its S-video jack disabled, GRRR). I'm getting pretty distinct scan lines watching at 640x480. (I know that's not the res for VCD, it's just an observation.)

So... I've been looking at ATI's cards, but there seems to be a general opinion here that their software leaves a lot to be desired. Right now my choice would be the Pinnacle studio PCTV pro. Their site also lists the Studio AV version 7, which looks intriguing but doesn't seem to be available yet.

Comments? Suggestions?

[x2pacalypsehalx]

suggestion- cancel digi cable

reason- most capture cards only alow 125 channels for capping while i think digi cable the main channel like 4 is around 150 so i think your setup wont work...also some dude tried it with like 5 diff cards and no luck.. get sattelite.

[SHS]

What we to lazy to hook up the S-Video or RCA jack and use the box to change channel that way?.
I have DirceTV sattelite and WinTV-PVR the only thing is have a hard time making scheduling being only have one input channel so you perset the channel before hand that all.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SHS on 2001-10-06 17:11:39 ]</font>

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On 2001-10-06 17:06:04, SHS wrote:
what we to lazy to hook up the S-Video and use the retome?.
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You mean use the remote right? I capture all day long on s-video and digital cable. Channels 311 to 389. When you use s-video you use the tuner on the cable box to change the channels not the tuner in the video capture card.

[Anonymous65]

No matter if you have satellite or digital cable, you have to record via the composite or S-video input of the capture card. You can of course use Ch3 (USA) or a UHF channel (Europe) to capture, but you will not get stereo audio. So, the tuner is useless. You can go with a super cheap video capture card without a tuner ($20 if you can find them) or go with a WinTV card type that does have the tuner, but use the composite or S-video inputs instead. If you need a new graphics card, then ATI or Matrox would be the way to go. Or, you could get a hardware mpeg encoder card, starting around $100 for the PV-231 card (VCD capture only).

[SHS]

Yes next I mean use the cable or satellite box remote.

[scsmith]

I agree that the TV tuner feature is useless. I'm using the cable box to tune the channels, but I won't be able to use S-video unless I pry part of the box off. I don't know why they sealed off that output, but they did.

Skittelsen, I'm not familiar enough with the different cards to follow you. What's the PV 231? (Couldn't find it anywhere in the list.) I don't need a new video card, so a PCI card that will do MPEG compression is what I want.

[SHS]

scsmith the web site for the PV 231 is http://www.provideo.com.tw/
Well the TV tuner feature is not that useless I still getting AIR TV where I live hehehe so it has it usage.