Good suggestions on Laptop Capture

[mohammedomer1]

Hi,
I have been a vcdhelp.com visitor for about 4 years on the safer side. Anyways, I have read capturing, ripping and editing guides from this site (and I thank everybody for posting them) for a long time first when I bought my first cd-rw about 4 years ago: a creative 8x4x32 for 400 CAD ! (talk about depreciation!) I recently had had the all-in-wonder 9000 and the 9700 (both pro) and used them for capturing in 352x240 MPEG-2 and converted to vcd or svcd. But I recently acquired a laptop: an emachines M5310. here are the specs:
XP2400+
1gig ddr-ram
ATI radeon video (128 MB)
24x10x32/10x cdrw-dvd rom
15.4 widescreen
60 gig 5400 hdd (seagate)3 USB 2.0
4-pin firewire
I am a huge fan of watching TV on my desktops (up until I had them) but now I have this laptop. What I would like some suggestions are how to watch tv on my laptop and record Simpsons and that 70's show (my favourites)
I tried the following:
ATI TV usb and Hauppage WINTV USB and some K-world usb 2.0 capture/tv tuner crap...picture quality was not so great (i would give 6.5 max out of a 10 rating) My laptop has a mic IN and a headphones OUT only not a LINE IN...that effectively excludes a lot of usb solutions
So, can somebody recommend a good firewire/USB/PCMCIA card that I can use to watch TV and record some stuff off. I have searched the Capture Cards listing (which is very comprehensive IMO) and see that the ADVC-100 has the best rating so far...But it kinda stretches my wallet.
I also searched for the terratec PCMCIA but not much help there.. I am trying the Moviebox DV with the mainconcept mpeg encoder 1.4 (8.5 out of 10) but I think there are better solutions out there.
Can somebody help me here?
Thanks

[Will Hay]

I'm trying to do the same as you, but having major problems.
I have a ThinkPad, a firewire drive, a PCMCIA firewire card and a firewire 30gb HDD.
Things are not going well.
These might make interesting reading, if only to give you an idea of the pitfalls I've found.

No. 1 not good

No. 2 no better

No. 3 worse still

have been a vcdhelp.com visitor for about 4 years on the safer side

I'm still testing to find a solution, feel free to check out my posts for updates
Will Hay

[mohammedomer1]

What PCMCIA firewire card do you have ?

[grossjamesh]

The Hauppauge WINTV PVR USB2.0 is very good, has HW mpeg encoding, and will allow viewing and capture of DVD quality video.

I have used this for many years and am very satisifed.

[mohammedomer1]

grossjamesh, does that require a "LINE IN" or it has a volume over USB solution like hauppage WINTV has, the later drivers for wintv allow volume to be input from the USB and doesnot need the line in to be connected to a soundcard, which is good in my case since my laptop doesnot have a line in..but since the quality was very poor and a/v sync issues, i returned it...but i have been having good luck with the Pinnacle DV moviebox, very, very good quality like capturing from an All-in-wonder...

[Superbee9001]

HI mohammedomer1. I was looking to purchase either a 9000AIW or a 9700AIW do you have them available still?

I was also wondering how difficult is it to go from using those cards to using a laptop to do your DV editing etc? Thanks.,

[fairbay2000]

Try this external USB 2.0 TV tuner unit with video capturing features, http://www.amberycorp.com/exusb20tvtuv.html

This unit can let you connect to your laptop 's usb 2.0 port for TV & video watching and video capturing/recording too.

It can be used also as a stand alone unit by connecting it to any desktop monitor directly without running a computer for watching TV, DVD movies and video game playing.

Cheers !

[The village idiot]

My opinions on the advc-100 problem are given in the above threads too, so I won't comment on that....

I also have a Pinnacle Bungee DVD that works fairly well for in computer viewing, on your laptop it should work just fine. When I bought it, it was on closeout for $50USD, and a good bargain at that price. If you buy any of the other external devices, make sure that they have a stereo audio tuner.

[andkiich]

My opinion on the whole subject is that laptops are a bad idea for any seriously heavy computer work. Getting/having a laptop for capturing anything, to me, is a bad idea.

I could build(and have) a bare bones machine for video capture/conversion for under $500.

I have a laptop, and it works great for stuff I have to do at the office, but I would not want to go through the headache of trying to get all that stuff working correctly with a laptop.

[themichael]

for laptops try this

http://www.1beyond.com/products/laptops.asp

be prepared, they start at US$ 3000!!!