Need advice on a replacement for Dazzle Hollywood DV bridge

[njahnke]

Hey, looks like this is the place to ask this. If not, I apologize.

In the summer of 2002 I bought the Hollywood DV Bridge from Dazzle, and I'm pretty sure I have a typical model, because I've experienced pretty much everything others have reported here (the poor grounding resulting in an unusable product when the stability of the electricity supply is less than optimal, the inability to capture anything off of a VHS tape that is less than perfect in quality, etc), as well as something else.

I've noticed that when I capture anything, the Bridge will cut off the bottom about 12 or 13% of brightness from the picture. I can go ahead and correct for the brightness discrepancy after I capture, but by then it's too late - a lot of data has been lost, and for what I do (capturing video game speed runs), it's more severe than if it were standard TV programming or something. I think the cable companies depend on this difference in signals (video game vs. TV) to deliver their compressed digital cable services, as I can see similar loss of definition on digital cable, especially dark areas, things most people probably wouldn't notice.

But don't get me wrong, this with the DV bridge is much worse. I've looked high and low for some kind of solution to no avail. I suppose I could buy a hugely expensive box to "preamp" the brightness before it goes into the bridge, but do I really want to lose the top end of the brightness spectrum that way? It seems like it would be easier to just buy a new capture device that doesn't have the problem, and solve the other two (grounding and poor handling of poor signals) in the process.

What's worse, this seems to be a common problem with capture devices of all kinds - several of my colleagues have also attempted to capture these video games (Metroid Prime being the primary one), and were greeted with the same "brightness problem." They were using capture cards, other Dazzle products, etc. A correction of about 10% was necessary in VirtualDub in every case. Unfortunately, though the result will appear to the user to be the proper brightness, a great deal of definition will have been lost due to the capture device incorrectly interpreting where the bottom end of the brightness spectrum is. It's so bad, I might as well capture with composite.

So here's my main question: what do you experts recommend I buy that captures colors true to the source, and not over 10% darker than they should be? I'm not concerned with price or compatibility - I will do whatever it takes to get the best quality capture. I also have some test captures I can link you to if you'd like a visual aid to help explain the situation.

Thank you in advance.

[njahnke]

Above is a comparison between the DV Bridge's results (left) with a screen capture of the same game playing in an emulator (meaning it's impossible for it to be lossy) (right). I.e., I want the images on the left to look as much like the images on the right as possible.

The top left image is off of a VHS tape and the bottom left image is captured directly from the console via s-video.

Notice how much definition is lost when the device drops the bottom 10% or so of the brightness spectrum (the images on the left above are post 10% or so brightness hike in VirtualDub). The direct capture looks noticeably better than the capture from VHS, but, in my opinion, the two images on the left look remarkably similar to one another compared to my target quality on the right.

As stated before, I am interested in buying a capture device that does not exhibit this brightness problem.

Thanks in advance.

[geek rock]

canopus advc-100 is a good replacement for the dazzle. much better quality.