Is the ATI TV Wonder any good?

[vulcan4d]

Unfortunately this is the only capture card in my area. I want to capture video off my Satellite Receiver at SVCD quality, meaning 480x480 resolution. Will this card be good enough for the job? I noticed that it has Mpeg2 real-time encoding, is that hardware or software? I'm running a Win2K system with CeleronII 850mhz, 384mb of ram and ATI Radeon 7200 video card, will I be able to do any real-time encoding or will the video have to be uncompressed? I know ATI isn't too good with drivers, but how does it handle under Win2K? Thanks for answering my questions, I'm pretty new to video capturing .

[FiEND]

no, the card is fine, the software/support sucks - you can get above 240 lines height but not easily - ie the card will be a pain in the ass from day 1.

order one online if that is all they sell near you because you will regret it.

[vhelp]

vulcan4d,

I've ben using the atw for quite some time now. It's a good card.
I use it under Windows 98 w/ vfw driver working along side my
ATI-Rage Fury card.
When I capture, I cap at 352x480 cuase that's really enough for
TV viewing anyways. I capped mostly from my Satalete, cause the
quality is the best.

I personally wouldn't recommend using the MMC x.xx I'd go with
straight AVI capturing and wait for the long encode, in my case,
it was 3 hours for a 1 hour capture. In yours, you can expect
much longer encoding times. The higher the resolution, the longer
it will take! So, do you self a favor and cap at 352x480.
As for MPEG1/2 It only does MPEG-1. Doesn't have MPEG-2.
Also, it's a software mpeg, NOT hardware. NONE of there cards,
Radeon, etc will do hardware. All of them do software mpeg1/2.
Don't get confused with "real time" mpeg. It's a catch that many
people fall pray to (myself included) I've wised up since.
If you're new to all this, then AVI capturing may scare you away
and steer you towards real-time mpeg caps.

It would be cheaper and best to get a new MB and CPU for under
$200 and $69 or less for an ATW card if you want good quality
and go the AVI route, else plan on saving for an upgrade real
soon. Cause you'll be realising this some time down the road
out of frustration, etc. So, like all cap cards, you should
expect many problems with setting up and getting to work right.

I've done many great looking encodes (svcd) and even some vcd's too.

I'm now trying my hand on DV, using a firewire and whatnot.
I've had many ups and downs (mostly downs) but am now able to
transfer my DV tapes to my harddrive via firewire. I'm using
Studio 7's driver support, and an "Sonydvcr.sys" file driver.
Studio 7SE wont let me capture, so I found an capture/transfer
app that seems to work ok, though a little buggy at times. It's
suppose to be for the Sony lines, and driver is for Sony. I have
a Canan ZR-10, and canon doesn't put out any drivers for these
ZR-xx models (or any others for that matter) I've done so much
research on this DV stuff, my head is still spinning. And all
just to get it working. Finally.

Good luck.

-vhelp

[jerycan]

Short answer:

It's fine for what your want to do provided you have a fast system and use the opensource drivers for win32. See the capture card section for more tips...