How Do I Capture Satelite TV

[zokka]

I'm Probally Going to purchase a video capture atapter or tv card and am wondering is it possible to capture satelite tv and if so what connectors would i need to make this possible. how would I do it?

P.s any product reccomendations would be much expirence my main use would be to record Digital Satelite Tv, analouge and video tapes to my computer so i can burn them to CD

[bigmicka]

Hi Zokka,

Hauppage have a couple of satellite cards for pcs, that works just like a set top sattelite box. It allows you to capture the mpeg2 stream directly onto the hard drive.

you will need to buy the card and a CAM which is what takes in the smart card from your satellite provider.

you should then be able to convert to whatever format you want. cant remember the resolution that gets sent down the line, you may even be able to burn directly.

look on the hauppage site.

mic

[wulf109]

The satelite receiver has video and audio output jacks. Any capture card will work in conjunction with your sound card.

[Donny661]

doing that would result in possible quality loss because the video and audio outs are analog so you have the digital to analog conversion then back from analog to digital which is unneeded quality loss if you can just capture directly the digital video stream. This same principal is why there are digital out cables for audio on dvd players. Why bother going D/A then A/D when you can just go D/D and have a perfect copy?

[wulf109]

Suppose your satelite receiver has no digital output? Mine dosen't.

[zokka]

Thxs for the input I was thinking of getting a digital satelite card but thought it would be easier and cheaper to buy a video capture card. What are theses digital output's proper name e.g s-video if someone could point me to a web site that describes and shows the various ports/connectors it would be much appreciated.

P.S How Would I Go About seting up a digital satelite card would i need to call the dish man out? or would i just connect something to hte satelite box

One more thing I Live In the UK.

[epo]

There is one and only digital out - SCSI and this means certain models from Nokia family only are useable (best option, but requires some knowledge, some tweaking and some research). For D/A->A/D there is S-Video through SCART on virtually every receiver, but DVB-S card is quite considerable option allowing to burn at least some broadcasts without re-encoding (depends much on region).

[CauCauCau]

Almost any capture/tv card will do as long as it has the connections you're looking for. You want S-Video and RCA/Composite. While it would be nice to get one of the satellite capture cards, there are many capture cards that will work. There are really cheap generic ones that work just fine. Check the reviews section, Capture Cards to left. You can search through a variety of cards from a variety of manufacturers, reviewed by actual users.