looking for a capture card.

[almostaborted]

i am looking to use my computer as a vcr. i have the necessary power, 1.33 athlon, 256 ram, ata100 segate hard drive with 12 gigs available for capturing. i am also using win2k.

since i have the space and power, is it good enough to get a 50 dollar hauppauge tv card record as avi and still have a good capture of a 30 min tv show that has few frame drops and high quality? or should i shell out more and go for a nicer capture card? i you could, please help, i am extremely new in this area.

[thxkid]

My system is just about like yours, I was using a $50 WinTV capture card and was getting no frame drops using virtualdub and unless you use some type of compressed AVI you will end up with a HUGE AVI file 30min., set at 352x240 for a VCD would be around 7-9 gigs for a 30min. show.
I always wanted to do SVCD because of near DVD quality but a 480x480 AVI ar 30min. would be around 12-15 gigs.
So I got a hampuagge WIN PVR PCI MPEG1 or 2 Encoder card $250. It will encode directly to SVCD, I just made a copy on a 60min. show Star trek next generation last night the 60min. ended up being 1.2gigs once I used TMPGE to edit out the commercials I had a 899MB files at 45min. perfect to fit as a SVCD on a 99min. CD-R.
I recorded it directly off my dushnet from WB 2 out of Alanta.
The PVR is exactly like a TIVO, even comes with a wireless remote.
My PVR was horrible out of the box until I went to Hampuagge German web site and got the SVCD & Manual advance settings. Now I can set it up exactly how I want it.
I got mine a Fry's Electronics so I had 30 days to try it out to see if I liked it.

[almostaborted]

so the only advantage of getting that 250 card is for the compression? based on the review of that card on this site, it doesn't look too good...i don't need to record dvd quality. i just want vcr quality from the capture card, so maybe it might be good enough. are you happy with the recording quality?


do you have problems with sound sync? i've had a little experience with a cheap hauppauge tv card and there was problems syncing sound together.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: almostaborted on 2001-08-31 10:09:53 ]</font>