Firewire TV-Tuner; Is there such an animal?

[lmennuti]

All I want to do is cap some TV Shows, then make SVCD compilations.

I've got a SCSI/Athlon 1.3GHz/Win2k system so i've heard the ATI TV-Wonder or Hauppauge WinTV cards, while cheap and decent, have been known to have issues with such a system...And doing Analog-to-Digital is a nasty generation loss (not to mention several extra steps).

So I'm wondering if there's such an animal as an external TV-Tuner box that has a Cable-TV Coax/Composite input and a Firewire output to PC?

[Tommy]

It sounds like your looking for a hardware encoder with a firewire out. I haven't seen one (other than the camcorders) but with more and more computers using firewire its shouldn't be to long until one pops up (encoder with firewire out). I think ATI has a usb tv tuner but thats as close as I have seen.

If you really want I suppose you could get one of those digital8 camcorders with a analog passthough and attach the cable box to the camcorder to the pc and have the camcorder do the encoding. However if your looking for somthing that would run off a timer it wouldn't work.

[jakecb]

DAZZLE MAKES A PRODUCT CALLED HOLLYWOOD BRIDGE THAT DOES
WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. I HAVE USED IT TO DIGITIZE
VHS TAPES AND TV SHOWS AS WELL. IT HAS FIREWIRE INPUTS AND
OUTPUTS.

[Tommy]

Jakecb,

What format does it output to?

[lmennuti]

Close, but no Cigar.

The Hollywood is a DV converter, but has no TV-Tuner capabilities.