Lots of questions about capturing television

[tgc225]

Right now, I have an analogue cable connection. I've read around some forum posts, and it seems that there has been a lot of discussion about what the optimal way to capture television is. My goal is to record a TV show regularly in as high quality as possible.

Now, it seems that many people have said that digital broadcasts are better to work with because they are interlaced already, and are broadcast in a similar format to MPEG2 making it easy to convert them to DVDs. I've seen other posts state that some cable providers just convert the analogue broadcasts to digital when it goes to your receiver. Is any of this true?

I've also seen a lot of debating on whether set top recorders were better than computers for capturing broadcasts, but I didn't see any definite answers from those discussions.

So which gives the optimal quality? Analogue cable? Digital cable? Satellite? All are available to me, but I'm a newb and all this discussion is overwhelming

[louthewiz]

I have both direct tv and cable I used to capture with my computer and I got really tired of the shitty quality until I purchased a panasonic E80-H and I just trashed the capture card and never looked back because a stand alone beats the shit out of cpu capturing and finally when I record from cable or sattelite the picture is great because of the built in tbc (time base corrector)....Just my 2 cents...... :P

[teegee420]

I capture analog cable with an ATI All-In-Wonder and I couldn't be happier with its performance. I think stand alone recorders are great and I may eventually get one, but I really don't need one as of yet. I like the fact that a capture card affords me a great deal of control over how the finished product will turn out. Most of all I like the flexibility. I can create a DVD with menus of my choosing, edit out commercials, I can make a VCD, SVCD, Divx, Quicktime or any other format I should need(with the appropriate software of course).

The down side is that there's a lot to learn in order to get the most out of your hardware and software. Personally, I think stand alone recorders limit your options too much. For me the simplicity they offer isn't enough to outweigh the tremendous versatility that a PC/capture card solution can give me. I might like doing things the hard way but I think the extra work pays off in the end.

[sacajaweeda]

I have both direct tv and cable I used to capture with my computer and I got really tired of the shitty quality until I purchased a panasonic E80-H and I just trashed the capture card and never lokked back because a stand alone beats the shit out of cpu capturing and finally when I record from cable or sattelite the picture is great because of the built in tbc (time base corrector)....Just my 2 cents...... :P

I'm glad you were able to find a viable solution to your apparent ineptness with computer generated video. Admittedly, this stuff isn't for everybody. Go with whatever works for you, I guess.

[ferreter]

If you want to spend $500 and just want to push one button and have it work, then go with the standalone solution. If you are willing to learn how to capture video, which I'm finding is kinda fun, then get a capture card for $100 - $200 and read up on the guides provided here.

I have the AIW capture card and it works great, after installing the latest drivers and MMC.

[tgc225]

Alright, thanks for the replies so far, I'll try to search for more topics about the computer vs settop box recording.

As for my first question, does anyone have an answer for that? Which medium gives the best quality, analogue cable, digital cable, or satellite?

Right now, I have analogue cable, and an ATI TV Tuner video card. The quality is pretty decent. I've had some troubles setting up VirtualVCR with the pitch falling as the recording went on, but I guess that's a different problem.

Anyway, one more quesiton I have is this: As I said, I currently have analogue cable. What resolution should I be capturing it in? I haven't really seen a definitive answer on that.

[teegee420]

I think satellite provides the best picture. My analog cable is only decent and my cable company only transmits 1/3 of the channels in digital, most of which are premium. I capture to 352x480, as this is close to the actual resolution the signals are broadcast. No harm in going larger but it's not necessary. I suggest you head over to Lordsmurf.com. If you haven't checked it out already, there's a ton of info there on capturing and use of ATI cards. One more thing, I find that I get the best results using the ATI MMC software as opposed to Virtual VCR.

[tgc225]

Yeah, thanks for the info, I saw some vidcaps of the particular show I was talking about, and they were of higher quality than what I can achieve. My dad works at SBC and they're going to offer employee discounts for Dish Network, so I could easily switch to that, and I'd really want to if it offered higher quality.

And thanks for the resolution info on analogue cable

[louthewiz]

In reply to sacajaweeda I am in no way inept but you might be,well anyway I was just sharing my way to make this hobby a little easier , Many times when I capture from my dish I record to dvd ram and then take it to my computer and edit make custom menus with it to my own liking with very good results its just alot easier..

[vcdforme]

DirecTV, into ADS Pyro A/V Link,
into Intervideo Pro 3, absolutely
rules! Lots of options.
Record to AVI, or make instantly compatible VCD, or DVD
files. As long as DirecTV is compatible with my system, I'm a fan forever!

[sacajaweeda]

I used to capture with my computer and I got really tired of the shitty quality

In reply to sacajaweeda I am in no way inept but you might be

I'm not the one getting "shitty quality" using a computer.

That's you.

Carry on.

[lchiu7]

Alright, thanks for the replies so far, I'll try to search for more topics about the computer vs settop box recording.

As for my first question, does anyone have an answer for that? Which medium gives the best quality, analogue cable, digital cable, or satellite?

Right now, I have analogue cable, and an ATI TV Tuner video card. The quality is pretty decent. I've had some troubles setting up VirtualVCR with the pitch falling as the recording went on, but I guess that's a different problem.

Anyway, one more quesiton I have is this: As I said, I currently have analogue cable. What resolution should I be capturing it in? I haven't really seen a definitive answer on that.

I capture on two machines, one a Athlon XP 2400+ using a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card using IUVCR and PicVideo MJPEG compression. I use this to capture unscrambled channels on my cable box.

I tried VirtualVCR for a while but never got audio/video sync right - no problems with iuvcr in this area

Other capture is done using a Duron 1.3GHz via a Pinnacle DC10+ card (native compression is mjpeg) capturing via composite input from the cable box composite output (when I want to capture scrambled channels). I capture 720x576 in both situations (perhaps overkill) and never get dropped frames.

Quality is better using the Pinnacle but I think that's because the signal from the cable box is better than that from the Hauppauge inbuilt TV tuner

The output files are about 10G/hour which I then encode to mpeg2 and burn to DVD

[Bob W]

Simple task for me, I just press the record button on my remote to start my DVD recorder.

[andkiich]

I've found that my TIVO gives me the best results with the most flexibility.

I record from DirecTV with the TIVO, then capture from that to my computer through my ATI AIW 7500. Depending on what I'm doing, I either capture directly to MPEG2 or capture uncompressed AVI. Then I convert if necessary, author and burn. The result is, to me and many people that have seen my DVDs indestingishable from the broadcast that was on TV.

If you do not want to do anything other than capture the video "as-is", then the easiest and probably best solution would be a stand alone recorder. If you want to do any kind of editing, menus, transitions, effects, your better off using the capture card and a PC.

[gmatov]

andkich,

Correct me if I'm wrong,but are you not taking an analog signal, recording as digital on your Tivo, then outputting as analog from your Tivo, into your ATI card and reconverting to digital?

Sounds like making a tape backup of a tape backup.

Even if your Tivo is recording a true digital signal from the disk, your result should be the same as plugging the Tivo into the ATI card and recording live.

I assume you need the Tivo because, unlike cable, none of the signals can be decoded any other wat, same as the Dish Network box I used to have.

On cable, I have 69 unencoded channels and some 100 that need the box. The first, I can connect straight to the tuner/capture card. The second, I have to split the cable box output, 1 to the card, 1 to the TV, well, a device before the TV, VCR, DVD, a second VCR.

My caps, while not DVD quality, are decent, and can go from MPEG4 to full D1 and anywhere in between except for AVI. Don't know why, that.

This is an MSI tv@nywhere. I like it better than either my Hauppage, Maxxron, or Pinnacle cards, the Pinnacle only capping AVI which HAD to be rendered into MPEG.

Cheers,

George

[andkiich]

gmatov,

Your assumptions are correct, and in addition, the computer is not in the same room as the TIVO(actually it's a receiver/TIVO combo), and for me the TIVO is much easier to interface with than the computer TIVO like devices.

I know it seems like making a tape backup of a tape backup, but I wish that I could show you some of the shows I've done and the quality I get. I watch my finished DVDs on a Sony Wega 36" TV, so any apparent problems should be noticable, none of which I can discern, they look the same. Maybe I'm just lucky or perhaps I've learned my lessons well from the wonderful people here.