to keep or not to keep - WinTV250

[madymo3d]

I just picked up a WinTV PVR250 for a decent price (<$120). What I want is have TV capability and transfer some 8mm tapes. Now I'm not so sure it's good for 8mm tape transfers since it's a MPEG only encoder which will then prevent me from using VirtualDub, etc (I did not know this at the time of purchase). In theory I would edit the tape footage, mostly cutting out boring sections, but in practice I'll probably just transfer to DVD with minimal editing since I do not have the talen nor the patience. So the question is do I keep it or buy a TV tuner for $40? I have an AMD 2000XP so I think it'll be fast enough to do real-time software encoding. I'm just not sure the extra $80 buys me anything extra beyond hardware MPEG, which may turn out not ideal for digitizing tape anyways. I already have a Pinnacle DC10+ that works but I just don't enjoy using it too much.

[lchiu7]

Haven't had any experience with the PVR250 but from all accounts the hardware MPEG2 compression is pretty good - especially if you have a slower processor. It's not easy editing MPEG2 files but for simple edits you could use Womble or their more sophisticated product MPEG Video Wizard which is a video editor for MPEG files.

Not sure why you don't have fun with the DC10+. I have one of those in addition to a WinTV PCI card and for capturing video from a composite or s-video source I think it's great. I usually capture with iuvcr or sometimes with Pinnacle Studio 7 and I found the MJPEG format it creates to be excellent quality. Then by loading a suitable codec (Morgan or PicVideo) for MJPEG files you can edit and output the files it creates to MPEG2 format for subsequent authoring to DVD.

I recently captured a 100 minutes movie on VHS which happened to be Macrovision protected via the DC10+ using 720x480 resolution on a AMD Duron 1.3 GHz machine and over that time had only 2 frame drops. That is pretty pleasing performance

Larry

[madymo3d]

I had not considered iuVCR because DC10+ is old VFW technology. I'll give it a try and just buy a cheap TV tuner. Thanks for the suggestion.

[yoda313]

Hello,
I have the pvr250 and I like it pretty well. It captures from video tape at a decent quality. I haven't had any problems with it and you can use its provided mpeg cutter (nanopeg I think) to delete commercials. I think the tv signals ok from a regular tv antenna. Unless you need to capture directly to avi I'd keep the card. Have fun dubbing.
Kevin

[lchiu7]

I had not considered iuVCR because DC10+ is old VFW technology. I'll give it a try and just buy a cheap TV tuner. Thanks for the suggestion.

I think if you if you have Studio 7 you can download files from Pinnacle that provide directshow drivers for the DC10+. Certainly to use the DC10+ under XP you need to update the drivers and I am sure they are DS ones, VFW. The only annoying thing is you need to have Pinnacle Studio 7 around to be able to install the drivers. If you are not using Studio 7 or above, you need to have it present to install the XP drivers. That could be termed disaapointing!

Larry