Analog vs. Digital Capture card

[bbarnard]

I am getting ready to buy a new tv card and am wondering if ther is any advantage to buying a digital card. My tv feed is a cable system without the digital box.

Thanks,

[doppletwo]

By digital do you mean HD type digital signals?

Do you have a HDTV or plan on getting one soon.

Digital cable TV and Satellite TV are digital signals, but there is no easy way for you to capure these signals in a usable format. These digital tv signals are scrambled and require the box to descramble them and then the box decompresses the signal and transforms it into an analog video signal that a normal TV recognizes.

A capture card can not do this unless you have software for pirating cable or satellite signals. I am not recommending this since it is quite illegal.

HDTV is also a digital signal but if it is broadcast TV then all you need is and antenna and a tuner. A digital capture card has the type of tuner needed for this type of signal.

So ask yourself, "Do I have a HDTV?" or " DO I plan on getting one soon?"

If the answer is yes then get the digital card otherwise don't waste your money.

The third thing you could mean by digital capture card if Firewire AKA IEEE 1394. Which is not actually used for capturing video but for tranfering it. But a lot of people call this capturing. Since the process seems quite similar.

Anyone post more details on what you want to do with the capture card.

[bbarnard]

Thanks for the information. The bottom line is that I don't plan to have HDTV for another year or so.

Thanks again,
Bob