Poor Video Capture Quality - is it my tuner, my comp, or ???

[reillyd]

Hi. I bought a DLINK USB 2.0 TV Tuner (having heard that USB2 capture can do high quality). And I happily recorded my shows in the highest possibly quality format (DV-AVI, 704x576 pixels, 25 frames per second). What I didn't do was review them - I just assumed it would be high quality, and I'd get round to editing/burning them later.

Two months later, and the shows I was taping are really mediocre quality. I see downloaded video from Direct Connect hubs, and it's picture perfect. Mine has lots of artifacts, and is very disappointing. My machine exceeded the specs for the capture card, it's a USB 2 machine, so no problems there. Is it just a junky capture card (cost me 299 AUD, was top of the range), is it the recording software I'm using (TV-PLUS2.0 came with it), or is it that my computer can't decode the data fast enough (too slow a CPU?).

Also, is there any tool that can remove these types of distortions?
I'd really like to restore the tv shows I've tapped (they're very rare, not likely to air again)

[reboot]

You can't put back what isn't there, so the quality you have is about as good as it gets.
The downloads you're referring to, are probably full D1 mpeg's, later compressed to divx, at a smaller framesize.
Try capturing at a smaller framesize, and higher bitrate, or...try capping directly to mpeg-2, at a high bitrate.
This is providing you can do it with no dropped frames.