Need new (cheap) capture solution-what to get? Are TV tuner cards any good?

[wickeddvine]

Hello,
I currently have Pinnacle Studio 8 internal video capture card with firewire. I'm in the market for a new capture solution, as Studio 8 isn't compatible with Vista. Plus, I never liked the capture results with Studio much. I don't have much $ to spend.

I usually make either mpg1 or mpg2 files from what I capture- which would be from a TV show, or a VHS tape. I am also going to be converting a lot of old VHS tapes to DVD.

Will a tuner card do the things I want just as well as a "regular" capture card? You can capture editable videos with a tuner card, right? They usually capture straight to a compressed format, is that correct?

Another thing I was thinking is just using a DVD recorder to get the VHS stuff onto DVD. Is that a bad idea?

Based on what I want to do, what do you think I should get that won't completely break the bank?
Thank you for reading this.

[redwudz]

Take a look at the Hauppauge video cards. They hardware capture in MPEG format that can be authored directly to DVD or edited with most any MPEG editor. The entry level card, the 150 is reasonably priced, about $65US:

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/prods_pvr.html The 150 does have Vista support, according to their site.

You can also sort though capture cards to the left in our 'Capture Cards' section. <<<<<<

And welcome to our forums.