Clueless about what TV/Capture card to get. Help me choose.

[Satan's Cheerleader]

I've read the reviews and comments about many of the tv tuner/capture products here and i'm just as uncertain about what to get as ever. I've sorted the comments by top rated, top commented. With each of them it seems like there's always a whole mess of negative comments even with the more highly rated ones.

This is what i want: To be able to watch and capture TV mostly in mpeg1 format to make vcds, but mpeg2 would be nice to have also. I'm looking for the least amount of trouble. i want it to be easy to install, not buggy, and stable. I'm on an athlon xp 1700, msi nforce mobo, gf3 ti 200, 512mb, win xp pro. Timeshifting would be nice, but not a necessity if it's going to cause me grief.

So please make me some suggestions.

[jerycan]

Get the ATI tv wonder VE. Get the open source drivers. Get the MMC 7.5from the web for recording tv progs.

very cheap...and effective. The hophog tv card is good too.

[Satan's Cheerleader]

hophog? i've never heard of that.

anyway i was reading the reviews of the pinnacle pctv pro and thinking about getting it. is this a good choice? how will it work with an athlon running win xp?

Can I get some links for the open source ATI drivers please.

[Satan's Cheerleader]

I'm thinking about getting the Hauppauge WinTV PVR. Is this a good choice? How does the quality of MPEG-1 captured on the fly compare that of like the ATI TV Wonder? I've read in reviews MPEG-1 capture with the PVR is pretty bad.

[baker]

don't get the wintv it only does a res up to 352x288 so creates a lot of problems. (including blocks for some reason)

baker

[lucindrea]

hophog ( Hauppauge is the correct spelling ) - the mpeg capture is not the best in the world ... as a matter of fact i bought another program ( nanodvr .. http://www.nanocosmos.de/ ) just to get it to capture correctly ( i have a tv-go Hauppauge card and not the pvr card ) and even that is a bit of a pain to use ...

The ati tv-wonder card ( not the all in one ) has orked great for me ... their are a few things you need to do to tweak the rez and capturing ( http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=81898 ) but i have found it to be alot more stable and customizable.

acctully i think it comes down to what you are willing to spend and how much work you want to put into getting it to make good captures , both cards ( ok 4 if you count the all in one and the pvr ) will require tweaking. and they both fall into the same price range.

[spiderman2k1]

I like the dazzle 2 i also have a ALL IN WONDER card and think it better for making SVCD and VCD but the AIW does thing dazzle can not do capture DIVX WINDOWS MEDIA player. Dazzle has some problem with AMD i have a AMD and no problems so look here

http://stop.at/dazzle2

If i had to say what you should get I would get the Dazzle 2 but if your some one that want to back up old tapes to VCD capture high MPEG1 then encode with TMPG dazzle can not capture high mpeg 1 only mpeg 2 but the dazzle 2 captures VCD real good you should get your self MPEG2VCR for editting SVCD or DVD and IFILMEDIT for VCD

[Rich927]

Pinnacle offers Studio 7 with a firewire or analog capture card for $99.00. Not bad for the price and software is ok. Or, for $49.00 get their USB analog capture package but it only captures at 352X240 resolution. Inexpensive way to start plus you can use the cards and adapters with the Freeware that is offered on this site.

[Mirror_Image]

What is your budget? 2 cents? A million dollars? Somewhere in between?

[aguillon]

I use the DVC II and love the captures it produces (even if there are some small software glitches).
Remember though that this product and other similar capture cards do not have built-in tv tuners, so you would need to output your tv channel off a vcr for instance to be able to capture it on your pc.
On the other side of the equation, beware that many tv tuner cards do not capture in MPEG1 but in MJPEG (AVI) which, while producing excellent quality, does result in very big video files on your hard disk (1 hour of MPEG: 650 Meg). 1 hour of MJPEG: 6-10 gig
Make sure to check this out before you buy anything.

[magelucid]

Cut out all the crap inherent with analog capturing and get a DV cam, or a dv box. Unless you're really desperate for capturing tv programs, in which case a tivo would do the job 10x better. Movie rips should come from dvd, and home movies look a whole lot better if you use dv and put on a svcd.. If you can't spend that much get a cheap analog->dv box. I used analog for 3 years now and the switch to dv has been like switching from walking to work to using a car. I don't have a tivo for taping stuff but it's released on efnet now anyway. Just one guys opinion