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  1. Member
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    I was thinking of buying the ATI TV Wonder 650 USB Dual TV Tuner (http://www.amazon.com/Wonder-HD-650-Combo-USB/dp/B0037A3MVE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=elect...6935384&sr=8-1) and I saw this quality test on youtube in which the quality was amazing but the person was using this same tuner, but for mac (http://www.amazon.com/ATI-Wonder-650-Combo-Tuner/dp/B00138CXT4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=el...6935384&sr=8-4) my question is, could I get this same quality with the PC one, like, is there only differences in compatibility, or would there be changes inside the hardware? Please reply. Thanks in advance!
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    The hardware is the same in both cases. The drivers would be different for OSX and Windows, but if only hardware encoding was used, the video would be of the same quality using the same settings. Capture software, and software encoders used could be different for OSX and Windows.

    Those who want maximum quality capture with a lossless codec, edit the result, and re-encode to an end format. However, chances are they have a second HDD that they use just for capture, and possibly third HDD reserved for editing and processing the video, not a single HDD in a laptop. Losslessly compressed captures produce very large files compared to MPEG-2 captures.
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  3. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by s3r19lk1ll3r View Post
    ...my question is, could I get this same quality with the PC one, like, is there only differences in compatibility, or would there be changes inside the hardware? ...
    I assume you are talking about SD analog capture (NTSC tuner or external composite/S-Video). ATSC capture is just a broadcast stream to a file. For OSX and Windows the hardware is the same. I haven't tried the OSX capture software but the resulting file should be the same. Advantage goes to Windows apps for native MPeg2 editing. FCE/FCP or iMovie will require format conversion.
    Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
    http://www.kiva.org/about
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    Another question about this same recording device: Anyone who has it, can you tell me what are the best custom recording settings on Catalyst Media Center? thanks!
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    Originally Posted by s3r19lk1ll3r View Post
    Another question about this same recording device: Anyone who has it, can you tell me what are the best custom recording settings on Catalyst Media Center? thanks!
    There is no way for me to answer this question. What is best would depend on what you plan to do with the video that you capture, and what the CPU on your laptop can handle. Catalyst Media Center can capture in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Generic MPEG-4, DivX, and H.264. You would probably have to experiment to find out what codecs and settings work best for your purposes.

    For example, so far I have only captured TV with the idea of possibly saving it on a DVD in mind. That being the case, I used MPEG2 with the MPEG-2 DVD profile at 720x480, Video capture quality of 100, and bit rates that are allowed for DVDs. However, once I got it working, I found that GraphStudio is a better choice than Catalyst Media Center if I want to capture closed captions.
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    Originally Posted by usually_quiet View Post
    Originally Posted by s3r19lk1ll3r View Post
    Another question about this same recording device: Anyone who has it, can you tell me what are the best custom recording settings on Catalyst Media Center? thanks!
    There is no way for me to answer this question. What is best would depend on what you plan to do with the video that you capture, and what the CPU on your laptop can handle. Catalyst Media Center can capture in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Generic MPEG-4, DivX, and H.264. You would probably have to experiment to find out what codecs and settings work best for your purposes.

    For example, so far I have only captured TV with the idea of possibly saving it on a DVD in mind. That being the case, I used MPEG2 with the MPEG-2 DVD profile at 720x480, Video capture quality of 100, and bit rates that are allowed for DVDs. However, once I got it working, I found that GraphStudio is a better choice than Catalyst Media Center if I want to capture closed captions.
    What would your settings be if you wanted to record in best quality but in minimal file size?
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    You still don't get it. Best depends on what you want to do with the video, and what your CPU can handle. I can't spoon feed this to you. You have to be willing to figure some things out for yourself. For one thing, I don't have a laptop like yours.

    First decide what you ultimately want to do with the captures. Second find out what codec is needed for that. Third, experiment to find out whether you can capture directly to that codec. If you can't do that in acceptable quality, experiment with capture using other codecs, that you can convert later. Hardware MPEG-2 encoding and various bitrates permitted by the card might be a good place to start because your laptop CPU is on the puny side, as I recall.
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    I personally will never get another ATI Wonder device. When I put the one I have into my latest build with Win 7, Windows update told me that there was no updated driver available and ATI notified them that there never will be a Win 7 driver. I have older ATSC cards and USB dongles that have Win 7 compatibility, so ATI's attitude just pissed me off.
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  9. The ATI 650 is a good capture card except it has an over aggressive automatic gain control that can't be disabled. That leads to blown out brights and inconsistent saturation, especially at scene changes. Some examples:

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326560-Which-is-better-usb-stick-vhs-cap-or-hd-pvr-...=1#post2023227
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    Originally Posted by festmaster View Post
    I personally will never get another ATI Wonder device. When I put the one I have into my latest build with Win 7, Windows update told me that there was no updated driver available and ATI notified them that there never will be a Win 7 driver. I have older ATSC cards and USB dongles that have Win 7 compatibility, so ATI's attitude just pissed me off.
    That's up to you, but many people found out too late there would be no Windows 7 drivers released for their hardware not made by ATI too. For example, no Windows 7 64-bit drivers were released by Hauppauge for a number of their popular analog-only tuner cards. If you are talking about an All-In-Wonder video card, apparently the kind of drivers they need to use are incompatible with Windows 7.

    Windows 7 drivers were released for the TV Wonder device the OP is considering.
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