Newer alternative to ADVC300?

[ereiamjh]

I've been using my ADVC300 to convert old video tapes for years now and have never had any problems with it.
However, I just got to wondering, given that I must have had it for at least 8 years, is there anything newer available that would produce better results?

[jagabo]

There's nothing much new in standard definition video capture. As more and more people got into SD video capture the Chinese manufactures caused a rush to the bottom in pricing (and quality). That left no money in standard definition capture devices so no manufacturer bothered to invest in it. Investment is in high definition capture devices now, with SD added as an afterthought.

You might get slightly better results with an ATI TV Wonder 600.
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/329016-2001-2010-my-capture-cards-comparison-screenshots

Avoid the ATI TV Wonder 650 and 750. They have terrible automatic gain problems.
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326560-Which-is-better-usb-stick-vhs-cap-or-hd-pvr-...=1#post2023227

[juhok]

You didn't specify price point so my answer is yes, there are better alternatives.

For example:
http://www.ensembledesigns.com/products/brighteye/be75

Many other alternatives exist at that price point or lower (used on eBay).

[jagabo]

High end SD capture devices like that existed eight years ago. Having 12 bits of precision won't help with VHS which only has 5 or 6 bits of signal. You'll just get more precise noise. Better capture resolution/sharpness won't help with VHS which only has about 360 vertical lines of resolution. The one thing that might help is if the Brighteye has a line TBC. Avoiding DV compression artifacts will help a bit.

[juhok]

Having 12 bits of precision won't help with VHS which only has 5 or 6 bits of signal. You'll just get more precise noise. Better capture resolution/sharpness won't help with VHS which only has about 360 vertical lines of resolution.

So people say and yet in real life I get better results with BE-75 than with ADVC300. That comparison is not very fair tho because ADVC300 was not so good compared to lossless options even 8 years ago. Also the reason to use such a device is not the oversampling, but having Framesync and A/D all in one lossless device with digital output. I have Blackmagic cards which gives almost the same quality as BE-75 but Blackmagic needs external Framesync like TBC-1000 which adds 1-2MB/s (noise) to the bitrate compared to direct BE-75 and makes temporal denoising that much harder.

edit: Devices like BE-75 costs closer to $10k when ADVC-300 was released. Now they can be had for under $500.

[jagabo]

Oh, there is one improvement in the Hauppauge Colossus (regarding VHS capture). It has a built in line TBC function that you can enable with a registry change. I don't know how well it works. Unfortunately, you can only get h.264 encoded video out of it though.