TV tuner cards... [was: RE: hey"!]

From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay_at_cs.umn.edu>
Date: Tue Jan 29 14:10:27 2002

Ebay has a listing category JUST for TV tuner cards, so you know they always
have a lot of em available.

I use the Pinacle Studio Pro card. I have been using it to record cable
TV shows, then later converting/compressing the HUGE files. You need
to realize a few things though:

1) The file size is HUGE. My card saves the video as AVI, which is good,
but I use Windows 98se, which has a 2Gig file size limit. And yes, that
2Gig limit per file is a big problem. Once the file is compressed, its nowhere
near that big, but still it can be difficult to record a 2 hour movie
since i hit the limit right about then. And when I hit the limit, poof,
the file is worthless (gotta love windows, eh?).

2) The video capture resolution is very low (320x240). So its only capturing
every other scan line, and its capturing only half the horizontal resolution
in order to compensate. In other words, only about 1/4th of the video
image data is being captured.

3) These cards really bang on the PCI bus. Dont plan on touching the computer
or running any other applications while recording. if you do, the number of
frames that are dropped will increase, and the video playback will then be
very poor at the spots where you were running netscape or whatnot.

4) If you get a cheap card that supports video capture better than 320x240, you
forgot to read the fine print. That better resolution is for grabbing a single
frame only. There are expensive cards that supposedly can do 640x480, one
of these days I might just plunk down a few hundred to find out...

All in all, it is kinda fun to capture an hour of Enterprise, edit out
the commercials and compress the remaining 45 minutes of video, then burn
about 3 shows onto a CDrom... The data compressing part is where you wish you
had a raid, and a very fast AMD processor.

-Lawrence LeMay

> Anybody got one for sale?
>
> --- David A Woyciesjes
>
> > ----------
> > From: Passer, Michael W.
> > Subject: RE: TV tuner cards... [was: RE: hey"!]
> >
> > I've done it with an Atari 2600. Works great (this was with a Gateway
> > OEM Bt848 card.)
> >
> > --Michael
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Woyciesjes [mailto:DAW_at_yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu]
> > Subject: TV tuner cards... [was: RE: hey"!]
> >
> > ! -----Original Message-----
> > ! From: Gareth Knight [mailto:gknight_at_emugaming.com]
> > !
> > ! Simon wrote:
> > ! > Please say me, how it works! I want to convert my VHS into
> > ! > mpg-Files, but it
> > ! > doesn't work, only the Convertion of mpg to VHS works.
> > !
> > ! For low-end conversion from VHS to MPG you can use a cheap TV
> > ! card, such as
> > ! those made by Pinaccle or Hauppage. This will allow you to
> > ! view the analog
> > ! signal of your video and record it as an AVI or MPG. I recommend !
> > http://www.tv-cards.com/ for more information ! -- ! Gareth Knight
> >
> > You know, I should pick up one of those, so I can have a display
> > for my C128 (and Atari800) on my Win98 box. Finally put it to something
> > useful...
> > Seriously, is anyone else doing that?
> >
> > --- David A Woyciesjes
Received on Tue Jan 29 2002 - 14:10:27 GMT

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