TV card suggestions?

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TV card suggestions?

2002-11-28 20:34:46

I need to buy a TV card for my PC. What is most important to me is first, it needs to have -good quality- picture AND -SOUND-.. I've tried some, and the quality varied, and especially in SOUND. Some TV cards' sound just SUCKS... Well of course it's very possible what i've seen and heard is just really low quality cards.
So that's what i'm looking for, no super features, many outs and ins and special stuff, i'll just use it to watch, and record/capture video from TV, so those features don't matter. hmm, so it should have good capturing ability, very important as well.
(i have WinXP, Geforce 4 TI 4200)

I'll keep on searching, but it doesn't hurt to get opinions, especially at a forum like this .
Thank you very much in advance...

TV card suggestions?

Reply #1 – 2002-11-29 00:32:28

I use a Hauppauge's Wintv for video capture, cheap but decent quality. Mine only does video in, not out. There is probably a better model suited for your needs...

http://www.hauppauge.com/

I capture using VirtualDub, forget about bundled software, its useless anyway, except to watch tv.

http://www.virtualdub.org/

TV card suggestions?

Reply #2 – 2002-11-29 00:45:41

Of course VirtualDub, nothing else is better .. I do all my encoding with it (well and other aids).
Thank you, i'll check this out.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #3 – 2002-11-29 04:21:44

Well, I have the AIW128 PCI and the ATI TVWonder (also PCI). The AIW works fine, but I don't want the 128 video. This lead me to buy the TVWonder. It also works fine, even under Linux. Nice, you can't beat that...

Remember, if you want to keep your freedom to watch TV on your PC and to Record it, then...

[span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%']Join the EFF[/span]

.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #4 – 2002-11-29 05:57:38

do you have any problems with 640x480 captures with the TV Wonder? Mine locks the whole machine up after 5-10 minutes of capturing at this resolution. However, it will capture all day and night if I set it to 640x240 or any other Xx240 resolution, only craps out in Xx480 resolutions.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #5 – 2002-11-29 07:31:38

My AIW would drop frames at 640x480 (1-3 per second), but it was stable. I havn't tried the TV Wonder at 640x480, as I usaly caputure at 320x240. ATI has used lots of diffrent cards over the years under the same name, so my AIW/TVWonder may be very diffrent from yours.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #6 – 2002-11-29 08:26:33

All right... I'm hooked into the thread out of a tangential curiosity; I'm considering the purchase of a TV tuner/capture device, and since I use VID4WA I am curious about the cards supported by another piece of software (RC4WA) by the same author. The cards in question are as follows:

- AVerMedia TVCapture98 and TVPhone95/98 with/without VCR
- AVerTV Studio (model 103, 107, 203)
- Phoebe TV Master + FM
- MediaLand SuperTV
- WayJet WT-951T/TF w/FM
- PixelView Play TV Pro (+FM)
- FlyVideo'98 with FM
- KWorld-TV878-FBK

Does anyone have experience with any of these? Good, bad, or indifferent?

On a somewhat related note, can anyone recommend a good external tuner/capture device (preferably USB compatible)?

- M.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #7 – 2002-11-29 17:55:43

I think ATI has a USB version of the TV-Wonder VE.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #8 – 2002-11-29 18:31:37

A fine choice is the TerraTec Cinergy 600 TV (http://www.terratec.net). Excellent picture quality!

TV card suggestions?

Reply #9 – 2002-11-29 20:23:16

I've got the ATI All in wonder Radeon, and the sound sucks.

It is heavily compressed in dynamics, with a very slow attack/decay. It gives the impression that a crazy baby is shaking the volume setting like a rattle. It can't be avoided.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #10 – 2002-11-29 22:37:49

I am really glad this thread came up.

I had an ATI AIW Radeon too for evaluation. I found the s-vhs output quality to be very poor for outputing even dvd video to my TV. I never really evaluated the sound because the minute I saw the video quality and realized it could not be tweaked, I rejected the product.

Capture to mpeg was seamless but again of poor quality. I never tried Huffy codec so I don't really know if this was related to the mpeg codec used, or the quality of the capture device itself.

So anyway, I sent the thing back then lost the bee in my bonnett about getting into video capture.

Now that a person can get a 120gig HD for peanuts and capture with near lossless quality with VD, I want ++ to get into it again.

Anybody have one of the Dazzle series of cards? I hear they also use the hauppage bt 8x8 (?) capture chips and have good quality.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #11 – 2002-11-29 23:05:23

I've been thinking of getting the Hauppage WinTV PVR or whatever it's called, it's their one that does hardware mpeg2 capture, obviously so I can use it as a PVR Should be able to use that in a pretty low horsepower machine (read quiet) since it does the mpeg2 capture on the card itself.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #12 – 2002-11-29 23:25:50

Quote

I've been thinking of getting the Hauppage WinTV PVR or whatever it's called, it's their one that does hardware mpeg2 capture, obviously so I can use it as a PVR

i'm staying away from such solutions, because you can't use any decent filtering (chroma/luma/dynamic noise reduction, chroma shift, etc..) before encoding, to the best of my knowledge..

TV card suggestions?

Reply #13 – 2002-11-30 02:01:53

Stay away from USB devices. Because of the limited bandwith of usb, they can only capture at 320x240 or something. Maybe we will start seeing USB2 solutions soon?

TV card suggestions?

Reply #14 – 2002-11-30 04:41:42

Oh, just to let you know, my WinTV is the 404 model, its based on the Bt878 chipset, fully supported in open OSes, never had problems capturing at full 640x480 at 29,97 fps (ntsc) (after switching to win2k from win9x, that is). I have a dedicate 60GB Maxtor HD to do the captures, using Huffyuv it gives about 3 hours of capture time (with 48khz stereo pcm audio). While the card has its own tuner, i don't actually use it, neither its mono sound. I simply have a VCR with stereo tuner hooked to it, the audio goes to the sound card.

I read somewhere that due to cabling and noise in analog captures, its imposible to discern anything beyond 384 pixels of horizontal resolution (even with s-video/ or separate rgb "combined" cabling). Capturing at 640 and later resize (precise bicubic/bilinear) can help reduce the perceived video noise a bit.

Vertical resolution is another matter, 240 will simply pick one of the two interlaced frames. Make sure you _dont_ use overlay display when capturing, preferably turn off any preview display in real time capture. 480 gets both fields at their intervals. In pal you have more vertical resolution (576?) and lower framerate (25).

In the past i used to lose about 1 frame per minute. When i switched the capture drive to a 7200rpm HD, this value decreased to something like 1 frame lost per 30 minutes, or so I have tested many other WinTV cards and all seem to capture just fine, even the 50$ model (Win TV GO PCI). They seem to use the same chipset anyway.

I also don't like any lossy compression applied in realtime (hardware or software), as you will lose the chance to apply filters, corrections, etc without further decreasing the quality. Of course, this means huge disk space, i simply dedicate an entire hard disk for capture and editing.

USB devices... Yuck! Usb1 is only 12mbps anyway, im hitting 130~150mbps most of the time (mind you, thats PCI bus transfering 32 bits at 33mhz, whose theorical limit is around 1056mbps) I don't want to even think about USB1, USB2 at least has 140mbps...

If you use digital equipment (ieee 1394) you don't need analog capture at all, only digital transfer with any ieee1394 aka firewire) card. Some digital cameras use 4:1:1, check your reds for blockiness

TV card suggestions?

Reply #15 – 2002-11-30 05:16:28

Quote

i'm staying away from such solutions, because you can't use any decent filtering (chroma/luma/dynamic noise reduction, chroma shift, etc..) before encoding, to the best of my knowledge..

you do, of course, have the option to capture in any other format you would like to choose, but for simply time-shifting some weekly sitcoms and dramas I really wouldn't care much about any filtering, I'd just like to watch the shows at some other point in time. Naturally for any archiving needs I would be concerned with these issues.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #16 – 2002-11-30 19:51:09

Thanks alot everyone!
I've checked all the suggestions.
However ...
My choice is "Pinnacle PCTV", Hauppage is very good as well, but this is just what i need, has very good quality and price as well. (suggested to me by Roberto [span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'](RareWares)[/span], thanks!!)

About AverTV, and FlyVideo, don't ever even consider using those, they stink... Horrible software and quality.
Keep the suggestions going anyway (maybe in a few days i'll be sorry something even better was mentioned .. but unlikely)
Thanks once again.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #17 – 2002-12-01 07:13:16

I looked at a few pinnacle cards and from what I saw and from what I was told by the CS reps that I was emailing back and forth with, *none* of their cards can do an uncompressed capture. The closest you can get is MJPEG which is far from uncompressed. There are times when I'm going to want to do a straight YUV capture with huffyuv and that just isn't possible with their cards, and that'd be another reason for me to pick an hauppage card instead. I may pick up the tv/fm card from them if I end up deciding that the pvr card isn't worth the extra cash.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #18 – 2002-12-02 00:41:33

All I can say is, go for any card with BT878 at least!

I've seen some superb rips done with this card, not dropping a single frame, and compressing to xvid with B Frames in REAL TIME! =)

Also, using dScaler you can filter out some of the junk noise and clean up the image with a bit of tweaking... so purchase carefully.

Ruairi

TV card suggestions?

Reply #19 – 2002-12-02 01:03:38

Quote

I looked at a few pinnacle cards and from what I saw and from what I was told by the CS reps that I was emailing back and forth with, *none* of their cards can do an uncompressed capture. The closest you can get is MJPEG which is far from uncompressed. There are times when I'm going to want to do a straight YUV capture with huffyuv and that just isn't possible with their cards, and that'd be another reason for me to pick an hauppage card instead. I may pick up the tv/fm card from them if I end up deciding that the pvr card isn't worth the extra cash.

I am having a pinnacle PCTV Rave and I can capture to uncompressed video or with huffyuv compression. The problem is that I cannot capture more than 360X240. I am using win2k and virtual dub for capture.

TV card suggestions?

Reply #20 – 2002-12-02 15:12:51

I own a STUDIO PC TV PRO.
You can capture up to 384*288 (in overlay), and up to 784*576 (in preview) @25/29fps.
The differences between STUDIO PC TV and STUDIO PC TV PRO is only the FM Radio support.
Great quality and good sound (good package with a lot of softwares), remote control is supported.

If you have a fast computer (at least 1000mhz) the card work flawless, but on my PIII 500 i got horizontal lines when capturing from the TV (but from composite no problems).

TV card suggestions?

Reply #21 – 2002-12-08 09:58:16

with matrox etv450 i capture in 3 different pal modes depending on the need (my pc is p3/800):

-with supplied matrox software into mpeg2 - half or 1/4 res (quality is poor)
-with aviio into m-jpeg - full pal res - audio uncompressed (for editing)
-with aviio into huffyuv - full pal res - audio uncompressed (short clips)

aviio
http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/
huffyuv
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software2.htm
m-jpeg
http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm

TV card suggestions?

Reply #22 – 2002-12-08 11:33:47

hi
I've got the Nexus-s which is a digital TV card, available for satellt or cable. the sound is really good as the card has a s/pdif out. and the video quality is also really good. well, it's digital.

as it is a dvb card you can use many softwares like dvb extreme since the standard software isn't really that good.

http://www.hauppauge.de/prod_nexus_s.htm

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