TV (and TiVo) on my Computer
Comments
Well, there’s only so much space on the card for connections. It has the coax in (cable), S-Video in, audio/line in, and a port for the IR remote receiver. The PVR350 version adds an additional coax in for the radio and an S-video out connection.
The manual (which looks to be the same for both the 250 and 350) does mention “if your video device uses a yellow composite connector instead of S-Video, use the supplied Composite to S-Video adapter.” No such adapter was included, but it also wasn’t listed on the box. My guess is that it might come with the 350. Shouldn’t cost much as Radio Shack, though, and I’ll probably pick one up this evening.
As for VHS stuff… what I’m actually interested in aren’t movies, but rather recorded TV shows that I haven’t seen available in any format: VHS or DVD. I do have some VHS movies, but I doubt I’d convert them over.
If it has coaxle in, then you can go cable into your vcr, and cable out (from vcr) into your card, thus have the ability to record your vhs’s onto dvd’s. You don’t HAVE to use the composit connections. However, there may be a quality difference. Your options are pretty much unlimited. Have 8mm tapes? Plug it up to your vcr, and output it (through coaxle) into your computer.
Yeah, I actually ended up going the coax route yesterday. I went by Radio Shack and picked up a ($40!!!) composite to S-video cable and then when I tried to use it I realized that I still had to figure out how to get the stupid audio to input.
So, I said “screw it” and went with the coax. The quality is slightly less (though not really noticeable), but it’s so much easier. Besides, the VHS stuff I’m wanting to convert isn’t very good quality anyway, so I don’t think coax is going to matter.
Now I just have to go return that stupid $40 cable.
I’ll argue that you’ll get a better signal from a composite->svideo convertor than coax, but yeah they’re pricey. It’s possible that the adapter they were supposed to include is really a breakout cable; are there 6 pins on the input box? you only need 4 for S, which means the composite is *there* you just need the breakout (this is how they do video out on most laptops). However, if you can get the composite, it will likely look better than the composite->svid converter from radio shack anyway. You’re mangling a signal to make it work, which will add fuzzies. Couldn’t you just take the dude back to whereever you bought it from to get the adapter? Or I guess you got it online… I just have a hard time believing they wouldn’t give you the ability to do coax. 
I wonder if a laptop svid adapter would work? i’ve got one you can try if’n you want.
After doing lots of messing around last night, here’s what the card actually offers for input:
1 coax
1 S-video
1 composite
1 jack for the IR receiver
The manual for the card is pretty crappy; almost the entire thing is devoted to their TiVo-like application with almost nothing talking about regular video capturing from a non-TV source (and their labelling of the ports is crap). It mentions nothing at all about how to do audio-in if you aren’t using the coax connection. (Obviously, you’d have to use the line-in on your computer, but I was unable to get mine working in brief tests last night.)
Because the VHS sources I’m going to be using simply aren’t very good quality to begin with, I’m just going with the regular coax connection straight from the VCR. It’s quick, simple, takes care of the audio, and the quality is “good enough” for my purposes.
Now, if I can just get VirtualDub to quit claiming my capture device was already in use… I can stop everything else from running and it still claims that. [sigh]
Odd that the capture card doesn’t have RCA inputs. Most that I have seen at least come with a dongle into a dataport that reads it.
Do you really have a lot of VHS stuff? That is to say, would it be cheaper to just replace them with DVD versions than it would to spend all of the time transferring it, buying DVD-Rs, and burning them?
By Derek Jones on October 20, 2003 at 04:32pm link