WinTV PVR-150 MCE

[toomanycats]

Short of finding an old VCR Moonrocks suggestion that is right on the money.
I tried to do what you are doing but gave up for 2 reasons. The first was macrovision. I purchased a little black box that got rid of it but then (reason number 2) the video quality just wasn't there. I think you will find when get a really good TV (I hope I am not being presumptous here) you will ultimately be dissatisfied with the final product. Saving home videos is different because that is all you got to deal with as far as the memories go. I wouldn't put much money into it. I would start changing the format of my collection to DVD. (And I am the cheapest person I know.) That's what I did.

[MikeyBK]

Well, seems the macrovision problem was software related. The Hauppage's WinTV2000 capture software did not see the macrovision on the tapes. Actually, neither did Media Center, but it could only be viewed on the Media Center itself.

So the WinTV PVR 150 does indeed bypass the macrovision on the VHS tapes. I can now back-up those tapes to DVD. I've tried several convertion programs and so far found that 1Click DivxToDVD to be the best in terms of retaining the original quality of the full mpg capture. I then used DVD Rebuilder to compress down to fit a DVD5, looks good on the PC, but am gonna burn to a disc in a couple of minutes here and will let you know how it compared to the full 7 GB file that I split into two using VideoReDo and put on two DVD5 discs. If the DVD Rebuilder files' quality is as good as that of the full capture file on the DVDs itself,

Then Success, Finally!!!!!


Thanks to all for their input!!

[moonrocks]

Great news! Glad to hear it

[toomanycats]

So, do the DVD's play on stand alone machines, just curious.

[MikeyBK]

Awesome!!!

I just viewed the disc that I converted with 1Click DivxToDVD and encoded and compressed with DVD rebuilder and it looks as good as the un-compressed full mpg capture. It looks almost better than when I view the VHS tape on the VCR! I guess maybe the DVD player just makes it look better.
Anyways, Success!!, and I just wanted to share this info with others that might try to search for similar projects.

So, do the DVD's play on stand alone machines, just curious.

Yes they do. Both the mpg DVD that I split with VideoReDo and burned to two seperate DVD5s and the one I just made in DVD format.

[MikeyBK]

Not the absolute best quality but remember it was captured from VHS.


Respect out to 1Click DivxToDVD and jDobbs for DVD Rebuilder


Oops forgot, Also to Hauppage.

[toomanycats]

Very Cool.

[dalkeja]

MikeyBK, I am duplicating your efforts and not trying to reinvent the wheel. Can you provide me some additional information:
1) What Video Capture Software are you using, WinTV2000 or something else?
2) What Compression setting are you using to capture the video in (MPEG2, ?
3) What Compression Data Rate Setting are you using (8Mbit/sec, 12Mbit/sec, etc)?
4) In the Video Format Window, what settings did you use or reccomend for Image Dimensions and image Format?

5) Within the DVD rebuilder Sofware what encoder packaged did use? One of the free downloads provided or one of the commercially ones mentioned.

Thanks in advance for yours or anyone eleses help.