My new capture card

[MikeyBK]

@futurex, I must be a mellow person then because I seemed to be OK with the cable signal on my 32 in. Of course it makes a difference when I put in my DVDs and I love my movies, so I'm sure I'll check into digital cards a little more before I make a decision on the WinTV PVR.
I read some reviews on the Leadtek terrestrial card and it didn't really get too many good ones?

@nwg, I'll look into those Hauppages

[nwg]

Now, the recording is still fuzzy, I will try to record 3 mins of a show and upload for you guys, it started about 3 seconds into the show so I missed the beginning of the "theme song". But that is because it has to write the file to the disc first... maybe I will try another program.

What format is it recording in? When I had a WinTV card it would record in DiVX.

@futurex

Here are some screenshots from my digital adapter. It records the raw mpeg stream to a mpeg2 file.

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/nodeal.jpg

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/news.jpg

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/smallville.jpg

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/spincity.jpg

[MikeyBK]

nwg, those first three are pretty decent. You captured those with your Freecom DVB-T USB adapter.

My main objective is to convert our VHS collection to DVD and I guess it wouldn't hurt to get a good digital card for the TV recording as well. My question is which digital cards would be recommended for both those objectives and will allow me to back-up the VHS despite the Macrovision?

[nwg]

nwg, those first three are pretty decent. You captured those with your Freecom DVB-T USB adapter.

My main objective is to convert our VHS collection to DVD and I guess it wouldn't hurt to get a good digital card for the TV recording as well. My question is which digital cards would be recommended for both those objectives and will allow me to back-up the VHS despite the Macrovision?

Yep the Freecom.

Freecom USB Adapter

All the cards I have seen ignore the macrovision.

[MikeyBK]

Yep the Freecom.

Freecom USB Adapter

All the cards I have seen ignore the macrovision.

Cool little toy! How much american is 79,00 EUR?

That would be nice but I've heard a few that couldn't like the ATI AllInWonder cards.

[nwg]

Cool little toy! How much american is 79,00 EUR?
[/COLOR]

That is expensive. It would be $96. I paid £35/$61 from Amazon.

It uses the DVB-T standard.

Amazon link.

[drfsupercenter]

Drf, just to give you an idea of what kind of clarity of image to expect with your 150, I recorded a couple of mpeg2 files from my cable TV, then here's two screen grabs from the mpeg2 file.

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/1397/142hm.jpg

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/4564/054zp1.jpg

If your captures look significantly worse than that then something isn't right.

Well the screenshots look better than my screenshots. Dunno why, but the screenshot function totally makes the pictures look like crap. I will do a printscreen of the Unsolved Mysteries ep I taped.

BTW, is there a way to tell WinTV to quit after it's done recording?

[futurex]

@futurex

Here are some screenshots from my digital adapter. It records the raw mpeg stream to a mpeg2 file.

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/nodeal.jpg

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/news.jpg

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/smallville.jpg

http://www.apah20.dsl.pipex.com/pics/spincity.jpg-

im guessing you live in the UK? curious what bitrates for sd and hd channels?

i capture ts mux. that way you get subtitles/teletext too

[drfsupercenter]

I would do that but I have analog cable.

[nwg]

im guessing you live in the UK? curious what bitrates for sd and hd channels?

i capture ts mux. that way you get subtitles/teletext too

I am in the UK. HD doesn't exists yet and all TV is still SD (Sky will do the first HD transmission later in the year). I am using a free digital service called Freeview. The only cost is the set top box to watch it on.

BBC Channels have the best bitrate which is why they look the best.

[moonrocks]

BTW, is there a way to tell WinTV to quit after it's done recording?.

If you use the Scheduler that got installed then you can tell WinTV to exit after it finishes recording a scheduled program. You have to uncheck the "Keep WinTV open when Done" box because it's checked by default.

I don't think there is anyway to get WinTV to automatically exit if you start a recording manually though.

[drfsupercenter]

I figured that out

One thing I am worried about is that when you click the "record" button next to a show on the guide, it starts like 10 seconds late, as that is the time needed to make the file. Is there a way to configure it so it starts 10 seconds BEFORE the show starts? I hate that part of the software, as I miss the beginnings of shows!

[moonrocks]

I don't use the scheduler a lot, so I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but if the scheduled recording is starting 10 seconds too late I'd just set the "Time to begin" recording 1 minute earlier than you need. Then in the Program Duration box change the minutes to record to 31 or 61 whatever you need. If you just use the up/down arrows next to Program Duration, the Minutes will jump up or down by 30 minutes. So at first your "Time to End" will be 1 minute too early, 10:59 for example.

But you can customize the Program duration minutes. If you click right in the green minutes box and enter a number, 61, then click the up/down arrows and you'll see the "Time to End" will adjust to end at 11:00 or whatever you want.

You'll end up with an mpeg file with an extra 45-50 seconds at the beginning that you don't need but you'll have the whole show. And it should only take you a minute or two with an mpeg editor to edit out the 45-50 seconds at the beginning. I always use an mpeg editor to edit out commercials anyway.

Also, keep in mind, some people with the Hauppauge 150 or 250 prefer not to use the WinTV software. For me I'm fine with it, does everything I need. But there is freeware, GB-PVR, that will drive this card. It's very popular and has lots of features. I don't use it myself but I know it gets good reviews. You might check it out if you're not real happy with the WinTV software.

http://www.gbpvr.com/

[drfsupercenter]

I will try it after I burn The Matrix to a DVD (I taped it off TBS last night).

Do you know if that program supports captions?

[moonrocks]

Not sure if GB-PVR supports closed captions. But they seem to have good support forums. From looking at this link it seems the answer is yes, but it looks a little involved

http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?t=12041&highlight=captions