looking for advices and opinions

[magecarin]

Hi, I have notebook P4, 2ghz, 512ram, Usb 2.0, I would like to capture signal from digital Tv, what would be the best device I should use , also what is the best quality I will be able to reach and also are there any limitation what I can (with proper hardware) capture, or are there basicaly no limits, basicaly what I need is to get dvd or close to dvd quality when capturing video from Tv, thx to everybody who have some advice(s)
p.s. would this device do the trick:

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage.asp?Product_ID=1008&Langue_ID=7

[jeremymacmull]

hey there im hopefully doing the same

Yes that device looks like it would do the trick another set of devices for u to look at USB is the hauppagge.com devices USB and if in UK can recieve digital terrestial if in US there is a whole host of different ones

Quality wise they are both very good. Have a gander at the websites

[magecarin]

are there any possible problems when you are capturing the video from digital cable (such as: signal is encrypted or usb is not fast enough....etc) ? I am in the Usa and I am quite new to all this, so I do not wanna waste money on something what I would not be able to use, thx

[jeremymacmull]

well i dont really know about the encryption stuff ud have to ask people who are in the US but as for fast enough yeah USB is more than fast enough (USB 1.1 ) if the original is in MPEG2 format and probably fast enough me thinks if you are just capturing directly.

Although if you are worried u can get a standard capture card with sound and S-Video input for PCMIA then attach your current cable box to it with a scart to S-Video and dual Phono out and record that way.

This way ud have no problems with encrypted channels and it would not mean ud have to dowload some illegal proggie to watch the encrypted channels either.

I have not done this myself but it should be possible as all the boxes ie Digital cable or otherwise have scart out to go to the TV and the Scart to S-Video and Stereo phono out convertors one can get anywhere here so u must be able to get them there so it would be like capturing and watching tv just like if you have a VCR or camcorder connected but at higher quality if PCMIA (although USB should be more than fast enough really!!)

hope any of this helps as i said before i am in the UK so i cant give u specifics but this should help a bit

JEREMY

[rmatei]

You can't capture the direct digital stream if that's what you're saying. You can, however, have the cable box output analog video, and capture that and convert it back to digital. Less than ideal but it's the only way.

You shouldn't bother with the Pinnacle products. The one you linked to has hardware mpeg and mpeg2 encoding, and while it may save you time and HD space, it's inferior in quality. Ideally you capture AVI in a lossless codec like HuffYuv using Virtualdub, and you then take that video, resize it, filter it, and encode it. Something like these (http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm#usb) should work fine. So you can save money and gain quality by not having hardware mpeg encoding, but you'll need more HD space.

As for getting DVD quality, forget it. Cable TV has, at its very best, the equivalent of only about 384x288 resolution. However, that doesn't mean that capping at 384x288 will get you full quality. You should capture at something like 640x480, then deinterlace, filter out the noise, and resize to 384x288 or 320x240.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>As for getting DVD quality, forget it. Cable TV has, at its very best, the equivalent of only about 384x288 resolution. However, that doesn't mean that capping at 384x288 will get you full quality. You should capture at something like 640x480, then deinterlace, filter out the noise, and resize to 384x288 or 320x240.

when was 384x288 established as some TV standard?
take a look at:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34122&highlight=pal+resolution+is

and scroll down to Xesdeeni's first reply....
that should help.......

also..the more you downsize the more of an image detail
you destroy.......