Best VIVO Videocard Available in the UK

[bobspliff]

Please can anyone recommend a decent video card that has video in (analogue) and video out capabilities, and is excellent for capturing from VCR? It MUST be available in the UK too (links to online stores appreciated)!

At the moment, I'm looking at buying the All-In-Wonder 9000 or the Gainward Geforce 4 - although I can only find the 600XP and not the 700XP - is there a big difference?

Any help gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob
PS: I forgot to mention... the card has to be able to disable Macrovision as well. Does the Gainward do this?

[dar1us]

The GeForce 4's run on the same two chipsets, either the 7104 or the 7108 (chipsets for the Video Decoding (analogue>digital)). If drivers 1.08 are run (a bit old and crooked) then macrovision should be no problem. - This is what others reccomend, I never had ANY problems with macrovision sources such as Sky Box Office or other such like DVD with ANY drivers on either chipset.

The card is pretty solid, though overblurs a little. Ofcourse, being it is a GeForce 4, it is nice on games. I have specifically a GeForce 4 Ti4200 (8x) - Phillips SAA7108 Chipset for gaming/fun and the MSI tv@nywhere for video capturing. It does it a lot better, capturing though the video out facilities of the GeForce work well enough, as long as you can get TVTool working with it.

With all cards, they LOVE progressive frames, and this one does its best not to really hate interlaced. The MSI tv@nywhere I use cant stand interlaced, the results are terrible, no matter how you deinterlace, it is packed with artifacts.

What kinda sources are you intending for your capture card, VCR, SKY, Cable or heaven forbid... DVD?

[bobspliff]

Dar1us,

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I'd be looking to mainly capture from VHS. The Geforce sounds like a safe bet in this case, doesn't it?

Thanks,
Bob

[dar1us]

No problem, if you have any more questions, direct them to this post, of if you are too scared, PM me. Though the people here don't bite... Much:D

Enjoy

[wotef]

are you really, really sure you need a vivo card?

why not just get a cheap and good hauppauge wintv?

best results from vhs won't depend so much on the capture card as on the quality of your (s-vhs) player

[artful]

Good reviews here.


http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/reviews/index.html