DVB capture hardware and cables

[Fredledingue]

The problem is that my satellite set doesn't have S-Video out and... my Asus card have a very strange non standard S-Video in slot, so I'm using the composite input.
Kind of a pitty when you know that I receive a digital signal. I'm moreless satisfied by this method but I assume that I lose a lot of quality with the composite, especialy and most boring, because of noise.
How can I improve this?

I'v been reading this forum and found two contradictory statements.
(can't find the thread anymore)

One said that the best way was connecting the S-Video from the sat receiver to the capture card, that composite will be much worse.

Someone else said that direct capture from the coaxial input of a tuner card is worse than composite.
That seems wierd to me. I was dreaming about the Prophet graphic card with tv-tuner integrated as the best solution.

So what do think about graphic card with integrated TVtuner and capture capability (S-v in, composite in, coaxial in...)

[Zhnujm]

the tv tuner should be the worst followed by composite and than s-video as best.
but what non-standard s-video-in uses your asus card ?
i cant believe this, at least there must be an adapter to work with standard cables.

[Fredledingue]

It's 7 pins (one horizontal row of 3 under a row of 4), it's as small as the standard 4 pins.
Thanks for your repy. I will drop the pc-tuner and look for an adapter.
I'm not sure at all it exists.
I will have to do something with my sat receiver which doesn't have S-video out too...

[Zhnujm]

i think that is a standard s-video plug with "integrated" composite signal. i have the same type as tv-out.
you can plug in a standard 4-pin s-video cable or a s-video->composite adapter wich uses the addidional pins.

but i really dont know if the quality improvement is worth upgrading your receiver. maybe somebody who has already tried this can anser.

[Atamido]

I had a Sanyo 31" (cheap) TV that definately looked better using the S-Video in. It (I am guessing) had a seperate tuner for the coax/composite and the S-video. If I took a composite cable and plugged it into a composite2svideo adapter, and then plugged that into the svideo connector on the TV, the video would actually look better than if I plugged the composite cable directly into the composite connector on the TV. That shouldn't have made a difference, but it did. I think the tuner that was used for the S-video connection was just better.

The S-video connection on the TV did have a strange issue when connected to some DVD players and the video contrast changed quickly frome one frame to the next like lightning or flashing pictures. I wouldn't recommend buying a Sanyo as this seems to be a brand issue, even though they are touted as having an extremely high reliability rating. Wait, why am I talking about cheap TV's in the HDTV section....

[Fredledingue]

I forgot to say that this 7pin is both S-video and composite, "integrated" if you will.
I supose the composite line is one of these pin, separate from the s-video pins.
Anyway the video source is composite and I don't see how "converting" it to s-video could improve the quality. My goal is to have a s-video source.
To answer to pamel, I think it must be because of the tuner.

[bofw3]

Originally posted by Fredledingue
I forgot to say that this 7pin is both S-video and composite, "integrated" if you will.
I supose the composite line is one of these pin, separate from the s-video pins.
This is not so, the 3 aditional pins are uses by power and I2C, that's the way that Asus controls an external Asus TV-Box, I have one o these. When you want composite from this connector you just use the Y pin.

Anyway the video source is composite and I don't see how "converting" it to s-video could improve the quality. My goal is to have a s-video source.
Yeap, that is your problem otherwise you could plug a standard 4-pin s-video cable and use it as a standard s-video connection, you don't need an adapter because the pins are aligned to fit, I used it this way with my VCR.