Compro Videomate Ultra or Hauppauge DBX 401: which one would you buy?

[Chainmax]

Everyone around here knows the 401, but since I'm not sure if anyone knows the Compro one, here's the product link (http://www.comprousa.com/products/vmtvultra.htm).

I plan to build a capturing machine that will most likely be used for capture of PAL tapes, but it's quite likely that I'll have to capture some NTSC ones every now and then (don't know if that could be an issue, that's why I am specifying it).

[Arachnotron]

All those fancy options the NEC chip adds to the compro only work for NTSC......
For PAL, it works like any other SAA713x based card.

[Chainmax]

That's the reason I specified that I will capture mostly PAL tapes with an occasional NTSC one. How would you say SAA713x compares to bt8x8? Are they about equal?

[Arachnotron]

I would say yes, but there has been some debate over this. Some people claim that the BT might be a bit sharper, but the fact that some manufacturers enable the peaking filter (= artificial sharpening) can throw the discussion a bit.

Anyhow, in my view for all practical purposes the quality is the same. Added bonus is that the SAA7134 has a functioning PAL-60 modus, but if you have native NTSC equipment you are not going to need that :)

There has been some discussion about the compro in this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87266) thread, and a few others on this forum.

[Chainmax]

Well, I expect to have a cheap VHS deck that can handle both PAL and NTSC if that's what you mean. So, the Compro is either equal or significantly better than the bt8x8 and it's priced similarly too. I think I'll buy it then, thanks for the help :).

[Arachnotron]

Cheap PAL decks like that DONT output NTSC. They output PAL-60. So if you are going to capture that, I would definately suggest a SAA7134. The BT878 can do pal-60 when combined with the BTWincap drivers, but this mode is broken and you need to fiddle with BTtweak and such to get it right.

Capping PAL-60 with a SAA7134 works like a charm by the way. I do it all the time :) (though I do use a s-VHS deck)

There is not much point to a compro though, since you are not going to capture NTSC :)

[Chainmax]

I'm not sure what you mean, but VHS players are multinorm here, so almost all of them can play PAL and NTSC tapes. As for the last line of your reply: well, I will capture some NTSC tapes every now and then, plus the prices of both cards are similar.

[Arachnotron]

I'm not sure what you mean, but VHS players are multinorm here, so almost all of them can play PAL and NTSC tapes. As for the last line of your reply: well, I will capture some NTSC tapes every now and then, plus the prices of both cards are similar. I assumed you were in PAL country. In most PAL countries, cheap VCR's are NTSC playback capable, which is not the same as true multinorm. For one thing, you cannot record NTSC with those, only play it back.

But, when you playback a NTSC tape in one of those, while the timing is left NTSC so it is still 29.97 fps / 525 lines, the chroma signal is encoded using the PAL standard. ( 4.43 MHz chroma subcarrier frequency etc.) The resulting signal is PAL-60. If you feed PAL-60 into a capture card that is set to NTSC, the result is a greyscale picture.

True multinorm machines generate a full NTSC signal when playing NTSC tapes, but those are rare.

You said you were mainly playing PAL and were going to use a cheap VCR. Hence my assumption it would deliver PAL-60, not NTSC

[Chainmax]

Ok, now I understand. I do live in a PAL country (Uruguay) and PAL-60 (didn't know what it was) does seems a lot more likely. I'm pretty sure I already asked you this in another thread, but could you recommend me a cheap SVHS deck taking into account I'll probably buy a PCI Full Frame TBC card at some point?


P.S: if I understood correctly, it's better to play an NTSC tape on a PAL machine. Is that right or am I missing something?

[Arachnotron]

@Chainmax

I use a JVC HRS-7950. I am happy with it, but it is an older design and it does not have a full frame TBC as the latest models have, only a line TBC. The cheapest versions are rumoured to have a mechanism that failes easily. Also, the cheapest versions don't have the full suite of digital filters and TBC. You will only need those for troublesome tapes (I even switch the TBC off by default), but it is nice to have.

You may not have much choice though, VCR's are going the way of the dodo and s-VHS decks are getting very rare.

Uruguay? That is PAL/N isn't it? PAL timing and color encoding, but a NTSC chroma subcarrier frequency. I am not so sure if a PAL/N VCR will produce PAL-60, true NTSC or something else. Might be PAL timing and encoding but using 3.58 MHz chroma subcarrier. No idea what that one is called. N/PAL-60 :confused: Maybe someone else from a PAL-N country can tell?

@anyone
Some people claim that the BT might be a bit sharper, but the fact that some manufacturers enable the peaking filter (= artificial sharpening) can throw the discussion a bit. To clarify this remark a bit further: The peaking filter is disabled for most BT878 drivers, but I have on occasion found it to be enabled for some SAA7134 and CX23881 drivers. In any case, when discussing sharpness issues between cards you have to make sure no peaking filter is enabled for any of the devices.

There Ivo, happy now? ;)

[edit]
http://www.dvdoverseas.com/vcr.htm
Lists a few VCR's and an overview of which tapes they can and cannot playback. There are also a few that can playback and record both standards and even a few that can convert (I wouldn't want one of those). The ones that are "Multisystem VCR's have unique feature of playback NTSC(U.S.System) videos with PAL only(overseas) TV" are in fact generating PAL-60. Just to give an idea of what is out there :)

[ses]

I have a Compro Videomate Gold II. It can read PAL 60 format in color and the color quality is true to the original. I have had a problem though, the Compro Card doesn't seem to work well with third party recording programs. I tried using my standard iuVCR program as well as Vitual Dub and some others as well.
It never would really work right. There must have been a system problem in my computer that I could not solve because it would ALWAYS drop the first fram at 1:31 into the recording. then the next frame drop happened exactly 4 minutes into the recording. Everytime, there would be a frame drop at exactly the same time so that in an hours time, I always had 45 frames dropped, you could set your watch by it! I can't imagine that such a problem was the card's fault. Indescriminant frame drops might suggest that, but a dropped frame at exactly the same time, everytime would imply a system problem, I would guess. So until I have the time to really dig in and find the problem, I returned to my old MSI card and iuVCR even though the MSI is having problems reading my NTSC recordings. Aprat from that, I'm getting great video from PAL TV broadcasts and PAL VHS conversions.
If you don't have to do any editing, I suppose you could just play the VHS tape into Compro's own recording program which works pretty well, but if you want to run the digital recording through some filters to improve picture quality, you would, I guess, want to record it in AVI format, which according to my experience so far, has been difficult with the Compro.
When I can afford to build a new computer, I plan to try to work out the problems I have had with the Compro, but right now it's on the shelf as I need one machine that is always ready to operate.