Vhs 2 Dvd, Or How Can I Record Live Tv ???

[jamieuk]

my main aim is to be able to record the ultimate fighting championship which is live on sky box office on the 22 november (paper veiw) on to a dvd-r disk with out having a dvd player that recordes directly, like the philipps 1.

I have used the search function here over the last hour and after reading some other peoles posts of the similar concern, the only option i can seem to understand is that i need to record the event using a VHS player, after that i need to some how hook my PC up to my VHS player and convert it to divx etc, ovoulsey with a tv capture card. ( i have the kiss dvd player which plays divx to watch it on)

IS THERE ANY WAY!!! i could plug my tv (sky) areial in to my computer and record the event LIVE!!! threw my PC ???. It just seems like i will loose alot of qaulity from recording it with a VHS tape fiirst off all, as you never get the same qaulity as what you are orinaly watching.

What are my options here ???? if you can point me in a direction of a good guide, or even writing a litttle guide for me would be most apreciated........ PLease dont give me short answers which leave me confused!.

Will thank you in advance to any 1 who has took the time out to help me!!!!!! cheers !

[ppera2]

Perhaps you should buy some DVB card - for best quality (it it's digital broacasting). Otherwise you need some analog capture card.

Yes, never record to VHS, only direct digitalize.

For more details browse forum :-)

[jggimi]

I agree with ppera2, if your "sky" set-top box has DVB out, then a compatible DVB card will allow Digital Video Broadcast signals to be acquired directly by your PC. If that's the case, the place to start is in the HDTV / DVB / Tivo forum.

If not, then you'll have to do an analog->to->digital capture. There are two ways people do that: An external A->D device, which then connects to the computer via a standard PC connection. There are a number of devices that can do that, and send digital video/audio to your PC in a format you can manage (such as MPEG-2 with MP2 or PCM audio). There are people who use their digital video cameras for this purpose, too. They record to their digital video camera and then transfer via firewire/USB to their PCs. The format returned with consumer video cameras is usually an AVI file, using one of a group of high bitrate, lossy codecs called "DV". And, we have a DV forum specific to DV processing issues.

An internal PC card that does the capture. These cards typically allow for S-video and/or Composite video connections, and sometimes have built in TV-tuners so that you can plug RF cables in. The sound capture is managed by your PC's sound card. These are relatively inexpensive, but their use consumes a great deal of PC resource (CPU, disk space).This forum is for analog capture issues, which includes external capture device discussions. Most of the problem threads are for those of us who use internal capture devices, due to their inherent limitations (software operation and performance, TV-tuner interference, etc.).