How to know what chip a card has?

[plazz2000]

Hi,

I'm looking for a card for under £50 with S-video Input, for recording to XviD and DVD (possibly recording to HuffYUV first)

I've read that the BT878A chip is good, but where can I find a list of cards with this chip? Is the BT879 better? What's the difference?

Also, I was looking at this card here, because it's cheap on eBay:

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_n.asp?Product_ID=512&Langue_ID=2&division_id=

Will this do what I want? How do I find out if it's BT878? If you look at the "Features & Specifications" page, it says that it doesn't record to MPEG1/2. Does this just mean that the hardware can't, but I can with software?

Finally, would you recommend recording audio through the TV card, or the sound card?

Thanks for your time.

[Fantasma]

Hello

Sometimes the only way to find out the type of chip a card
has been assembled with it is by looking at the card itself, I do this all the time before I buy a TV card and the clerk is more than
willing to satisfy my curiosity.

Example of some cards with the BT878 chip are:
1. Flyvideo 98 -> (No S-Video though)
2. Avermedia TV

They can be found at retail stores even today. I have both and I can do real time captures up to 720 X 480 using PCiVideo MJPEG codec or
HuffYUV. However, you first need to use the BT878 driver found here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/btwincap/

Good luck.

[plazz2000]

Thanks. I found a page here:
http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/supportedcards.html
where a few BT878 cards are mentioned.

They can be found at retail stores even today.
When you say "even today", do you mean that the BT878 chip is outdated? Has it been replaced by a superior chip?

[Fantasma]

Plazz2000

I am sorry my replies take so much time to be posted. The BT878 is being replaced in new TV cards, some of them are using the Philips chip which is supposed to be much better. I, for example, bought the Flyvideo 2000 TV card and this one comes with the SAA7130HL from Philips, and I must admit the picture looks much better. However, there is a problem with it and this is that you can't use Third Party Applications to do real time captures (unless you do some hacking in the registry).

Now, FlyVideo 3000 is manufactured with SAA7133 and SAA7134 chips, but I have no experience with this card.

But anyway, I do prefer those with the BT878, which is proved as very stable and the drivers are fully functionals.

[plazz2000]

Thanks for the help, Fantasma.

I think I'll go for the aforementioned Pinnacle, because of btwincap.

Thanks again.