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View Full Version : Wonder what everyone recommends for

Fistandantilus
28th October 2004, 22:34
a good capture card. A few years ago I bout the TV@nywhere card and it was okay but just doesn't work on alot of 3rd party programs(not any that I have tried). I'm thinking of dishing out some money and getting a good capture card but i've been away from the capturing for so long I'm not sure what cards are good anymore.
Anyone recommend a few? Also i'd probably be looking in the price range of $100 - $300.
njahnke
30th October 2004, 21:40
my vote goes to the ati all in wonder 9600. it has been everything i could have wanted in a capture card (and it works perfectly with virtualdub; just need to set your video standard in ati's "tv" application and you're ready to go).
fccHandler
30th October 2004, 22:25
Originally posted by njahnke
my vote goes to the ati all in wonder 9600.
I have one of those too. For capturing broadcast television, it works great and you'll be very happy with it.

But my advice is to avoid this card if your intent is to backup old VHS tapes. The All In Wonder cards employ an overly sensitive "Macrovision detection" circuit which can ruin your capture, even if the tape doesn't use Macrovision! I found this out the hard way. :(

For my VHS backup project, I switched to the ATI TV Wonder VE. No Macrovision detection, and BT878A chipset. :)
njahnke
30th October 2004, 22:34
curious, do the tv wonders also support full resolution capture and all the video standards (including pal-60)?
fccHandler
31st October 2004, 09:13
Well, in the "Video Source" list mine shows PAL_M and PAL_N_COMBO. But I've no idea what those terms mean, because I live in NTSC land. Also, I should mention that I'm using the btwincap (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/) driver, NOT the ATI drivers which came with the card. I do capture full 720 x 480 NTSC.

One thing the ATI TV Wonder VE lacks is S-Video input. (But for me this isn't a problem, since my VCR only has a composite output.)
njahnke
31st October 2004, 16:07
ah cool, as far as i know, pal-m and pal-n are two different pal-60 broadcast standards that are used in south america. they're only broadcast standards, though, so that should mean that i could set the card to those modes and capture a pal-60 signal successfully. if i'm wrong, someone please correct me.