[trevlac]

I have one of these cards. This may repeat what others have said, but I'd thought I'd chime in.

Originally posted by plazz2000
I'm looking to buy a TV capture card with S-Video In. I don't want to use it to watch TV on my PC, just make high quality copies from digital satellite (maybe XviD).

I'm not sure where you can buy from, but there are lots of cards with s-video in even without a tuner. Here is a link with a bunch of choices: http://www.newegg.com/app/ListProduc...tby=22&order=0

The Leadtek has the same chip as the MSI with no tuner.

I'd like to use resolutions of maybe 512x288 or higher.

This is more dependant on your driver/machine/capture app. Most any card/chip today can do 720x576. The card/chip is not the limiting factor.

I see this card here: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&sku=118657

but I don't know if it's what I'm looking for. Will I be able to use VDub, etc to capture video from this card?

As noted, VDub may not work well with the driver for a CX based card. There are a lot of great free capture apps that do. VirtualVCR is one I like.

What can I expect from the MPEG-4 encoder? I never knew that was available on hardware.

It is available on hardware, but not in this card. Cards starting at double the price have this in hardware. Generally, I think mpeg capture is bad. However, if you have clean digital source, it may work well.

The price is what I like about that card (it's just £20 on eBay), but I don't want to spend over €100 on a card.
Is it possible to buy a card in this range that can do what I want?

If you want just AVI capture, there are lots of BT878a based cards that would work. If you want hardware assisted encode, a HAUPPAUGE PVR-250 may be a good option (I don't have one so don't base it on what I said).

My thoughts about the MSI card:

I had no trouble getting it to work in a dual AMD Tyan machine. Of course I never bothered with anything but the driver. The software that comes with any card at this price range is suspect. You can get much better for free. The captures have slightly more detail than a BT878a based card. This means more noise from an analog source. I like the tuner in my AVER BT878a card better, even though the MSI is "solid state". Any BT8x8 based card has better software support because the chip has been around longer and the driver source is known. It's the safer bet for avi capture.