Video Capture Card
 

Looking at buying a PCI Video capture card and I was wondering if anyone had any experiences with them? I will be using it for 2 reasons,
1) Watching TV on my computer
2)Capturing video from Camcorder and/or VHS

Thanks

I have an old ATI TV Wonder VE PCI card. It has connections for both Coaxial and RCA video. There's also a line out jack that you connect to either your line-in or mic jack on your sound card. That's only applicable if you're using the coaxial cable since the RCA video doesn't carry sound signals.

You'll have to find a female RCA to male stereo adapter and plug that into your line-in jack if you want to watch/capture video from a machine that doens't have a coaxial out. That's if you want to hear sound from your computer speakers. If you just want to hook the video to the computer and the sound to a stereo system, that's fine.

The software (you can download it free from the ATI website) works excellently Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 Server. Those are the only systems I've tested so far, but 98 and above should work fine. The software can be a little buggy sometimes though. For non-Microsoft systems... no experience at all. Good luck if that's what you're trying for.

Quality is merely OK, it's nowhere as good as watching it on a regular television set, but it's a lot more convenient. You can resize the TV window and have it on while you work. You can minimize the TV window and you can choose to let it replace your desktop wallpaper (the icons will still be on top of the video) but you can't change channels/volume in that mode. You can capture video, set timers to capture video (easier than setting up a VCR), have closed captioning, name your channels, switch from coax to RCA with one button, mute, autodetect channels, full screen it, and more that I can't think of.

I like this card a lot, but ATI All-in-Wonder video cards are newer and work even better. Not to mention there are external connectors (A little connection dongle with a thick wire from the back of your computer to wherever the wire can reach.) so you don't have to climb behind your PC everytime you want to change the connections. I think there are both in and outputs on the dongle and you can plug in RCA sound on it as well. Svideo on that too (I think). I don't have an All-in-Wonder card but I have a friend who has one and it has all the features of mine and more.

You can probably find an old ATI AIW card on ebay if you don't need the latest and greatest. Same with the ATI TV Wonder VE. You can probably find it on ebay or an online store. Don't know about retail stores. Good luck with it, and let me know if you have questions!

id have to say pass on the ati tv wonder ve, i have one and it seems to be a bit of a bitch getting it to work with winxp and this is coming from me and a friend who is feel is very adept at pc's and who i usually go to for answers when i am stuck.

cant speak for an AIW but im kind of unhappy with the TV wonder VE

good luck to you though

I have had a AIW for years and always works great, not that i use it much but it works... I think the main features over the VE is that the AIW cars have mpeg 2 compression built into it and it has a better picture quality, can't remeber what res. it is but it looks good full screen on my 17 inch monitor at 1024 by 768....

I have had a ATI AIW 7500 for some time now and it has been a very good card for me - unfortunately it is dying on me now and needs to be replaced.

I use the Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe. Great card and it works perfectly under WinXP.

I've used vid cap cards from Canopus and
Pinnacle; no problems with either.

I dont think your looking for a capture card as much as your looking for a TV Card. The cards Nash and Mont suggested would work great, never seen a Leadtek in action but I have heard good things about those as well. The ATI AIW cards are out of the question because your looking for a PCI card and if you get a AIW that old, it would not be as good of quality.

TV Card = Watch TV on / Record / Output to TV
Capture Card = Capture Video from different sources / Output to different sources.

When I think of capture card I think of the Matrox X10 / 100 or the cards from Pinnacle / Canopus like TwoToTango. Most of these cost a fair bit more then your average TV card, but usually dont have a Cable input, only RCA / Firewire.