how to hook tv to laptop?

[bellzboy]

what can I do to connect my laptop and TV so as to capture video off the TV? what cables do I need for the tv signal to go in?

thanks

[brandon11983]

You need a video capture device. You'll need some video cables (S-Video preferrably) to run into the vidcap box, and that will connect to your laptop via USB or Firewire. The most popular model's are made by Dazzle.

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/videoediting.asp?Family=24

[mikec]

I've used dazzle products before with much success. That's definitely the road to go down.

[bellzboy]

Thanks, but damn, thats some expensive stuff.

[cthulu23]

Devices that use USB or firewire for capture seem to be a bit more pricey than some of the PCI devices that you can buy. You can get cheap PCI capture cards (Hauppage WinTV, for example) that offload all encoding to the CPU. Most of the laptop ready devices that you'll find have both a receiver and a encoder, freeing your CPU to do other work but driving up the price of the device. There are exceptions to this rule, though. Take a look at hauppage.com for some other products.

What sort of video quality/ file type are you hoping to end up with?

[Bamrak]

Edited due to the inability to read the question

[viper11885]

Originally posted by Bamrak
Does the laptop have a video out or a S video out?

You cannot capture using those connections. Those 2 connections will only project the laptop's image out to the other source (TV). In order to capture from a source, you need a video capture card.

[mikec]

hehehe, INput vs. OUTput heheheheh

and bellz, a hundred bucks isn't that bad to basically make your laptop into a TIVO.