[Roger Huston]

Hello,


I have been reading posts on this board for a couple hours now. I have a new Dell notebook (Inspiron 8200) and have downloaded some video off of the Internet. I haven't had a high-end Pc at home in years as I work on computers all day long and the last think I wanted to do when I came home was work on a computer, if you know what I mean.


Anyways, this thing as the new NVidia Go 440 card which kicks butt at games. I have downloaded some DivX video from the net and thought it would be nice to do it myself. I travel frequently and friends of mine always have videos they want me to see.


Ok, I have been reading about USB video capture cards and their inherent weaknesses. They can't capture more than 320x200 at 30fps. That and you can't use them with DScaler. Is that true with all USB? What about the new Bungee DVD ? I suppose the cheaper solutions from DLink, Hauppage and the like are also out.


What about the Hollywood DV Bridge ? This is at least a Firewire so I am sure the transfer speed is better than the USB stuff. I haven't seen anyone talk about this product yet. Are there other firewire products out there? Also, size is more important than price as I will be traveling with it from time to time.


I will not be pushing this video to any large screen TV, mostly I will be just viewing it on my computer or pushing it to a regular 4:3 TV. I still would like something better than VCR quality, something around what my TIVO does would be just fine. As I said I travel a lot now and this way I can record some shows and watch them on the plane or something.


Any help would be appreciated. Although I have learned a lot in this forum over the past several months, I still feel like I am way behind the curve here.


Thanks,


Roger

 

[Roger Huston]

Hello,


I also had one more question. How does the SoundBlaster Extigy(sp) perform? It is an external version of the Audigy and while not on par with the M-Audio (according to some posts on this forum) I have read reports of pretty decent performance.


Has anyone tried this?


Roger

 

[SHS]

More like a TiVo or VCR with the option to burn to CD or DVD

Pinnacle Bungee DVD

Hauppage WinTV-PVR USB

ProVideo PV356 USB

DViCO FusionMPEG USB


More like Capture only with the option to burn to CD or DVD but no Tuner nor a TV Scheduler.

ADS Instant DVD

Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge

Dazzle Digital Video Creator

 

[Roger Huston]

SMS, thank you for your reply. That was a distinction I had not seen. Since I will be using this for my notebook, I probably won't need a TV tuner as I will probably be backing up old VHS tapes or simple stuff. If I like it, I will probably get a dedicated machine to do TiVo type duties.


I do have a couple of questions about quality.


There is a significant price difference between the the WinTV-USB and the Pinnicale Bungee DVD, but is the quality better too? I have gone to each company's site, but there seems to be very little information available from them. I can't even get the dimentions or weight of a product and the stats are minimal.


Has anyone use the Dazzle Hollywood product? How does it perform?


Thanks,


Roger

 

[Namlemez]

USB physically does not have enough bandwidth to do good video capture.


As for the Extigy, it doesn't really work with passing through any AC3 sounds from a DVD. The only product that has worked over USB is an Abit one that isn't sold in the US.

 

[dschmelzer]

If they were to come out with a USB 2.0 capture card, it physically would have sufficient bandwidth for full speed capture. However, I have not (yet) seen one on the market.

 

[SHS]

No Roger there no significant price difference they both cost $200.

Yes what some folks are saying is ture USB physically does not have enough bandwidth also long you keep setting down to 4MBit/sec MPEG2 or less you should be fine how every trying capture RAW AVI is not going happing with USB 1.1 device and dschmelzer is rigth a ture USB 2.0 capture card what will be need for any above 4MBit/sec or RAW AVI capture at 320x240.


The four I list above are all Hardware bace MPEG2 capture device, As for quality it should be about the same but I have hear that FusionMPEG USB dose one hell job at quality other then audio bug I don't know if they ever fix this you can read Warren review on this I post a link to it.

Pinnacle Bungee DVD

Hauppage WinTV-PVR USB

ProVideo PV356 USB

DViCO FusionMPEG USB http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/reviews/fusion.html

 

[Roger Huston]

All,


Thank you for your replies, they were helpful. From what I can determine it looks like all the USB stuff falls short. I think I am going to try the Dazzle Firewire capture device. As my laptop will be used for the occasional capture, mostly when I am traveling, I think this will fit my needs.


Has anyone tried it yet?


Roger