Recording TV Shows! 1

[shmoes]

Hey!,

Does anyone know any GOOD cards that when you connect cable to them, you can select channels to record or program to record at a certian time. like a VCR, only say in a quality compressed mpg or avi format?



~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[ksmtech]

Hi Shmoes,

I don't claim to be an expert in this area.. but I am using the ATI All-in-Wonder 8500 DV card. For me it works great - you can connect your cable TV line and record onto available HD space. The VCR functions are pretty complete.

 

[shmoes]

Thanks for the info

question.

a 30 minute show for example would take up how much hard drive space?

~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[ksmtech]

well for one - i forgot to mention before - with this card (well with the ATI multimedia center software) you can capture video in MPEG, avi, .vcr or wmf formats. You can also use a preset "recording quality" setting or make a custom setting - depending on the format and quality, obviously the necessary space will vary.

At "good" quality (ATI .vcr format, 720x480 NTSC 6.0 Mbit/s, 16 bit stereo audio at 44.1 KHz) and with about 66 GB of space on this drive, I could record about 25-26 hours worth of video.
At the higher quality ("DVD" - MPEG2 format, 720x480 NTSC 8.0 Mbit/s, 16 bit stereo audio at 48 KHz) the same HD space would hold around 19 hours.

At the lowest preset quality ("video cd" - MPEG1, 352x240 NTSC 1.13 Mbit/s, 44.1 KHz audio) it says I could go for over 5 days (yikes 120 hours!) of TV time. That a lot of Smallville

Anyway, at the "good" setting, I'm guessing 30 minutes would be around 1.3 GB? Something like that. In that case, at the lowest setting a 30 minute show should only take up around 300 MB. If I've done my math correctly...

I hope this helps!

Jon

 

[Kocky]

It depends on the budget. A good tv card is the Pinnacle PCTV Rave. It displays tv on your pc and you can capture the tv image and you can even connect a analog and SVHS device to the card and record that. Price is around €55.