Yesterday I bought myself a TV tuner card for my PC as step 1 of my plan to be able to transfer stuff from VHS to DVD. However I can't get the fucking thing to work. I suspect a combination of XP being a PITA, no-name hardware and shite software, but before I go to the hassle of returning the card I thought I'd throw myself at the feet of ukrm and beg for wisdom. The facts, ma'am, are: o I'm running Windows XP Home o The packaging for the card says it is made by Mentor (no, I'd never heard of them either) and claims that the software included supports XP. o The actual chip on the card is a Conexant Fusion 878a o When installing the software that came with the card Windows has a hissy fit because it's not certified for XP. o When running the software it gives shite ... and I mean really shite ... error messages. An example is (and these aren't my typos) "Cannot preview, maybe some program use same interface or something wrong ..." o I've downloaded the drivers that go with the chip from driverguide.com and they install cleanly and Windows reports the device as present and working correctly. So, the upshot is that I _think_ the card is working OK, but I can't get any software to run with it to actually let me see it's working. Even a window with static in or an FM radio signal would do. Unfortunately I know nothing about TV tuner cards, never having owned one before, but I think my options now are; 1. Try to find some generic software that lets me use the TV card, rather than the shite that came with it. 2. **** about some more with drivers and see if it will work. 3. Unplug the card from my machine and try it in my wife's Windows 98 machine. 4. Send it back to whence it came and start again. 5. 1 followed by 2, 3 and then 4. Anybody have any sage words of advice to me on any of these matters? -- AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas) Kawasaki ZX-6R J1 BOTAFOT#2,ITJWTFO#6,UKRMRM#1/13a,MCT#1,DFV#2,SKoGA#0 (and KotL) BotToS#5,SBS#25,IbW#34, TEAR#3 (and KotL), DS#5, Keeper of the TFSTR# The speccy Geordie twat.
can you trace the OEM from the FCC ID.? http://www.fcc.gov/oet/fccid/ If you are lucky they will have an English as well as a Taiwanese website.
Agree on the Hauppauge bit - but I think you should try to stay away series of "USB Family" products and go for one of their much better PCI tuner-cards instead. I've had both and wish I'd never bought the USB-thingy... /claus
----- Original Message ----- From: "AndrewR" <> Newsgroups: uk.rec.motorcycles Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2003 12:31 PM Subject: 200LY from planet Topic - TV tuner cards Option 4, if it dosen't work out of the box, send it back. Always works for me ! HTH
Option 5 - learn to format usenet replies correctly, while snipping and comforming to normal attribution line construction. On the TV card - option 4 sounds good to me; then get a PCI Hauppage item as they always work.
Why are you looking at TV cards? Most of them are cheap tuners that are just about capable of displaying a picture on your screen, most have recording capabilities but not up to the standards you are probably looking for:-( The Hauppuage card in my machine is only capable of capturing about 15 frames per second, way below what you need for decent quality DVD's. That one sounds good Yep, if you want to do the job properly you will need something thats capable of doing the job. How about something thats capable of handling the output from a video or any other analogue source. <copied from an earlier post> Pinnacle's Studio DC10plus version 8 seems capable, good picture capture size and handles PAL frame rate without problem, C/W software. http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_n.asp?Product_ID=2&Langue_ID=2 The important specs on features and specifications link. It needs to be mounted in a capable machine with plenty of free hard disk space, only needs 12gig an hour for high quality capture Dare I say it, it is available from PC World for about £100, probably a lot cheaper elsewhere. This ain't a product recomendation, I have never used their kit
Not the one I got; from new it seemed to suffer when it got hot and start flickering. This happened in two different machines and under both Windows and Linux. Couldn't be arsed to do anything about it mind you...
My Haupage card is capable of capturing 25 frames per second at 720x568... "streamer -o /scratch/video -O /scratch/sound -b 32 -s 720x568 -f 422 -F mono8 -c /dev/video0 -r 25 -n pal -i television -j 100 -t 67500" for 75 mins worth. Great for recording TV programes. I should do stereo really but I'm too lazy... -- SimonB - South Wales. BOF#32 email simonb@zapikdotcodotuk Triumph Sprint ST, ZXR750L2 Wazimbaki. Kawasaki Z1R For Sale
Try Dscaler http://dscaler.org/ it's the daddy - IIRC it's worked before I've installed all the Hauppauge drivers. I've captured TV uncompressed on Virtualdub and then converted it to DivX 5.05 after, works well. IuLab's iuVCR is good too, but it refuses to work for me of late.
Is that running in Linux? I was just looking at the standard software that came with it TBH I only occasionally use mine, and then only to watch rather than record, did try but with very limited success.
Yes indeed. I use it for downloading stuff from my Bro's old Video Camera. Yes well. Winwhatever does appear to leave very little cpu power for anything really important... I just run a cron/at job wth the above command line... -- SimonB - South Wales. BOF#32 email simonb@zapikdotcodotuk Triumph Sprint ST, ZXR750L2 Wazimbaki. Kawasaki Z1R For Sale
xawtv -hwscan gives me :- /dev/video0: OK [ -device /dev/video0 ] type : v4l name : BT878(Hauppauge (bt878)) flags: overlay capture tuner So your card looks as if it uses the same chip set as the Hauppauge. Download the drivers... -- SimonB - South Wales. BOF#32 email simonb@zapikdotcodotuk Triumph Sprint ST, ZXR750L2 Wazimbaki. Kawasaki Z1R For Sale
Yes, one of these days, sometime in the distant future, I may attempt to install and learn a proper OS, til then I will continue to use windoze
