Hello, I’m looking for a new pc and doing some vhs capturing, Is a PC with window’s media center OS going to be a plus or minus? Make a difference? Or should I go with a machine with Xp? Any suggestions I’d sure appreciate. Mike
If I were you I would Stick with XP Home/Pro over Media Center as Most Hardware/Software that Is MediaCenter compatible is XP Compatible but some XP Software isn"t Media Center Compatible Pluss there are Better Capture softwares that have Most of the Media Center Features..... I believe the Biggest Factor you should be Looking at is what Capture Device to get and what Capture software to use.... I would suggest that you get an Internal PCI Capture Card over a USB One as PCI Cards have More Bandwidth available to them...You should also probably get a card that uses Hardware Compression over Software Compression as the Quality is better and it Frees up your CPU to do other Tasks while you are Captureing which also Lessens the Chance of Dropped Frames and Sync problems...If you are going to be converting VHS to DVD then a Hardware Mpeg-2 encoder Card would be best as Mpeg-2 is the Format used on DVD"s..... There are 2 Inexpensive (Under $100) Hardware Mpeg-2 encoder Cards on the Market that I would recomend , One is the "Hauppaggue WinTV PVR-150" which has a Built in TV Tuner so you can also record TV shows and it also has Composite/RCA and S-Video inputs so you can Connect a VCR or Camcorder or Game Console ect up to the Card and record to Mpeg-2/DVD Format...The Card uses a 10Bit decoder so the Quality is Pretty Good and it has a Very Good Hardware encoder so there is Little quality loss from Compression..... The Other Card I would recomend is the new "ATI Tul Theater 550" which is very Simular to the "Hauppaggue WinTV PVR-150" but it has a Few extra Features which Might make it the better card...Like the Card uses a 12 bit decoder which should Produce better quality than a 10 Bit decoder, Also the "Theatre 550" has a Hardware Dolby Digital AC3 audio encoder so it Compressed the audio to Dolby Digital which is the Best Format For DVD...It also has a Built in 16mb Frame Buffer which elimates the Chance of Dropped Frames and has an audio Lock Feature that elimates any Chance of Sync problems... It also has Built in Image Filters and a Digital 2D/3D Comb Filter so you don"t get as Much Noise in the Image and you don"t get Interlace artifacts...The Card also has a TV Tuner so you can record TV shows and it has a Breakout Cable to Composite/RCA and S-Video and audio so you can Connect your VCR or Camcoders ect to the Card... You can Find these Cards for under $100 and are MUCH Better than any other Analogue Capture devices in the Same Price Range...You can get a Cheapo Card for about $30 But it will cause you More Problems than it is worth as the quality will be Bad and you may experience Sync problems and Dropped Frames..... If you wanted to do Professinal Quality Captureing of VHS Footage and Put it on to DVD you would need to spend from $250 to $500 on an Analogue Digital Converter Like the "Canopus ADVC-110" ($250 to $300) or the 'Canopus ADVC-300" ($350 to $450) which would Produce the Best Possible Quality without haveing to sell your Children to do it..... Good Luck....Cheers
Hey Minion, Thanks for the suggestions! I'll go with a XP home machine - unless i come across a MCE deal thats too good to pass up. Capture Device:The ATI Theater 550 looks very cool and ideal for what i want to do but I'm not sure if it can capture in AVI, i'm looking for its manual. I'm under the impression that if you plan to edit captured vhs video it should be uncompressed. Whats you opinion Minion? Anybody? Mike
These devices aren"t for Captureing to AVI, They have a Built in Hardware Mpeg-2 encoder Chip which Compresses the Video to Mpeg-2/DVD Format..... If you want to edit these Files you should be useing a Native Mpeg editor like "Womble Mpeg2VCR" which will let you edit the Mpeg files without any Quality Loss....After editing the Files can Be authored Directly to DVD without haveing to re-encode the Files.... Poeple used to Do Uncompressed AVI Capture and editing because there is No quality Loss when editing in Uncompressed Format But Since you are Captureing Directly to Mpeg-2 and If you use a Native Mpeg editor then there will Not be any quality Loss anyways which defeats the Purpose of Uncompressed Editing.... You don"t want to Capture to Uncompressed AVI anyways because it uses up about 1.2GB per Minute of Video so a 2 hour movie wouldn"t even Fit on a 120gb Hard Drive and in this Case there is no need to go uncompressed..... Cheers
