[tech] tv tuner card

[David Basden]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 07:56:55PM +0800, Paul Marinceu wrote:
> Hiho Dudes,
> 
> Been thinking this might be a cool thing to have...
> Has anyone actually got one? If so, how would you rate the
> coolness/usefulness factor of such a gadget?

I have a BT848, which is very outdated, but i've got my niftyness
quotent out of it by doing wacky video molestation stuff for parties,
and other various teleconferencing stuff.

> Might be nice if it works in Linux too, but doesn't _have to_
> I was also wondering what res people are using it at and if mpeg4 would be a
> good choice for encoding TV programmes to disk ;P

It really depends on what you're sampling. If you're sampling
free-to-air analogue PAL, then capturing at any more than PAL resolution
is pretty worthless. If you're grabbing digital TV though, thats another
matter.

> So far I only know of the Leadtek WinFast 2000 card.

I'm not up on the current cards, but go for something that has MPEG
encoding onboard. That way your CPU won't get all loaded up with it.
MPEG-4 is great, but won't play on a DVD player. Most DVD players these
days will play SVCD (MPEG-2) or VCD (MPEG-1). MPEG-4 however is much
better compression.

David