ATI TV Wonder or a 3dfx VoodooTV? Please help

[ddragon]

Hi all,

I stumbled across one last VoodooTV card in a store. I would like to buy an add-on TV tuner card for watching TV (doh) and converting some of my VHS tapes to some suitable format to burn them to CDs. My question is: should I buy the VoodooTV (if they still have it) or should I go for an ATI TV Wonder? I am not very experienced in the field of TV tuner cards, so I have no idea how they compare. Of course I know the VoodooTV must be a year old design, but I am not sure for how long has the TV Wonder been around, either. My primary concerns are picture quality (I am still holding on to my Voodoo5 as my graphics card) and compatibility (W98 & W2000). The VoodooTV has a remote included and costs a bit more (converting from Czech Crowns & German Marks, I would pay roughly $58 for the TV Wonder and $63 for the VoodooTV to give you an idea - but please don't send me any tips on better deals online or elsewhere, I want to buy the stuff here and not on the other side of the planet ).

If anybody has any tips regarding moving my movies from VHS to CDs (including compression parameters), I would welcome them too. THX.

 

[AluminumStudios]

Get neither (^_^

Many ATI and Voodoo products are based on the same capture chip mabe by Brooktree. These cards give you washed out, fuzzy, low quality captures. Capturing is pretty much an afterthought for these people.

If you want to do good quality digitizing of stuff from VHS you should consider a Pinnacle DC10+. The DC10+ is a stand lone PCI capture card. It is inexpensive. It has the draback on only having Windows 9x/Me drivers. BUT the quality, the clarity, and color is an order of magnitude better than ANYTHING ATI, or Voodoo ever did. Pinnacle makes high end video editing boards, so that experience bleeds over into theri cheaper products. I actually dual boot 2000/98 so I can still use my DC10+ which does a superb job.

~Bill Milberry
http://www.aluminumstudios.com

 

[ddragon]

Thanks for the reply!

I also dual boot W2000 & W98, so that is not an issue.
But that means I would have to drop the idea watching TV on my PC... well...

I am just curious if I can get my slimy paws on the Pinnacle here in Prague, Czech Rep. I can't remember seeing any products of this company in any of my suppliers' offers. But I'll definitely take a second look.

If you don't mind, Bill, please tell me what would you do if you still wanted a TV Tuner as well. Also, when I said picture quality, I did not mean that I require "professional" quality, just that quality would be my primary reason to choose one of the cards over the other. My VHS tapes are by no means Super VHS or even good HQ tapes, so I am not sure if I could or could not live with the results of the Brooktree chip's work.

Which gives me the idea - isn't there a card with a TV Tuner AND a good quality digitizer? I am sure there is, but it costs a fortune, right?

As always, any comments are welcome - thanks in advance.

 

[Agamar]

The TV wonder and Voodoo are pretty much equal on quality. Either one would do great as a low cost video solution.

 

[rbV5]

<< BUT the quality, the clarity, and color is an order of magnitude better than ANYTHING ATI >>



BS, I'll put my Caps that I've made with my ATI card against any you've made anytime, give me space on a ftp, I've got DSL. I have caps from broadcast as well as analog caps from VHS tapes. I have samples of what I'm currently working on using ATI's Digital VCR and Nandub to compress to Divx that I'm particularly proud of as well. So if you'd like to back up your claims, I'm certainly game.........put up or shut up.

Here is a good link with comparison of different capture cards Linked. It always suprises me that someone will even recommend a card for capture that doesn't support NTFS, and MJPEG IMHO(the dc10's claim to fame) doesn't even compare to using Huffyuv and Raw AVI capture for quality, and once its captured, it don't matter what capture card your using unless your talking hardware RT editing, which we are certainly not talking here.

There are alot of cards you can get good caps with, just be sure to do enough research to know which features are important enough to you to pay for.

 

[Creig]

3dfx - dead, gone and buried. No new drivers.

ATI - still around and putting out updates. Works in 9x/NT/XP.


Sounds like an easy decision to me.

 

[Duvie]

I agree I have made some good captures using the ati card form the tv and exceptional captures throught the svideo in port...

I would tend to stay away form 3dfx...Though nvidia is supplyng some drivers for 3dfx vid cards I have not heard if they are offering any tv drivers and the likelyness of issues with nvidia drivers and 3dfx cards is high. Nvidia may not support this for long either if they are indeed supporting it now.

 

[HJB417]

I dual boot winme/win2k. I use the winme for voodootv recordining. If you're going to go the voodootv path, I would recommend nothing higher that DX7 with win me and a 1.3ghz or faster cpu if you want to record using a motion estimation performace of 20. Before, I have a 900mhz duron and it only work with an estimation performance on 14~16. Motion estimation performance determines the blockiness of the video on a scale of 0~20. 20 being highest quality. I use the vtv to record simpsons episode to mpeg->divx and I'm satisified with the quality.

 

[The_Lurker]

Get the ATI TV Wonder. Voodoo's dead, so no more driver updates.