Camcorder to MPEG to CD - best solution? ATI 8500

[UILanMan]

I have a friend who's looking into getting a new machine soon.. he has 2 main things he would like his machine to do, which are:

1) Connect his camcorder, and save his videos to a cdrom drive for future playback.

2) Play DVD movies on his TV via his computer.


Here's the dilemma.. the card that has been recommended to him was ATI's All In Wonder RAEDON DV (AKA the RAEDON All In Wonder).. now don't get me wrong, this card looks very nice (and if I had the money myself, I'd probably grab it too just for fun). The only downside? It retails above $300 making it quite an expensive solution. For the Camcorder part, I'm assuming this card would do the job.. but I was wondering.. what about the software? How easily can this be done? Is the resulting MPG of decent quality (I'm sure there are options for which codec and FPS to retain) - he just wants as close to real (30fps) and as clean as possible. Is the bundled software with the 8500DV capable of doing this well?

The other part was DVD movies. This card has a radio remote with it to control the DVD player. Does anyone have any input on this? Does it work well? How much of a hassel is it to just pop in a DVD, sit down on the couch, and watch? Ease-of-use is a huge factor here.. if you have to pop in the dvd, start the software, switch the card to TV-OUT, then go sit down... that might be too much hassel for him. Will the remote make this easier, and do all that automatically? Is it responsive?

If this card does the capturing part OK, but not the DVD side, I've also told him he could easily purchase a home stereo DVD player for around $150, and then spend $120 on the ATI All-In-Wonder Pro AGP 32mb card for the Camcorder process. What are your thoughts on this? I'm just trying to get a reasonable response before I tell him to go ahead with anything.

Also one thing of note.. operating system is going to be huge in this, as I know that ATI has not had great driver support in the past for Win2k, or XP.. we have to decide what OS to go with as well.. your suggestions here would also be helpful (for stability purposes and my own opinions, I've pretty much destroyed Win98/ME as choices for him). Thanks in advance, I know there are tons of you with experience in this area!!

 

[rbV5]

<< if you have to pop in the dvd, start the software, switch the card to TV-OUT, then go sit down... that might be too much hassel for him. Will the remote make this easier, and do all that automatically? Is it responsive? >>



If that's true:

Your friend needs a set top player and capturing/editing/encoding video will be way too much work for him.

If not:

*$300 is not expensive IF you use the features.

*Does he have a DV camcorder? if its analog, the AIW Radeon is around $150 and TV Wonder is under $100, both have s-video inputs for your friends analog camcorder.

*ATI drivers work very well in Win2k and XP, and have for well over a year that I've used them exclusively.

*I've used an AIW Radeon and currently my Radeon VIVO for capturing/editing video. It is quite capable of excellent quality work, but digital video is not easy. Quality work takes a lot time and effort.