TV Tuner card & recoridng

[lozina]

I got the WinFast 2000 XP the other day and it looks pretty cool. The picture quality isn't what I expected though... In full screen mode it is a little fuzzy- it just makes me wonder, why a $200 TV will look better than my $700 monitor with GeForce 4400 GFX.

What I'm wondering though, is after recording this, if I encode it into VCD then burn on CD, will a DVD player be able to recognize it? And if so, will it's quality be handicapped or would it be as if I was watching it through the TV originally?

 

[JellyBaby]

I have the 2000XP Deluxe and feel the TV picture quality is excellent even in full screen mode. You might try other TV Tuner software like DScaler or ATV2000.

VCDs work on nearly all DVD players. The quality is only average, though.

 

[lozina]

is there another format that is better quality but not too much more space than VCD?

What if I were to burn the base MPG file that was recorded- even though it would be huge, let's say I recorded it onto DVD- would that be just like playing any regular DVD in your player?

 

[JellyBaby]

SVCD is a notch up but not all DVD Players support that format. I'd visit http://www.vcdhelp.com/ and read the topics in the upper left.

 

[lozina]

great that site is gonna be useful. I'm just curious though, what mode do you record in usually? Do you record in the best quality mode available then use other software to convert it to compressed formats later or what? I'm wondering if I should record something directly to VCD or record to something else then convert to VCD later. Any suggestions? I think the modes I have available are mpeg1, mpeg2, dvd, vcd, and uncompressed avi

 

[HendrixFan]

You have to understand that the effective resolution of TV is 320X240 progressive. When blown up on your monitor, it will look like crap. If you sit close to your TV, you will see how poor the picture quality is.

 

[JellyBaby]

I made just one VCD as a test. The audio quality was decent but the video wasn't terribly impressive. I don't have a standalone DVD player (yeah, I suck) so my current plan is to record shows using DivX/PCM then later recompress the audio using MP3. Leadtek's PVR can't use MP3 to compress the audio directly...plus it takes a ton of CPU to simultaneously compress both video and audio at the resolution I want (640x480). Finally, I'll stick the results on a CD in AVI format.

No DVD player will play the CD but that's not a problem for me right now. Eventually I'll get a DVD burner so I'll completely bypass the VCD/SVCD era entirely.