[P1] capture from tv

[Mark O'Brien]

On 2/9/03 7:29 PM, "Don Hinkle" <donhinkle at att.net> wrote:

> I'm considering buying EyeTV and just looking for extra ways to justify
> my decision to spend money at this time!
> Thanks for your detailed reply. I didn't realize that EyeTV lacks
> quality? I thought there were different qualities of recording
> available? Are you talking top quality or average, or wot?
> And, yes, I was thinking of digitizing capturing commercial videos.
> Since they go to the television by same connection that carries cable,
> why wouldn't the EyeTV capture directly? But maybe I don't understand
> how EyeTV works.

EyeTV can do what you want, but it compresses the incoming signal (whether
from broadcast TV, cable, or other audio/video input) to MPEG1 in hardware.
It has two quality settings: Standard and High Quality. Either way, it's
still MPEG1. Standard is considered akin to VHS quality, but it looks a lot
better on my computer than burned to a VCD, at least to me. I've started
using High Quality to see if it's any better on a VCD, but haven't burned
one yet.

As others have posted, you'll get much better quality with a digital
camcorder than with EyeTV, because the camcorder will digitize to DV format.
You can then compress the video from iMovie to various quality settings
(including MPEG1 for VCD using the Toast plug-in, or MPEG2 for DVD using
iDVD if you have a SuperDrive-equipped Mac) or use other third-party
compression software like Cleaner or Sorenson Squeeze. These third-party
options allow for higher quality/lower file size than what iMovie alone can
provide.

The beauty of EyeTV is that you can schedule shows to record while you're
away, Tivo-like. I had no problem playing the Austin Powers Goldmember DVD
through the EyeTV's RCA ports and capturing it with the EyeTV software -
except I couldn't record more than an hour at a time. Main point is I saw no
macrovision problems.
-- 
Mark O'Brien
AIM: rmarkob