Hi all, I've been lurking on this mailing list now for a couple of months, hearing about all the problems people have been having with their various hardware and how it all got fixed (or not). I learnt a lot about how to fix all sorts of problems from all you learned people. This weekend I took the plunge: ATI TV wonder VE (GBP25) own brand ATI rage 128 based video card with TV-out (GBP20) Redhat 7.3 (FREE) quarter gig of DDR (GBP35) ECS K7S5A (SIS735 based) (GBP50) Athlon XP 1600+ (GBP50) had the other bits lying around (FREE) ( GBP180 = $270 ) Redhat (most of it!) took 17 minutes to install (fast disk) (!) I logged in, called up a command window and for laugh typed 'xawtv &'. I expected loads of errors, but got exactly none. I didn't do a modprobe or anything. xawtv told me that it had no config file and still worked beautifully. I tuned in the channels and saved the .xawtv file. I was watching TV *30 minutes* from starting with a clean box. Wow ! Don't believe all those horror stories. As a word of warning, the ATI TV wonder VE windows software is terrible. (if you really want to capture under Windows, VirtualDub is the business - although you'll still have to use the wretched ATI software to change channel - bleaugh !) I bought the new motherboard, processor and memory for the next stage. Now I need to get ffmpeg and a few codecs and see what this baby can really do ! Anyone got any comments on codecs to use? The first level of quality required is to replace a VHS video recorder recording on long play. Lee Sanders. _____________________________________________________________ Compupower Systems - Harness the power ! _____________________________________________________________ Promote your group and strengthen ties to your members with email@xxxxxxxxxxxxx by Everyone.net http://www.everyone.net/?btn=tag
