On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 18:19:42 -0500 (CDT) "Jay Herrick" <Jay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Now I'm interested. What hardware would you use to get similar > funtionality, if you were not limited to this list? I've been > laboring over what new card to buy that has the most features vs. best > driver support. I'd get a Matrox G400 or G450 and a bt878 based pci capture card, frankly. The integrated stuff seems a tad sketchy. If you want to record a lot of video, if you have an older intel chipset motherboard (say, 440bx), an old Iomega Buz instead of a bt878 card. If your chipset aint intel, the Miro DC10+ probably. (the Buz has a hokey pci-pci bridge on it that has a strong dislike for many chipsets. Has an annoying tendency to drop frames like a child born out of wedlock on, say, via chipsets.) Don't get me wrong, i love my Marvel g200, but there are tiny issues. If you use it for watching tv, and the scan rate of your video mode isn't a multiple of the scan rate of your analog video format (PAL, NTSC, whatever), every 5th field is offset by 1 row of pixels. Makes the image sorta shudder. Also, single fields that are very bright or very dark (say, a scene change or a commercial that lacks a lead-in), the marvel will lose sync for a fraction of a second. Neither of these issues exist with the vendor-supplied apps and drivers under that other operating system. If you're way short on PCI slots, and want to record a lot of video, a Marvel g400 could do you OK. But although i have the utmost respect for the people who write the drivers, there's a big difference between reverse engineering and having a full set of programming documents from the chip maker. The G450 eTV lacks the Zoran mjpeg codec that the Marvel cards have, so it's just a tv-watcher card. You could do casual capturing with it, but I'm not sure if it's as good as a bt8x8 for that sort of work. If you're way short on PCI slots and just want to watch tv, by all means talk to the Gatos people and see about getting an All-In-Wonder. I hear mostly good things about their code. - Eric
