Video card question

[Lumax]

Does anyone know of any video cards or video capture devices that have Component or DVI inputs?

I want to record some HDTV and burn it to DVD and I can't seem to find a video capture device that can capture HD.

[Catila Amano]

I've been looking into MythTV (www.mythtv.org) recently, so I've been looking into capture cards. Right now, there aren't many HDTV capture cards. I'm only aware of the ATI HDTV Wonder (http://www.ati.com/products/hdtvwonder/) and pcHDTV (www.pchdtv.com) -- the latter of which only supports Linux -- and neither one seem to have DVI or Component input. I seem to remember reading recently that there are no DVI input cards around -- apparently at the behest of The Powers That Be in the movie/television industry that don't want their precious shows recorded by viewers, even under the terms of Fair Use, but that's another rant altogether.

One other alternative is to get a HDTV TiVo and hack it so you can access the video files directly on the HD.

[Lumax]

Hmm.. dang..

I've already got a DISH DP-921 HDTV DVR receiver but what I want is the ability to archive some of my favorite shows on DVD. Unfortunatly the only way I'll be able to do that is to have a component or DVI input in a card so I can go from the receiver to the computer to the TV.

[Catila Amano]

Can you hack into the DVR to access the files and convert them to .VOBs?

[Kat]

Catila is speaking Greek! Or is that Geek? hehehe

Is any of what you two are talking about like DivX?

[Catila Amano]

Hehe, it's Geek! :D

What we are talking about *can* be related to DivX, but it depends on which definition of DivX you are using.

First, there was "Divx" (small X, short for "Digital Video Express"), which was a lame-brained scheme cooked up by lawyers with Circut City to sell a special-format DVD player that would play Divx-format movies. These movies would be sold for $4-5 instead of the usual $10-20 for DVDs. The difference is that in order to view a Divx disk, you must call a 1-800 number to "activate" it, after which you have 48 hours to view the movie. After that, you can no longer view the movie, so you can either throw it away or pay another $3 to unlock it for another 48 hours. If you want to unlock it permanently, you could pay a different fee (probably about $10). The supposed idea for this was to be able to "buy" these disks for the price of a rental. The problem with these Divx disks (other than the obvious money-grabbing scheme) is that the quality was not as good as standard DVDs. Fortunately, this scheme died a quiet, but not-quick-enough death.

Next came a video codec (compression/decompression) method called "DivX" (big X), using the now-defunct Divx name to poke fun at it and the movie industry. This codec compresses video files with great efficiency without losing quality. Using it, you can compress a full DVD movie (several gigabytes) to fit on a CD or two (650-700MB each) so you can save your original DVDs from damage.

If you're talking about the DivX codec, then yes, it can figure in to our conversation indirectly if Lumax wanted to encode his archived shows with DivX (assuming he can get them out of his DVR (Digital Video Recorder) in the first place, which is not easy.

I think what you're asking about is the DVI, which is Digital Video Input, which is a way to connect an encoder card to an HDTV digitally (obviously), rather than converting the already-digital HDTV signal into analog and then reconverting it into a digital format by the encoder card.

.VOB files are the native file format that DVDs use (pop a regular movie DVD into your computer and look at the disk in Explorer and you can see the .VOB files).

I hope that sort of clears up the Geek for you. :)

[Kat]

Yeah, I was talking about divX as in "In order to watch he World of Warcraft video you'll need to download the DivX codec thingy thing."

But talking about that stuff, you made me think of the DVD that is photosensitive and made to be disposable. So when you open it, and play it, it is exposed to light (or air, or flux or somesuch) and it starts to darken so it can't be read by the DVD player. They also make biodegradable CD/DVD media now, although, I'm not ure why you would want that as a storage media. :shock:

Back on topic, sort of, my vidoe card that recently died was the GForce 5200 Ultra and it had 2 extra hookups on it. One looked like an S-Video hookup, the other was similar to the VGA hookup, but the "pin holes" were square. Was that a DVI Input? If so, my replacement card has double the memory, but it doesn't have that doo-hickey.

[Catila Amano]

I think what you're asking about is the DVI, which is Digital Video Input, which is a way to connect an encoder card to an HDTV digitally (obviously), rather than converting the already-digital HDTV signal into analog and then reconverting it into a digital format by the encoder card.
Oops, I got this part wrong. Here's (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DVI.html) Webopedia's definition of it.

The connector with the square holes on it was the DVI, but it's output, for connecting to a digital monitor (usually flat panel) or HDTV. This type of connection gives better quality (i.e. no ghosting from interference that may get picked up in a regular VGA connector), but unless you have a monitor that can handle it, or plan on getting one before upgrading to your next graphics card after this one, you probably won't miss not having it. In any case, the increase of memory is more important than having the DVI connector.

As for the disposable DVDs, I have no problem with them at all. One use and throw them away. No further charges after the initial purchase.

What I do have a problem with is buying a DVD and then having to rent it to watch it past the "authorized" period (and having to get authorization to watch it in the first place). Renting something you already own is just so fundementally wrong that it's hard for me to explain the wrongness of it.

One thing I forgot to mention about Divx is that you'd have to "re-rent" the movie if you wanted to watch it in another player, so you couldn't take them to a friend's house for a movie party without paying more money. On top of that, Divx disks could not be played in a standard DVD player. The selction of movies was also very limited because it was up to Circuit City as to what movies would be encoded. Bah.

[DocBobo]

I reread your first post and just wondered... why is it you can't simpy buy a HD TV grabbing card like the one Catila linked? You should have a few plugs in your receiver to connect at least 2 TVs. With that card you can record the mpegs-streams directly to HD. Going from there...


A quick google and I found exactly zero capture cards with DVI input. The only thing you can do right now is find a way to convert the mpeg2-streams you have on your hd to either mp4 (DivX or Xvid or Quicktime or RealMedia 10 or Nero:Reloaded) or you try to find some Microsoft authoring tool that can generate HD DVD format (VOBs, as Catlia already explained it).
In theory you can watch your movies on a HD TV if you connect your computer via a DVI cable.

If you look for more technical advice surf to www.doom9.com and check their forum (http://forum.doom9.org/). I'm sure you will get some detailed answer what is possible for your problem and what's not.

I highly doubt you will ever find a capture card with DVI input for the simple reason that you could actually *copy* protected media with it. It's as simple as copying from one VCR to another. With the current smackdown on buyers world wide you can forget the MIAA would allow the use of such devices (okay, they can't forbid someone building this stuff, but they sure can sue the hell out of him afterwards for making tools to copy their protected media).

[Catila Amano]

I highly doubt you will ever find a capture card with DVI input for the simple reason that you could actually *copy* protected media with it. It's as simple as copying from one VCR to another.
Heck, the TV and movie people don't even want to let consumers do the very thing that devices like TiVo (heck, and VCRs, too) are made for: time-shifting, i.e. recording a show for viewing at another time. They are insisting on having a "broadcast" flag in HDTV broadcasts so that consumers can't timeshift.

Most of the time, people use timeshifting devices (VCRs and PVRs/DVRs) because they are unable to watch a show they like when the show actually airs, so time-shifting is their only option to watch their shows. The broadcasters, however, are are SO uptight about the *possibilities* of "rampant piracy" (because HDTV broadcasts are digital, i.e. no signal/picture degredation) that they want to take away a consumer's choice of when to watch a show.

Hopfully, consumers will not stand forthis broadcast flag crap and demand that this broadcast flag be dropped.