Well, is it a capture card
Here's my story. I have been playing with ATI All in Wonder and WinTV GO. Both cards have basically the same chip set. The BT878, which has 8 bit A/D resolution. I just haven't been able to get a descent capture from my satellite system, even when capturing straight to AVI with the Huffy CODEC. To my surprise, I made a test today, using heavy shielded RCA cables with ferrite beads ( toroids ) at each end of the cable. But I didn't use my capture card. I used my Panasonic DMR-E20 DVD-R/DVD-RAM recorder in 6 hour mode . I looked carefully and said to myself: If the DMR-E20 captures at 352x240 MPEG-2 on the six hour mode, then why not try to get that MPEG and fool VCDEasy and burn it as VCD Well, BINGO!, it works . I took the mpeg ( .VRO file ) produced in the capture and demuxed it in my pc. The audio captured is 2 channel ac3. So I demuxed and re-encoded the audio at 44.1Khz, and muxed the same MPEG-2 with the audio. I didn't use TMPEG . I just muxed right back the same MPEG-2 video stream with the new 44.1Khz audio stream but at 128Kbps. The result is this: http://www.kvcd.net/dmr-e20-352x240-tricked-to-vcd.mpg

This was from my 4DTV Satellite and it was an ANALOG channel. Not a digital channel. Also, I used Composite RCA cable for the capture. Not S-Video. Take a close look at the file size and play time. Just like a VCD
I had always said that the DMR-E20 was crappy in 6 hour mode. I WAS WRONG!. As they say: trash in, trash out. The previous tests I had done, had been with bad channels and low quality digital channels. I am amazed at the quality produced by the DMR at 352x240. Also it creates a 29.97 progressive mpeg file, so VCDEasy read it as a compliant MPEG-1 VCD file . Go ahead and try it. Just load the mpeg in VCDEasy and burn it as a VCD. I did mux it with BBMpeg, as VCD VBR. Just as we do with the KVCD mpegs. Taking into consideration that my capture was on an analog channel, I can only dream of the result from a high quality digital channel capture. Sadly, my digital channels are crap
Anyway, just wanted to let you all know what can be done with this machine, and I think that this is a perfect substitute for any real-time hardware capture card. Panasonic just released a brand new model, the DMR-HS2, which integrates a 40GB hard disk AND the DVD-RAM ( single and dual layer ), so you can record up to 52 hours in long playing mode.
Then you can edit/cut your capture in the hard drive, and copy it to your DVD-RAM or a DVD-R, and take it out to a PC for doing all these tricks.
Check out the sample and look at the possibilities

-kwag

have to say VERY good cap but the sound is a bit loud other than that its bloody good lad.

Hi andybno1,

I think I screwed up when I encoded the audio from 48Khz down to 44.1Khz. I believe I didn't normalize it . But other than that, I haven't been able to reproduce that quality with any of my capture boards. Not even capturing 352x480 and encoding with TMPEG!. It's a shame that the quality being transmitted on most 4DTV digital channels is bad, or maybe it's my receiver which is the first model that came out. It's 4 or 5 years old now.

-kwag

Hi Kwag

Very interested in this old post of yours since the new device has just become available here in Oz. How do you take a DVD-RAM to a PC since I understand that they do not play in a normal DVD-ROM. Excuse my ignorance.

Cheers
Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I have a Panasonic LF-311 DVD/DVD-RAM reader/burner on my PC.

-kwag

Thanks mate....just was not familiar with -RAM format.

Cheers Jeff