Best Windows 10 compatible capture cards/devices for VHS transfer?
 

I know the ATI All-In-Wonder cards are recommended, but it would be nice if I could buy something new and not have to use Windows XP. I haven't seen a ton of discussion about the 'professional' alternatives mentioned in the AIW alternatives thread. It looks like the Kona cards are available new, and support current operating systems and hardware.

Has anyone used the Aja Kona LHe? What are the disadvantages to using the Kona on a Windows 10 machine vs an AIW card on a machine running XP?

My goal is to transfer old family VHS tapes of various quality made using multiple cameras (possibly some DV as well since I think at least one of the family camcorders was digital) to high quality digital files for preservation and the ability to edit/enhance in the future.

I'm thinking setting up a Win 10 computer and installing the Kona card will be simpler, but maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty of procuring and setting up a XP machine and an AIW card. (I have very limited technical knowledge and experience with this kind of stuff) Thanks!

There's literally nothing new. Capturing analog consumer videotapes is a 2000s task, and that's when the ingest hardware was made for it.

In the 2010s, you got
- crappy HD cards that "also did" (badly!) SD video.
- bottom (non)quality USB junk from China. An Easycap was literally $4 or less on eBay, Wish, etc. It uses reverse-engineered junk chips, and quality and performance as complete crap.

There are various cards that work in Win10, or at least various builds. You need to understand that "Win10" isn't an OS, but a brand. Every year, "Win10" is "updated" to a new actual OS version. But those "updates" are more like upgrade of yesteryear, like WinXP>Vista>7>8. The version means nothing now. "Win11" is the next-gen OS, vastly different from Win10, because Win10 couldn't be "updated"/upgraded anymore.

If you're going to setup a system, do either WinXP or Win7. Those are the video capture OS.

Thanks for the advice, lordsmurf. I'll look into an WinXP build and an AIW card.

Is it feasible to use a modern motherboard/hardware for an XP build if I manage to find one of the PCI AIW cards, or will I likely be scrounging for old used parts? Thanks.

You can make an XP build with modern parts and a PCIe card if you really want to, provided you have a motherboard that supports Windows XP. The PCIe cards are more trouble than they are worth though (I'm probably going to be able to confirm this personally pretty soon because I've got one about to arrive in the mail!), with their rare "silver stab connectors", amongst other issues (loud fan, image offset a few pixels to the left when capturing at 720x576/480.) Basically it's probably easier to get a relatively modern Core 2 Duo motherboard that has an AGP slot and use the AGP cards with it.