Hardware needed to capture video from my DISH digital recorder

[Loring Hutchinson]

I recently acquired the DISH satellite system that came with 2 Digital
recorders. I want to be able to capture the video from one of these
recorders on my computer and then burn a DVD. I tried this
once,(before I had the DISH system). I tried to do it with a cheapo
video capture card and it didn't work too good. For one thing I had a
lip sync problem. The World Cup Soccer has inspired me to try again
with better equipment.

My current computer is as follows

1.66 GHz, AMD Athlon, 480 Mb of Ram, running Win XP Home Edition,
2 Hard drives, One 40 Mb and one 120 Mb. I have a new Pioneer DVD
burner

Specifically I would like to know what I need for a medium priced
video capture card, and what are the "gotchas" like is 480 Mb of RAM
enough, and other problems that might arise when I try to do this.

I wouold appreciate suggestions/inputs from some of you that have been
down this road before me,

TIA

Loring H.

 

[Loring Hutchinson]

I neglected to mention that I have Chan 3 or 4 RF video out and non
syero output. The 2nd option is S-band video with stereo audio.. I
also have digital audio output.

Loring H

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

You'll need an analog hardware capture card (something like the Hauppauge
PVR 250 or 150) and analog capture software. Your PC specs are on the low
side for video work, I'd suggest a minimum of a P4 2ghz with as much as 1gb
or more of RAM and a good graphics card. Plus if you capture as a DV-AVI
file, you'll need as much as 12gb of hard drive space per hour of video.
Once you burn it to a DVD, you'll find that when it's compressed, 2 hours is
about 4.3gb on the DVD but the third party DVD burning program will take
care of that for you.

There is plenty more info at www.videohelp.com

 

[Guest]

Recording TV (subject to time shift copyright fair use)

You say you have two Sat Digital Recorders so why would you bother
with recording on a PC, maybe you meant Sat Decoder / Reciever,
with no inbuilt recording HDD ?

1 Terrestrial (transmitted from a tower on the ground) - FTA (free to air)

(Aerial) - (VCR / DVR / PC) - (TV / Monitor)

2 Terrestrial - PAY

(Aerial / Cable) - (Decoder / Receiver) - (VCR / DVR / PC) - (TV / Monitor)

3 Satellite - FTA

(Dish) - (Decoder / Reciever) - (VCR / DVR / PC) - (TV / Monitor)

4 Satellite - PAY

(Dish) - (Decoder / Reciever) - (VCR / DVR / PC) - (TV / Monitor)

You are probably 4

You say your Sat Decoder / Reciever has,
RF-Out (channel 3 or 4 uhf),
S-Video-Out,
Digital Audio-Out,
no stereo AV-out.

How you chose to connect to the PC AV-in is up to you, RF gives the
lowest transfer quality, but I have used is on occations its acceptiable.

If you chose to use RF-Out method then, input the RF-out from Sat
Decoder to RF-in of a VCR, or DVR, they should have stereo AV-out,
which you input to your PC AV-in, plus you can record on the VCR or
DVR at the same time as capturing on the PC.

If you buy a Video / TV card with S-Video-in then connect Sat decoder/
reciever directly to PC TV / Video card S-video-in.

Your PC is just on the limits of acceptable specifications, I use 1.8Ghz,
1GB RAM and el cheapo $40 analogue TV card with video-in, it works fine.

A faster CPU of 3.0+Ghz and 2GB RAM would work better, either
Digital or Analogue TV cards work, most of the cheap ones work just
fine. There is even Satellite Decoder PC Cards in some countrys with
these you dont need the standalone Sat decoder/ reciever you just plug
the dish cable into the PC Sat card-in. They are legal and have special
slots for the activation PAY cards.

Lip sync problems can often be solved by locking the audio and video
streams, using either as the master, by adjusting the streams manualy
in the capture software, using a faster codec, using a faster CPU,
defragmenting your PC, etc.

Win DVD Recorder work just fine for me, as does simple
VirtualDudMod in capturing the streams.

Win DVD Recorder captures in MPEG2 PAL 720x576 (NTSC
720x480) ready for you to burn your DVD.

Any old cheapTV /Video card works fine for me, sorry cant suggest a
brand card for you.