Other than the need to make high quality VCD's I also have the need for video to VHS. What capture card or seperate video card has the ability of EXCELLENT tv output. Couple of us checked out the tv output from a 3dfx voodoo 3500tv and I believe the quality can be better. Plus the card seemed to have problems expanding the tv image horizontally to the outside edges.

Appreciate any response.

-- may (mlea@uswest.net), April 17, 2000

Answers

If you just want the TV out for your MPEG videos, you could try the Creative Labs Dxr3 DVD decoder. I have this card and it works great with video CDs as well as DVDs. Another card that is very similar (I noticed no difference between it and the CL Dxr3) is called the RealMagic Hollywood+ it is also a DVD decoder. Those cards require PCI slots, but if you want to use an ISA slot, you might try to find yourself an MPEG1 decoder card, I have a TeleMPEG PRO card (that I did not check out because it was not compatible with my 486's VGA card) and a generic card that just says MPEG Decoder (which I use with my 486 right now). The MPEG card that I have in my 486 plays MPEGs just as good as the Dxr3 (in my opinion), but if you are viewing a PAL movie on an NTSC TV, the bottom 48 lines of the video will be cut off. This does not happen with the Dxr3 because you have the option of stretching the image to fit the TV. There are a variety of MPEG1 cards that have TV out, and they are very cheap because of DVD (which the MPEG1 cards can't decode). I bought my MPEG1 decoder cards for about $30 each, I got my Dxr3 card in an OEM kit with a DVD-ROM drive for $150 from a wholesale dealer (in 1999, don't really know what price it would be now. At the time, it was extremely cheap, because the retail kit sold for nearly $300!). As for the problems you had with the screen ratio, you might have been playing the MPEG through Windows Media Player instead of through the DVD/MPEG decoding (unfortunately, I do not own a Voodoo 3 3500tv card, so I do not know what TV out features it has and I am just taking a guess at that.).

Hope I was of some assistance.

-Cyberlien51

-- Mr.Ian Roswell (cyberlien51@juno.com), April 17, 2000.

Thanks for the response Cyberlien51. Your info is helpful. But it sounds like your saying that it only plays mpegs to tv out. I also need to output quicktime and avi.

-- may (mlea@uswest.net), April 17, 2000.

The Creative DxR2 and Hollywood+ boards(same thing different names) all output PC video to a TV. You can watch Quicktime and AVI on a TV with these cards.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), April 18, 2000.

The Broadway 4.0 will output AVI files to TV but not MPG files

-- Al Mccraw (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), April 18, 2000.

You can do all this with a Macintosh G4, FinalCutPro, and Sony's DVMC-DA1 media converter box.

FinalCutPro's tight integration with QuickTime allows you to play MPEGs, AVIs, and QuickTime (of course). The quality is unmatched because you can control frames per second; resolution; NTSC or PAL; etc within FCP. From within FCP you output to TV or VCR. You would not need any extra accelerating card because it's already built into the Mac G4 along with FireWire -- which is compatible with the DVMC-DA1. The DVMC-DA1 connects to TVs or VCRs with S-video or component connections.

-- John (John7446@aol.com), April 18, 2000.