Wide World of Women

Would anyone be interested in posting a "how to" on capping, including step-by-step procedure, equipment needed, software needed, etc.?

I know absolutely nothing about capping. I have a Snappy, which is a device for capture that attaches to the serial port of your computer, and to the receiver via an RCA plug, but the results are less than satisfactory.

I understand there is a computer card that is available, as well as software, and that Windows XP has something called WinDVD, but I don't have a clue how to use it or what to get.

My new Dish 942 receiver has very limited outputs for a top-end piece of equipment ... just the three component leads for going to the TV, and another set of RCA outputs for a second TV. There's a USB port, but it's "reserved for future use" and is dead now. And they're probably for inputs from a camera anyway, not outputs.

Thanks!

Your DISH receiver likely has S-Video out (I know mine did when I was capping).

Here's a little primer I wrote a while back:
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To cap the cable channels I used the Osprey 100 card.

It is available here for purchase:
http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey/osprey100.html

In order to cap the local channels (NBC, ABC) in HDTV I used the Fusion 3 Card.

It is available for purchase here:
http://www.digitalconnection.com/produc ... ion3qt.asp

And, this is the newest Fusion HD card:
http://www.digitalconnection.com/produc ... usion5.asp

The Osprey card was about $ 160 and the Fusion HDTV card was $ 150.

To make the clips I used the ATI TV Wonder USB. I got that at a local shop for $ 80.

The TV Source was digital satellite television from DISH Network. I also had the Digital Video Recorder from DISH which allowed me to cap things from months ago at the same quality as if I had seen it live. The HDTV was OTA in Philadelphia.

The software used was
DScaler ( http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/downloads.htm ) for the Osprey Card and the Fusion software for the HDTV card.

Any questions just ask.

- BPM

Thanks, BPM. That's pretty much what I was looking for. Additional step-by-step instructions would be beneficial ... call it "Capping for Dummies".

Yes, my Dish receiver has S-video out. It has a built in DVR large enough for 180 hours of regular programming, or 25 hours of HD (or any combination thereof).

One problem is when the DVR is "paused" the on-screen graphics remain and won't go away. I finally found that if I change the picture mode (from regular to zoom to partial zoom, etc.) that it WILL go away, even in "pause" mode. Probably a software glitch.

A good first step is to see what your computer is capable of.

This information would be useful to have:

Your processor: (i.e. Pentium 4 2 GHz etc...)
Amount of RAM (i.e. 512 MB etc...)
Hard Drive Space (i.e. 80 GB etc...)
Operating System (i.e. Windows XP etc...)
Video/Graphics Card (i.e. ATI Radeon 9700, NVidia 7800 etc...)

Number of free slots you have in the back of your PC.

And, finally what's your budget?

Tell us these things and we'll know what your computer is capable of doing.