PC TV Tuner Recommendations - Specifically for Games

[Hesei]

I mean what can you expect. To answer this entire thread, don't waste your time buying any regular consumer capture devices.

Well, I decided to try wasting my time and money, but it seems to have worked out! I fail at everything...

Joking aside, the GameBridge seems to work rather well. It came in today along with my 3D0 ($30 shipped, don't judge ) so I tested them out with Gex.

System:
ECS C19-A SLI (V1.0) - It's old and it sucks, but it was the top of Newegg once...
Pentium D 3.0 GHz
3.00 GB RAM
2 EVGA 8600 (Not in SLI) - 3 monitors
XP Pro (32-bit)

First, the InterVideo software is absolute crap. It will work and render things okay, but there is not a whole lot of control over the video or audio quality. In addition to that, my CPU bounces between 40 and 80% capacity with the damn thing! The installation froze on me and somehow, my default boot drive was changed... I dunno either. It also kicks in a ton of programs at startup and keeps them running. I tend to generally stay around 2 to 14% (0-4 at idle) and maybe a bit higher when Firefox is acting up, but I was running at 30% with just the basic install!

So, I quickly got rid of that thing through a system restore and installed only the 2 drivers. Quick note, this thing gets pretty hot, pretty fast, which makes me worry about the longevity a bit.

I have tried 3 programs so far.
The first was VLC Player. Now, I have seen posts on other boards claiming the GameBridge works with VLC, there are just issues with streaming it. I can't get it to work at all, so I dunno.

Second was DScaler. Now, this one is really something I will need to play around with. So far, though, I don't like it. It can vary from very smooth video to choppy framerate issues. I have again seen people without such problems, but it simply isn't working for me. I also experienced the much dreaded lag in this program. It was easily solved by closing and reopening it. Not the best solution, but it works. I should mention that the lag was video only. The audio came through clear and on time.

The third and best solution was VirtualDub. No frame rate problems, no quality issues, and no lag! Only issue I have is trying to get it to go full screen. Either it can't be done, or I'm missing something very obvious.

Anyway, those are my initial impressions and findings so far. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play around with it, and probably won't again until Friday or late Saturday. So I'll get back to you, then. I'll also test it on another system and maybe another OS if it will work (I hear bad things).

Thanks for all the help, and if you have any recommended settings or fixes for the programs, I'd love to hear them and get the most out of this little device.

[dlmvii]

I mean what can you expect. To answer this entire thread, don't waste your time buying any regular consumer capture devices.

Well, I decided to try wasting my time and money, but it seems to have worked out! I fail at everything...

Joking aside, the GameBridge seems to work rather well. It came in today along with my 3D0 ($30 shipped, don't judge ) so I tested them out with Gex.

System:
ECS C19-A SLI (V1.0) - It's old and it sucks, but it was the top of Newegg once...
Pentium D 3.0 GHz
3.00 GB RAM
2 EVGA 8600 (Not in SLI) - 3 monitors
XP Pro (32-bit)

First, the InterVideo software is absolute crap. It will work and render things okay, but there is not a whole lot of control over the video or audio quality. In addition to that, my CPU bounces between 40 and 80% capacity with the damn thing! The installation froze on me and somehow, my default boot drive was changed... I dunno either. It also kicks in a ton of programs at startup and keeps them running. I tend to generally stay around 2 to 14% (0-4 at idle) and maybe a bit higher when Firefox is acting up, but I was running at 30% with just the basic install!

So, I quickly got rid of that thing through a system restore and installed only the 2 drivers. Quick note, this thing gets pretty hot, pretty fast, which makes me worry about the longevity a bit.

I have tried 3 programs so far.
The first was VLC Player. Now, I have seen posts on other boards claiming the GameBridge works with VLC, there are just issues with streaming it. I can't get it to work at all, so I dunno.

Second was DScaler. Now, this one is really something I will need to play around with. So far, though, I don't like it. It can vary from very smooth video to choppy framerate issues. I have again seen people without such problems, but it simply isn't working for me. I also experienced the much dreaded lag in this program. It was easily solved by closing and reopening it. Not the best solution, but it works. I should mention that the lag was video only. The audio came through clear and on time.

The third and best solution was VirtualDub. No frame rate problems, no quality issues, and no lag! Only issue I have is trying to get it to go full screen. Either it can't be done, or I'm missing something very obvious.

Anyway, those are my initial impressions and findings so far. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play around with it, and probably won't again until Friday or late Saturday. So I'll get back to you, then. I'll also test it on another system and maybe another OS if it will work (I hear bad things).

Thanks for all the help, and if you have any recommended settings or fixes for the programs, I'd love to hear them and get the most out of this little device.

For virtualdub - in file->capture avi, there are lots of options in the capture menu, including full screen and removing status bar and stuff

In DScaler - Use Even Scanlines only (or odd scanlines only) in the filters, this makes it much smoother, but sometimes text can be very hard to read like this

[Mozgus]

For virtualdub - in file->capture avi, there are lots of options in the capture menu, including full screen and removing status bar and stuff

or just press alt + enter. Be sure to enabled full screen stretch

In DScaler - Use Even Scanlines only (or odd scanlines only) in the filters, this makes it much smoother, but sometimes text can be very hard to read like this

Well duh. You use that mode on any 480i games, and you're cutting the resolution in half. That mode is no good for any recent games.

[Anapan]

My ATI TV Wonder has a BT8X8 chip and works well using the BTWincap driver here http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/
I found the best quality I could get from it was by using Virtual VCR http://virtualvcr.sourceforge.net/ in full screen (press F) and using FFDShow to post-process the raw YUY2 video (good realtime deinterlacing and sharpening) before it gets to the display. I had to do alot of tweaking and resets to get FFDShow to run stable and don't really remember how I did it finally, but I made a post about it on the VVCR board years ago (maybe still there?).

Aparently the cheapest HD capturing available now is the BlackMagic one (still, that's not really in my price range for what I'd use it for).
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

I'm currently looking into this
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... dy=REVIEWS
Not actually a video capture, but it might be a good solution for viewing games clearer on my Big Screen LCD. I'm going to need to do more research tho. It either sucks, of the guys posting about S-Video for Component-in are stupid.

[Hesei]

Sorry for the delay. I completely lost track of time! It's already past 11:00 here!

First, thanks for the recommendation on VirtualDub, but the issue is really just trying to keep the aspect ratio while in fullscreen mode. I have a 16:9 monitor, so things get a little funky with the stretching. I made due with eyeballing it, though.
As for DScanner, sorry, but I didn't try that. I pulled up a game and immediately got lag, so I gave up on it then and there.
Anapan, I'm afraid I wasn't able to get Virtual VCR running with the GameBridge. It seems the project is over, as SourceForge no longer host their builds. Picked it up off Free-Codecs.com (gotta love Google), but like I said, no luck.

Anyway, I said I'd update when I had more time to play with the device, so here I am!
After about 2 hours of play, I have experienced absolutely NO lag whatsoever... with VirtualDub. Everything else just drags its feet. DScaler will last for a few seconds, but if I have Firefox running, it will lag right on startup.
There is also no lag when recording uncompressed video, either. A quick (half a second?) blank screen when it starts and stops, but nothing to interfere, or at least nothing a pause can't handle.
Of course, this still centers around hardware, too. I haven't gotten a chance to test it on my other systems, but will hopefully be able to by Wednesday.

As for image quality, I spent some time in VirtualDub trying to get the color and brightness properly set. I didn't do the best job, but it looks pretty close. The image comes up a tad bright, but I was having a tough time juggling that and the saturation.

So, I grabbed a couple videos for you all. Please excuse the bad gameplay, it's been close to 2 months since I've played anything and probably over a yer since I've played any of these games!
Turns out, I had thought ahead when I set up the office gaming systems. I already split the cables and ran a set to the floor! So the Gamebridge is about 10 feet from my computer, but with a USB extension, making the cable 16 feet and going into an added USB via PCI.

Let me also say that in order to save you all some space and downloading time, I encoded these with VirtualDub as Xvid AVIs and set a desired file size, so the live quality is much better than this, but it serves its purpose. I'll up a bit of HQ video if anyone wants me to.

First up is "Gex" on the 3D0. Now, I recorded this before making video adjustments, so the quality isn't as great as it is now. I'd grab another, but I'm freaking tired...
Gex (3D0) - USB GameBridge.avi (34.31 MB)

And then I have these two from "Sonic Adventure 2: Battle" on Gamecube. I tried grabbing something to demonstrate the adudio and another for color. So I have a clip from the first level, City Escape, and a full run of Green Hill, mislabeled as Emerald Hill... I like Sonic 2 more.
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle - City Escape Clip - USB GameBridge.avi (27.8 MB)
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle - Emerald Hill - USB GameBridge.avi (32.67 MB)

So I'm pretty happy with the GameBridge! Thanks for the advice! Looking forward to capturing gameplay of some absolutely terrible Godzilla games! First up: Godzilla Generations!