SD Capture Device for MC

[epete]

I am looking for a capture device that Media Center will recognize as a tuner so I can archive my old Home VHS Camcorder Tapes. Does anyone know one that they have confirmed works with media center?

[richard1980]

I haven't confirmed this, but any NTSC tuner should work. Every VCR I've ever seen can output on NTSC channels 3 or 4, so all you have to do is have a tuner set up in WMC to tune whatever channel the VCR is using for output. AFAIK, there's no way to set it up using the S-Video or composite inputs on the tuner, so you'd have to use the coax connections.

[mark1234]

You should be able to get it working over S-video/composite by pretending that you have an STB, but you'd need IR blasters as part of the ruse.

It is worth pointing out that this isn't something Media Centre is really designed to do, so whilst not impossible, it won't be a pleasant experience. A dedicated video capture tool would probably work better for you. I believe Windows Movie Maker can do this, keep meaning to try for the handful of tapes I've care about - assuming I can still find them.

[epete]

I though of the NTSC solution and thought that a direct baseband connection might preserve as much of the origional copy as possible. Also my only analog tuner is HDHomerun and that is located near the attic where the antenna is.

I do have one of those USB Video Capture devices that came with some software that worked on XP but does not on Vista or W7 (one of those Pinnacle devices w/ SW). I never thought to see if Movie Maker could recognise the HW. I will give that a try this weekend.

...making sure the old videos of the kids are all available and in WTV format (or WMV) would go a long way for the WAF.

[sorethumbs]

My missus had some vhs video tapes that she wanted converted. I have a £21 compro s350 dvbs card receiving satellite in media center. I installed the compro software (which i hadn't done before as was using media center) plugged in video recorder and recorded off the tape to some format or other, anyway upshot was i got it onto the pc.

Quite pleased i could do it with a piece of hardware i already had. The converted video could then be played in media center once stored in the correct library, uninstalled the software for the compro and went back to using it as my satellite tuner in media center

[blueiedgod]

I haven't used WMC to capture VHS recordings, but rather used a tuner with S-Video input and Windows Movie Maker to capture, edit and make a DVD.

It only works with home made VHS, long time ago I tried to capture a commercial VHS, and it was going from dark to light, from dark to light... Turns out that was the copy protection feature.

One word of caution though, no matter how hard you try to capture the best possible singal out of VHS, it looks like crap on HD TV.