[MPlayer-users] tv card basics

[Jindrich Makovicka]

Chris Phillips wrote:

>[Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
>  
>
>>I want to start encoding from TV for ACAP (As Cheap As Possible)
>>
>>There are cheap tv cards with no saving/encoding at all or expensive 
>>ones with mpeg (only 1 or 2, I assume) encoding.
>>Can I get the cheap one (without encoding) and use mencoder to capture 
>>the stream from it and encoding it to mpeg4?
>>Does anyone have such a cheap card and could recommend me the brand/type?
>>    
>>
>
>anything based on bt878 should be fine. my wintvgo is super. obviously 
>mencoder does all the capture outside of the card itself.
>  
>
Agree, don't spend your money on the MPEG encoding cards as the cheapest ones (which are about 2 times more expensive than plain bt878) can't grab more than half-pal anyway and IMO they are unsuported under linux. Surely not in mencoder.

The brand doesn't matter much, just look whether the card supports stereo and it's good if you can review the picture before you buy it as the only thing that differs if the tuner quality.

Regards,
-- 
Jindrich Makovicka