[mythtv-users] good hardware for transferring videos from vhs and dvd players

[Brian Wood]

On Sunday 10 January 2010 07:19:11 pm David Brodbeck wrote:
> Mike Andrews wrote:
> > dear folks,
> >
> > i'm interested in mythtv for transferring my vhs and dvd collection to
> > the computer. do folks have a particular set of hardware cards or O/S
> > to recommend for this?
> 
> I've used an AVC-2410 MPEG capture card to do this with VHS tapes.
> (It's basically a clone of the PVR-150.)  I think these cards have been
> discontinued, though, so I'm not sure how helpful that will be.
> 
> Note that if these are commercial videotapes they will probably be
> Macrovision protected, and this will cause flickering, flashing, and
> blackouts in the recording.  I actually had problems with it just
> *watching* tapes on my video projector due to this form of copy
> protection.  There are devices that will stabilize the video but I'm not
> going to say anything more about that here because of list rules about
> discussing copy protection.

If you are having a problem *watching* a Macrovision protected tape, that is 
not copying, and I think it would be in bounds to discuss it. If the problem 
is *copying* such a tape, I agree it would not be allowed here.

There are various "image stabilizers" designed just for such situations with 
picky monitors that have trouble syncing to such a tape. This is a well-known 
sort of problem.