Video card advice

[Ross1]

Amiduffer wrote:
Hi everyone, I need some PC advice....
So, what are my options? There's an extra desktop PC we have around the office here thats not being used for much, and would work if I got a video capture card to put in it. Any recomendations on any basic cards?

The PC needs to be at least a P3-800mHz in order to capture without droping frames.
On eBay you will find many ATI All in wonder graphics cards that will do a great job. This way you dont have two different cards in the machine. The All in wonder 9600 or better will do just fine and gives you some decent graphics on the PC as well and goes for less than $60 on ebay

I'm planning to get a laptop in the near future, can that be used to take video off a VHS machine? Thanks for any advice.

Yes but you would need to get an external USB capture device and they cost around $100 for a decent one.

[Ross1]

ral-clan wrote:
The advice someone gave above to purchase a stand-alone PVR-DVD recorder is a good way to go.  You can transfer the VHS to DVD this way, then pop the DVD into any computer (like your future laptop), rip the video and edit it in software....

True but a good one will cost at least $100 and the Hard drive DVD recorders costing much more as the cheep ones do a poor job and do not last long (make sure you do some review reading before you buy). I would recommend nothing less than a DVDr $150 unit.

[Ross1]

Dont laugh but my work PC is still a win 98SE box with a P3-450mHz so thats not nessisaraly true.
My home PC on the other hand is AMD 2core 5000+. He did mention that the PC we wanted to use was one that was lying around the office so it could be a slower machine.