Bits for a new PC

[MartinImber]

We are getting a new home computer I need some advice on bits

I will use it for lots of stuff including transfering tape to DVD

1) OS - Win2000, XP or 98 OSR2

I like 98, also got a copy of Win2000 at work

2) DVD - Sony DRU500A any good?

It does DVD+RW and DVD-RW - my player requires DVD+RW but -RW discs are cheaper

3) Video capture - recommend please

4) Been recommended a Creative Audigy2 - any good?

I will use it for transfering audio from MP3 to MD also games usage heard something about DVD-A?

 

[Sgt.Colon]

1) Windows 2000.

2) Good recored. Could also look at the Aopen @ www.dabs.com

3) Not sure.

4) Yes Very good sound card. IMO.

Enjoy ya new PC

 

[RichardH]

Re OS - as you're buying components, you'll be able to get an OEM version of the OS - much cheaper - worth looking out for suppliers who do it. I find that WinXP Home is fine for our "main" family PC - kids games run on it better than they would on 2000, although some of the older ones would be better off on 98. I run 2000 on my office PC. Perhaps a dual boot 2000/98SE would be better?

 

[MartinImber]

Got 2000 CD at work

Dual boot with 98? I'll think about that!

 

[Rob.Screene]

3) Video capture - recommend please

I just bought a second-hand Pinnacle miroVIDEO DC30 off ebay. There's quite a few for around £90 or under. It's a semi-professional card which originally was 4x that price.

+ Initial brief tests with a PAL Laserdisc show that the video capture seems cleaner than the Pinnacle PCTV Rage, IDS Falcon and even CX23881 MSI [email protected] (I think that's suffering from early poor capture driver problems right now).

+ Works beautifully for me straight away under WinME (and is listed to support Win98, SE etc). This includes VFW drivers so the excellent VirtualDub can be used for the capture. This is much nicer than modern cards which require the low-res, buggy WDM wrapper.

+/- Capture uses a hardware Motion-JPEG codec, up to 6100KBps. This utilises DMA and requires very little CPU and dropped no frames. I have yet to work with the captured video to ensure the codec produces no artefacts even at 6MBps. My gut feeling would be to prefer to capture using the software losless Huffyuv codec, but I have yet to do any comparison tests to see if any artefacts are visible after re-encoding to mpeg2 DVD but I'd bet there aren't!.

+ The DC30 apparently includes perfect lip-sync analog audio capture unde Win9x. Whereas the DC10's don't do audio. I haven't tested this as I plan on capturing audio digitally through my M-audio Audiophile 2496 SPDIF.

+ The DC30 looks to be able to capture NTSC with 4.43colour "pseudoPAL" which many Laserdisc players can output, which previously I have found to have less chroma noise with for NTSC captures. It also appears to have a switchable Comb Filter for vhs or composite sources.

- The latest 1.41a drivers are supposed to support Win2000, but I couldn't get the drivers to recognise the card under Win2000 Professional (SP3?). I think WinXP drivers won't happen, as it's discontinued.

I noticed John at rgbtosvideo.com used a DC30 for the comparison stills.

regards,
Rob.

 

[MartinImber]

Been recommended a Leadtek GF4 Ti 4200 128Mb MyVIVO A250LETD