Video Capture Card?

Bryyyyyyyyyyyy

Distinguished
Feb 27, 2010
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18,510
Hey everyone. This is my first post on Toms, so I hope you can help me out. I guess what I'm looking for is a Video Capture Card. What I want to do is plug in a component video device (my PlayStation 2) into my PC and have it displayed in a window on my desktop. I've done this before with an Xbox on a Sony Vaio desktop with incredible ease, but unfortunately the capture card in that system is proprietary and cannot be used on a different motherboard. I tried a TV Tuner card by Asus a few months ago, and i couldn't get it to work. I don't know if it was a faulty card, or if it just can't do what I'm looking for. Either way, the user interface on their software was so terrible i sent the card back for a refund.

So in short, what is the best capture card (or tuner card, if that's what i need) for the money, that I can plug a component video device into, with a simple program to display the picture on my desktop with minimal lag? I don't need a coax jack or s-video, but it wouldn't hurt.

Any comment is greatly appreciated! Thanks.
 

Bryyyyyyyyyyyy

Distinguished
Feb 27, 2010
2
0
18,510
Well, like I said, what I want to do is plug my Playstation 2 into my PC and have the output (whichever game i'm playing or DVD i'm watching) appear on my desktop. I don't care a whole lot about actually capturing video or saving it to my hard drive, but it wouldn't hurt if i could. Basically I want to play a PS2 game as if it were a PC game, so I can alt+tab between my desktop and my game. I know i could plug my PS2 into my monitor directly, but then i can only watch one input at a time, and switching between a game and my desktop would be much slower.

I have done it before with an Xbox and a sony vaio, so i know the hardware exists. I just don't know what to look for in a good quality capture card, so i'm asking here.