Video

[neilmc33]

Hi! I'm sure this has been asked before, so don't be mean if it has;-)

I just got (2 days ago) a new Dell 2350, 2gig Celeron, 256ram. It has an integrated AGP card with 64meg of ram on it, and I got a 4x dvd recorder with it. I want to cut my old home video tapes to it, so I need a video-in. Got a Raedon, but was shocked when I found out that there is no AGP upgrade slot in my pc:-( So, since I have to stick with PCI, does anyone know if there is a decent PCI video-in card out there for a decent price?? I see there are several usb ones, but I would think that a card, even a pci one would be better... I really would like a 740x480 30fps one, but I think I'm probably asking too much... Thanx for the help!!!

Would an all-in-one be better???

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by neilmc33 on 01/30/03 01:41 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

Dude, you got Delled very badly. I wish I could help. Yes, you could get a PCI video input card, but you're still Delled. Did it come with DDR or standard SDRAM?

I have a 4 year old computer that, through a simple processor upgrade, is much faster than your new one. Cost less too, Probably has a bigger hard drive. And it has an AGP slot.

Don't they have a customer satisfaction warranty? You could potentially trade it in for something with a better board!

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[neilmc33]

Thanks for the reply... I did call Dell to see what they could do, and if I want to return it and get a "comparable" one, it'll cost me an additional $450.!!! I think I may just send it back and shop elsewhere... If for no other reason, as my dealings (since paying for it) have not been "5-star"...

On a side note, last thursday I got the WinTv PVR usb model (since everyone tells me there's not much difference between usb and pci). After screwing with it for over 6 hours, sitting on their tech line (my dime) for over an hour and giving up, downloading their updates, I couldn't get it to even come up, I took it back. Got a Dazzle DVD Station 200 instead (even though I was warned against Dazzle), and the thing was up and running in less than 5 minutes!!

But!!

The picture is gorgeous, the sound is great, but the sound won't sinc with the video. It starts out fine, but in about 5 minutes, it's off by about half a second, and then continues to get that much more worse every 5 minutes or so... I've used the moviestar5, I've used mydvd, I used the dvd complete, I've even used the test program that came with the dazzle, and some are better and some are worse, but they all do the same thing... Is it me or my pc???

 

[Slava]

1. Moral: you want a good PC on a budget? Build one yourself. Dell has fallen from grace. Their stuff is not what it used to be (component quality wise) 3-4 years ago.

2. About audio/Video sync -- you are not giving enough info to answer your question. When does the problem occur? During capture? Are you using any compression during capture? How is your sound captured? Do you feed sound directly to the sound card or what?.

It is likely that your sound is out of sync because you are trying to capture and compress at the same time using a codec (such as DivX or whatever). If this is the case, the problem is caused by insufficient CPU speed. Like the man said: You got Delled, brother. Return the piece of [-peep-] ASAP.

Finally, capturing into DivX or other compression codec (except hardware MPEG) is a BAD idea. This results in a/v sync problems, bad video quality and all kinds of other problems, unless you have a super powerful machine. Try capturing direct stream (uncompressed) and edit/compress the result later.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Slava on 02/03/03 11:20 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

Who told you this? I certainly didn't! The WinTV PVR USB is garbage! In fact, ALL USB TV devices are! You don't seem to understand that USB is a 12Mbit connection, aka 1.5 megabytes per second. PCI is 133Megabytes per second. Now, you can't see that 133MB/s is bigger than 1.5MB/s by nearly 100x?

No, you'll NEVER get good performance from a USB TV device. Ever. Perhaps you'll see USB 2.0 TV in the future, but until then, PCI is your only good choice.

<font color=blue>There are no stupid questions, only stupid people doling out faulty information based upon rumors, myths, and poor logic!</font color=blue>

 

[neilmc33]

No, Crashman, you didn't tell me this, but several people here at work told me this, as well as someone I talked to about building a system for me before I bought the Dell. And, when I bought the p.o.c. (I 100% agree with you there) Wintv pvr at CompUSA, the sales people there (I asked 3) told me the same thing.

But, like I said, the picture from the Dazzle is absolutely *geogeous*, Not only from the tv-picture composite video-outs from the VCR, but from my SP-video tapes as well, so I can't say that "all" usb devices are "all" that bad;-) Someone sent me to the www.dvdr.com helpdesk yesterday, and after scanning through that, I gather that the sync problem has a lot to do with the sound card, not just the video-in or the sw. Someone even posted a nice long note on how to resample it, and sync it up, although several replies countered that non-snching could be a lot of things. But, even if that took care of the problem, it'd be waaaay too much of a p.i.t.a. to do it every time I wanted to cut a dvd!!

Bottom line, is that I'm shipping this p.o.s. back to Dell... No slot to upgrade the agp is bad enough, but now, I'm also extrememly annoyed at the other main integrated part as well. So, back it goes, and I'm looking into more either having a system built for me, or maybe attempting to build it myself! If I can afford it that is, because it's come very clear to me with all this screwing around, if I can't get it to do what I want it to do with the money I have to spend, it's better not to get anything at all:-(

I guess maybe Dell should spend less on the flood of advertising they've been doing lately, and more on putting out a good product. S'funny, but it wasn't the advertising that sent me to Dell this time anyway, it was that I had an old Dell 486-20 when that was the fastest, and I didn't have a single problem with that machine for the 2 1/2 years I owned it until I got my first Gateway Pentium!!

Thanks much for your help, guys!!!

 

[Crashman]

With Dell, quality means only 1 thing-the fewest service calls possible! Yes, they build for reliability and don't care about upgradability or performance. Why? If you're in the PC industry you'll know exactly what to order to get your Dell configured properly. Otherwize you're probably only using it to surf the net, so performance and upgradability don't really matter! The people who filled out those "quality" surveys are exactly the type, at most their kids do a little homework (upload a few pictures, make a few documents, print everything out) and they rarely break! So these people, NOT WANTING more out of their machine, give it a good grade!

<font color=blue>There are no stupid questions, only stupid people doling out faulty information based upon rumors, myths, and poor logic!</font color=blue>

 

[neilmc33]

In all honesty, I blame myself for a big part of my experience here. My last (and current one since the new one is all boxed up now;-)one was a P120, that I've had for years now. I couldn't afford to upgrade before this, but I've scraped up enough to get a new one. And the first place I thought of was Dell, and checked out their website. I did tell the Dell sales rep what I wanted it for, and asked him if it was fast enough and he said yes... But, I didn't ask around all that much beforehand, and so, saw a price I could afford, and went for it. And THAT was entirely my fault...

I guess I haven't kept up enough with the times. My last Dell, I bought with 4 megs of ram and a 120 meg hd. I added a sound card, extra hd, scsii cd because of no more ide connections, upgraded the ram and hd several times, network card, ect, and no significant problems (except that I learned more about jumpers than anyone I knew;-); my gateway 120, I did the same sort of things to. As I said before, I never even considered that I was buying something that wasn't upgradeabe, to extend the life of it somewhat. I just ASSUMED that since it was new, it had all the right holes for any future expansions. I just saw the price, looked at what I was getting, thought about my current 18-minute boot-up time, and jumped in... And, again, that's my fault, not Dell's!!!

I take this away from all this, and if I can pass on anything to anybody else in my position: DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!!

 

[Crashman]

Yes, well, for most people none of that matters. They'll never do anything more advanced than transfer pictures from their cameras on the USB port. And if their kid can't play a game, they'll buy another system!

<font color=blue>There are no stupid questions, only stupid people doling out faulty information based upon rumors, myths, and poor logic!</font color=blue>

 

[LancerEvolution7]

Dell's used to be pretty decent computers 4-5 years ago when they didn't use intergrated and properity components. But now've they gone to the pits. They cost as much as the crappy computers that they sell at the local best buy and the features are sometimes worse.