+orpheuswaking Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Hey guys, I'm moving in August and will no longer have access to a TV in my computer room at the new place. I know that there are products out there that allow you to hook up the atari to a PC Monitor. I have a regular cable that hooks up to RGB outputs (Video and Audio L/R)... I have been looking on the internet and found that the Cheesebox and the JAM are no longer produced... Therefore I would like to ask all of you out there if you have used or recomend any of the following products... (obviously I am going for ease of use and low cost VS a clear picture and good resolution). http://www.grandtec.com/videomate.htm http://www.baysoftgames.com/vgabox1.html http://www.avtoolbox.com/uhrgamer.shtml http://startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm...ID=COMP2VGA&mt= Thanks for all your help... Simon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 (edited) Hey guys, I'm moving in August and will no longer have access to a TV in my computer room at the new place. I know that there are products out there that allow you to hook up the atari to a PC Monitor. I have a regular cable that hooks up to RGB outputs (Video and Audio L/R)... I have been looking on the internet and found that the Cheesebox and the JAM are no longer produced... Therefore I would like to ask all of you out there if you have used or recomend any of the following products... (obviously I am going for ease of use and low cost VS a clear picture and good resolution). http://www.grandtec.com/videomate.htm http://www.baysoftgames.com/vgabox1.html http://www.avtoolbox.com/uhrgamer.shtml http://startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm...ID=COMP2VGA&mt= Thanks for all your help... Simon The best thing Ive personally used is a video-in Mpeg encoder card. It does a full 60fps, in crystal clear sharpness and puts the atari's output in a window on your windows desktop (or full screen if you want), and alos allows you to capture full 60fps mpeg movies of the atari's output at any time with the click of a mousebutton. The one I got has both composite video in, and s-video in, as well as stereo audio inputs. And.. Its cheap.. less than $50.00 nowadays.. Edited March 23, 2006 by MEtalGuy66 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+orpheuswaking Posted March 23, 2006 Author Share Posted March 23, 2006 The best thing Ive personally used is a video-in Mpeg encoder card. It does a full 60fps, in crystal clear sharpness and puts the atari's output in a window on your windows desktop (or full screen if you want), and alos allows you to capture full 60fps mpeg movies of the atari's output at any time with the click of a mousebutton. The one I got has both composite video in, and s-video in, as well as stereo audio inputs. And.. Its cheap.. less than $50.00 nowadays.. The only drawback with that is I am running a POS computer that would probbly die if I added any new hardware to it, All I'm really trying to do is be able to use the monitor for both the Atari and the PC... Now if I had the money I would just buy a brand new PC and go the video in MPEG route... But I appreciate the idea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 The best thing Ive personally used is a video-in Mpeg encoder card. It does a full 60fps, in crystal clear sharpness and puts the atari's output in a window on your windows desktop (or full screen if you want), and alos allows you to capture full 60fps mpeg movies of the atari's output at any time with the click of a mousebutton. The one I got has both composite video in, and s-video in, as well as stereo audio inputs. And.. Its cheap.. less than $50.00 nowadays.. The only drawback with that is I am running a POS computer that would probbly die if I added any new hardware to it, All I'm really trying to do is be able to use the monitor for both the Atari and the PC... Now if I had the money I would just buy a brand new PC and go the video in MPEG route... But I appreciate the idea Well, thats not really the case.. Its just a PCI card, and it has a HARDWARE mpeg encoder on it. It doesnt use any of your CPU cycles at all, because the chip on the card does it all. It works fine in a 450mhz AMD K6-2 with 64megs of ram running 98se... ANd Its cheaper than any stand-alone box your gonna find.. And if I remember, the reviews I read on the "cheese box" and "dazzle box", etc.. They dont do a full 1:1 60 frames per second conversion. The problem with dropping frames is that any of the kewl effects that use fast graphics page/DLI flipping (eg. HIP, COLRVIEW, etc..) used in alot of kewl demos and even games, these days, are gonna look like total ass... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 A capture card is the best option. In conjunction (preferably) with an S-Video mod. Your PC doesn't need much grunt to just pass-through an input stream, and it has the added advantages of showing the overscan area, and blending frames (ie - no flicker) - but it can be undesirable at times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 This option does work, just make sure you get a decent (i mean decent) tv card (like haupauge's), although, when i tried it I sometimes used to get interference if i stuck the coax cable fully into the tv card, i also tried it with my brother's orig. playstation machine In the UK (i dunno about europe) the channel to set it to is 36 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 The composite/S-Vid approach is much better. I own 3 capture cards, and they all get some degree of interference in TV mode, no matter how good the source is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 The composite/S-Vid approach is much better. I own 3 capture cards, and they all get some degree of interference in TV mode, no matter how good the source is. I think it might be something to do with the quality of the CoAx cable.... Can't be a prob. at the Atari end (is there a way of measuring the 'quality' of the CoAx cable) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 My 800XL came with a cable with an inline "black-box" which undoubtedly contains a ferrite inductor coil (I think that's it) which greatly reduces RFI compared to a normal cable. Capture cards don't have very good RF shielding, and as a result cop heaps of RFI (most of which is generated by other components in the PC). Using composite or S-Vid results in a much better picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 So..whats a goo dbrand name for one of these? Metalguy, which one in particular do you have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 it varies... The leading brand is Hauppuage (or however it's spelt) although some leading video card manuf's are incorporating tv cards into their video cards (like ATI's all in wonder) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 There's little difference in most analog capture cards. In fact with both digital and analog, there's only 3 or 4 chipsets which most makers use. The biggest difference is usually in the bundled software (which often is crap). But, with analog devices, VirtualDub is a must-have, and it's free anyway. I have a Compro DVB-T300, which is a hybrid (it does digital and analog TV). It can also display 2 or more channels (although they have to be on the one frequency). It all depends on your needs. You can spend close $200+ on the latest/greatest digital cards, many now have PIP and can do 2 seperate frequencies at once, or just get a budget analog capture device for under $50. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 The best thing Ive personally used is a video-in Mpeg encoder card. It does a full 60fps, in crystal clear sharpness and puts the atari's output in a window on your windows desktop (or full screen if you want), and alos allows you to capture full 60fps mpeg movies of the atari's output at any time with the click of a mousebutton. The one I got has both composite video in, and s-video in, as well as stereo audio inputs. And.. Its cheap.. less than $50.00 nowadays.. I use one of the Hauppauge PCI boards. This works great along with APE. Everything shows up on your PC monitor. They even have USB capture cards these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 The best thing Ive personally used is a video-in Mpeg encoder card. It does a full 60fps, in crystal clear sharpness and puts the atari's output in a window on your windows desktop (or full screen if you want), and alos allows you to capture full 60fps mpeg movies of the atari's output at any time with the click of a mousebutton. The one I got has both composite video in, and s-video in, as well as stereo audio inputs. And.. Its cheap.. less than $50.00 nowadays.. I use one of the Hauppauge PCI boards. This works great along with APE. Everything shows up on your PC monitor. They even have USB capture cards these days. Nope. Its not the brand necessarily you need to pay attention to, but the CHIPSET that it is based on.. Mine is a cheap assed K-world card, but K-world makes at least 10 different models. I bought mine because it used a certain chipset that I had read was a really great performer.. And no, it doesnt "average" any frames.. It does a full 60fps at 640x480 resolution. (thats twice DVD quality, folks.) And it will record directly to mpeg 2 or 4 WITH audio with no slowdown whatsoever of the PC.. I bought it from NewEgg about a year ago and paid $50.00.. Its probably cheaper now, if you can find it. I've never used it for TV reception. Ive alwayse used the composite video in, or S-video in, and it has the cleanest display I have ever seen come out of an ATARI, by far.. No "interference" whatsoever. Some of the other video sources Ive used it with to record mpegs include: Playstation 1 and 2, Apple II, Commodore 64, AMIGA 1000, a 4head VCR, a color composite video camera, etc. I'll post which chipset it is when I get home tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 The best thing Ive personally used is a video-in Mpeg encoder card. It does a full 60fps, in crystal clear sharpness and puts the atari's output in a window on your windows desktop (or full screen if you want), and alos allows you to capture full 60fps mpeg movies of the atari's output at any time with the click of a mousebutton. The one I got has both composite video in, and s-video in, as well as stereo audio inputs. And.. Its cheap.. less than $50.00 nowadays.. I use one of the Hauppauge PCI boards. This works great along with APE. Everything shows up on your PC monitor. They even have USB capture cards these days. Nope. Its not the brand necessarily you need to pay attention to, but the CHIPSET that it is based on.. Mine is a cheap assed K-world card, but K-world makes at least 10 different models. I bought mine because it used a certain chipset that I had read was a really great performer.. And no, it doesnt "average" any frames.. It does a full 60fps at 640x480 resolution. (thats twice DVD quality, folks.) And it will record directly to mpeg 2 or 4 WITH audio with no slowdown whatsoever of the PC.. I bought it from NewEgg about a year ago and paid $50.00.. Its probably cheaper now, if you can find it. I've never used it for TV reception. Ive alwayse used the composite video in, or S-video in, and it has the cleanest display I have ever seen come out of an ATARI, by far.. No "interference" whatsoever. Some of the other video sources Ive used it with to record mpegs include: Playstation 1 and 2, Apple II, Commodore 64, AMIGA 1000, a 4head VCR, a color composite video camera, etc. I'll post which chipset it is when I get home tonight. Yup, mine is an old bt848 (I think this is the right number) based Hauppauge. Brooktree was bought up by Connexant, so I downloaded the XP drivers from the Connexant site. It is probably not the best... but I have had the card for years and it has done me good... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 (edited) Would this be a good one? And does this work with (or in spite of) my uber video card? Edited March 23, 2006 by danwinslow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 It shouldnt conflict with your video card. Remember, its a INPUT dvice, over the PCI bus. Your "uber" video card is either AGP or PCI EXPRESS. As long as youve got free IRQs (and slots) to support an additional standard PCI device, it should be fine. It is not necessary to have an "uber" video card, though. You could have a "scheiss" video card, by today's standards and it'd work exactly the same. Since it's an NTSC input device, the max framerate you need to display is 60 frames per second, so unless your running a 200mhz pentium II with an old ISA video card, you should be fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Ok. The card I have uses the Conexant 2388x Chipset. It doesnt have a TV tuner in it. It just has various types of video-in ports, stereo audio-in ports, and a realtime hardware mpeg encoder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Y'know, it would have been clearer what I was asking had I actually included the link :rolleyes: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...&CMP=KNC-goog13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 (edited) Y'know, it would have been clearer what I was asking had I actually included the link :rolleyes: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...&CMP=KNC-goog13 Hmm it says it does 30fps. Does that mean it drops every other NTSC scan, or does it average every 2 scans? Also, it says the video digitizer is only 10 bits. Does that mean its only 1024 colors!?!?! Now That I'm looking, I dont see ANY cards (except professional surveilance system cards) that do over 30fps. Maybe mine only does 30.. But I swear it records 60. I know this for sure from editing all my family's old VHS home movies onto DVD.. Theres TONS of cards with similar or slightly better specs for cheaper.. Also, Id be more inclined to buy one that doesnt have the "tv tuner" built in. Just because the ones Ive seen that have that seem to have "interference" problems. Edited March 24, 2006 by MEtalGuy66 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Y'know, it would have been clearer what I was asking had I actually included the link :rolleyes: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...&CMP=KNC-goog13 Hmm it says it does 30fps. Does that mean it drops every other NTSC scan, or does it average every 2 scans? Also, it says the video digitizer is only 10 bits. Does that mean its only 1024 colors!?!?! Yup, normal NTSC is either 29.97fps or 30fps and PAL is 25fps. The 10-bit sampler means that is samples 10-bits per color component. It samples YUV 4:2:2 10-bits, which means that it stores 30bits per pixel... although the color components (U/V or Pb, Pr,) are sampled at half the horizontal and half the vertical rate as the Luma (Y) samples, to it is not really true 30bits per pixel, but this is how it is done in most chips sets... This board is like a newer version of mine, and will do quite nicely. I like the video capture capabilities... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Capture cards usually do blending, with "comb filters". Some are good enough to blend frames so that the interlacing can't be seen, but with others you have to do post-processing to blend the frames (each frame odd/even on TV is usually from a consecutive timespan). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Uhh. NTSC scans 60 times a second... Not 30... Post production video is often done at 29.97 for time-sync reasons that I wont go into here.. But NTSC is most definitely 60 complete raster scans per second. NTSC DVDs are half that, but your NTSC television set, or video monitor is scanning 60 times a second. And the ATARI's output is effectively 60 frames per second. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Guitarman Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 (edited) Uhh. NTSC scans 60 times a second... Not 30... Post production video is often done at 29.97 for time-sync reasons that I wont go into here.. But NTSC is most definitely 60 complete raster scans per second. NTSC DVDs are half that, but your NTSC television set, or video monitor is scanning 60 times a second. And the ATARI's output is effectively 60 frames per second. This is correct. I think the confusion here is the difference between scans (60hz) and FPS. In the industry, 30fps (29.97fps) was choosen because the human eye can not distinguish single frames above about 24fps, giving the illusion of fluid motion. Edited March 24, 2006 by Guitarman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 (edited) Uhh. NTSC scans 60 times a second... Not 30... Post production video is often done at 29.97 for time-sync reasons that I wont go into here.. But NTSC is most definitely 60 complete raster scans per second. NTSC DVDs are half that, but your NTSC television set, or video monitor is scanning 60 times a second. And the ATARI's output is effectively 60 frames per second. Uh, yes and no. NTSC does scan 60 times a second, but it is interlaced. So, you receive 60 fields per second. What the Hauppage website is reporting is 29.97fps (frames per second, not fields per second) . So, no NTSC is not 60 complete raster scans a second, it is 30 complete raster scans a second, with 60 field scans per second (every-other line). This is 480i... the Atari outputs 480i for NTSC and 576i for PAL. This is correct. I think the confusion here is the difference between scans (60hz) and FPS. In the industry, 30fps (29.97fps) was choosen because the human eye can not distinguish single frames above about 24fps, giving the illusion of fluid motion. Okay... I see the confusion. NTSC does scan 60 times a second, but this is every other line... so I tend not the think about this as a "complete" raster scan of the screen... I think of a complete raster scan as 480p... which is 60fps... NTSC (480i) is ~30fps. Edited March 24, 2006 by Cybernoid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.