Hi People,
Can any one tell me what the best option is for TV capture on my G4.I've looked all over the net and contacted the mac dealers here (New Zealand) and they dont have anything.
I really didnt think it would be such a big problem,since theres so much stuff out there for PCs.
Putting it through the firewire port would seem to be the best option and I've read you can do this using a digicam with A/D pass through and HackTV.But I realy dont want to fork out for a digicam just to capture a bit of motorcycle racing.
Any help would be great.
Well. . .
How much money are you willing to spend, and what kind of resolution do you want? There are several solutions.
The low end ones can be picked up on Ebay for $30, the high end ones for about $200. Belkin made/makes some piece of junk with a USB interface that would only save as MPG files in 320x480 resolution for an SRP of $99. Canopus' ADVC-100 has a lot more options on it and basically acts as a high quality A/D D/A converter with I/O for firewire(DV), S-video, RCA video/stereo jacks, and I think coaxial too. (It also reportedly had a way of bypassing/eliminating the copyguard protection on DVD's.)
Canopus had the only thing I could find that I thought was any good too.But over here our NZ$ is worth about half a US$.So I'm still looking at about $500+ (almost a weeks wage for most people) buy the time I land it and pay tax on it.Thats almost twice the price of a DVD recorder.Which is starting to look like the way I'll go.
I have to wonder why Mac dont make something like this.
. . . because they don't want to fight endless court battles with the MPAA over any video piracy enabling equipment.
I gess it has to be something like that.But then how do other companys get away with it?
Interesting,I got a sales brochure in the mail today from HP and it says ""Imagine accessing all your entertainment experiences on yourPC- from a single remote....now you can.Experience TV,music,digital video,photos and DVDs from one place-with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition""
And it goes on to say ""Watch TV when and how you want,pause and record live TV""
Wasnt one of Apples sales pitches,not long ago ""The center of my digital lifestyle""or something to that effect.
It seems a shame that something thats totaly impractical to do on a Mac,anyone with a PC can do for under a $100.So MS get one up on Apple which is a shame because anything MS can do Apple can more often than not do better.
Something I love proving to to everyone I meet running MS Windows.But not this time.
Thanks.Been nice talking to you.
You don't say whether your Mac is a desktop or laptop, or what model it is. If it's a desktop that can boot into OS 9, you could try getting cheap used Mac-compatible video capture PCI cards from ebay with good specs. There are also a small number of manufacturers making new OS X PCI cards.
Some older card drivers won't work with OS 9 (I've heard) but if you have a really old G4 you might be able to boot into 8.1 or 8.6
A relevant post
Hi,
I've got a 400mh G4 tower.So no problems booting up in os9.But I imagen a pci based card is going to have a crappy transfer rate and the old CPU is going to be doing overtime keeping up with it all.
So if I can get it into the firewire port its got to be better?Like most of us I'm learning all the time but I figure even if I can find a broken digicam that will still work as a A/D converter its got to be better.
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/01/26/hacktv.html
Have a look at this and see what you think.