Gaming Recording TV with a PC

[Joey Ravn]

I got a VGA cable today (because HDMI is just too expensive) to connect my laptop with my HDTV. So far, the connection is good, the image quality is great. Now I'd like to record some programs and movies, but I don't know where to start. I know that I must get an app that records from the TV, but which one? Does anyone have any experience on this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Scorpei]

Off to bed right now, but seeing as I have the topic open

. To record TV output you need either a TV card (compatible with whatever input you which to capture; digital / analoge / etc.) or a video capture card + some other hardware capturing the TV signal converting it to whatever signal your capture card can take (for example a composite capture card together with a VCR with a composite out).

 

[FAST6191]

What Scorpei said although I will note that many TV stations these days are digital which usually means some form of simple encoded broadcast you can just capture a digital stream. I am not sure where Spanish TV falls these days but it is likely to either be MPEG2 (like DVDs) or MPEG4 of some simple form.

Once you have that you have to convert it, digital will be be but not as unworkable as some video has been in the past. From here it is basic conversion methods.

If you opt for analogue signals then you will have to capture it first, the usual way here is to capture to lossless and then encode.
There are a couple of forum sections over at http://forum.doom9.org/ on this sort of thing.
On the other hand I have to ask if you want a TV box, in that case something like http://www.mythtv.org/ might be in order, there are many skins and many frontends.