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Anybody ever do VCR to computer?

Circumventing macrovision or copying commercial tapes would be inappropriate for discussion here. So let's not start, lest I close this up ;) Copy protections are not permitted to be circumvented, whatever your ultimate intentions are.
 
I was hoping to avoid going down that road. Believe me, if the Dr. Who stuff I'm after was ever released on DVD, I woulda gone that route in an instant. This is a lot of trouble for (probably) 1 thing.

But regarding the Hauppauge card, I see 2 coax connections and a couple other jacks I can't ID from the photo. I assume a VCR would get connected via the coax for full A/V?
 
I was hoping to avoid going down that road. Believe me, if the Dr. Who stuff I'm after was ever released on DVD, I woulda gone that route in an instant. This is a lot of trouble for (probably) 1 thing.

But regarding the Hauppauge card, I see 2 coax connections and a couple other jacks I can't ID from the photo. I assume a VCR would get connected via the coax for full A/V?
Are you talking about the HVR-1600? If so, one coax connection goes to the digital tuner and the other goes to the analog tuner. There is also a S-video connection for a direct video connection and either composite or 1/8" DIN connectors (depending on the model) for audio. If you can use them, the S-video and audio connectors will give you better quality than the coax, but since you're using a VCR, you probably won't have an S-video output.
 
...
But regarding the Hauppauge card, I see 2 coax connections and a couple other jacks I can't ID from the photo. I assume a VCR would get connected via the coax for full A/V?

Coax = Crappy video since it's composite video that will be run through a modulator, and then a tuner on the PC side. Too many layers of analog.

You connect an RCA video cable to the RCA jack on the card. For audio, there is a 3.5mm jack on the card labelled "Line In". You'll need a 3.5mm stereo to 2 RCA plug cable. This will go from red and white on your deck to the 3.5mm on the card. This kind of cable is commonly used to hook mp3 players to stereos.

You can then use the crappy wintv application to view your tapes on your PC by selecting the "line in" or "composite" input on the wintv application.
 
No RCA jack on the HVR-1600, but it came with a S-Video to yellow RCA adapter, and I have one of the adapter cables you mention.

So far I can only view it on the WinTV app, but the record option has some kind of trouble. All other capture apps are still showing scrambled video.
 
No RCA jack on the HVR-1600, but it came with a S-Video to yellow RCA adapter, and I have one of the adapter cables you mention.

So far I can only view it on the WinTV app, but the record option has some kind of trouble. All other capture apps are still showing scrambled video.

If you have cable TV, hook that to the tuner input of the VCR. By tuning the VCR to a known good cable channel and then looking at the output of the VCR on the composite input of the hauppauge card, that will help you determine if the problem is in the PC hardware, your capture software working with the hauppauge card, or some problem with your source material, whatever that may be.

Some other RF source may work, like the TV out of some other media player, but that would make things more difficult to troubleshoot.
 
Copy protections are not permitted to be circumvented, whatever your ultimate intentions are.

Permitted by who? There are instances where it is legally permissable to do so. At least US law there are. Perhaps it's different in the UK?
 
Now, the thing that's making me feel stupid is that I have a Pinnacle capture device I tried for pulling TV onto the computer, and it's related software.

I haven't used it in about a year and a half, but it could do the same thing as this item I purchased.

I do remember there being a definite A/V sync problem after a while worth of recording.

Pinnacle has a habit of dropping video frames if it doesn't see a good NTSC signal level - it can play hell if you're trying to digitize older VHS recordings.
 
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