Copying Old VHS tapes (1 Viewer)

JohnnyJay

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Hello. I just installed Media Portal 2 on my Win 10 Home PC, a HP Envy 23 all-in-one. I had to install the Windows pack and the dxwebsetup.exe in order to make it work. The PC has a 75 ohm coaxial input, and I downloaded MP2 to act as a media center-type interface so I can play my old family VHS's through my VCR, with the intent of capturing them through Vegas Pro 17, since Windows Media Center does not exist in Win 10. However, I'm not seeing where I can watch the coaxial input through MP2. Did I download the wrong thing? Should I have downloaded MP1?
 

JohnnyJay

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If I understand what I am looking at correctly, it is an AVerMedia H334 MiniCard Hybrid ATSC/QAM card.
 

Lehmden

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    Hi.
    AVerMedia H334
    This only is the chipset used on your TV card. This solely didn't tell enough about the device itself. This around ten years old chip is build into TV Sticks, USB boxes, Laptops, even into Car HiFi systems... And it is used on PC Tuner cards as in your case, probably...
    There are BDA drivers available for this chip so in general it should work in MP 1 and 2. But if the drivers supports the analoge input needed for your VHS is nothing I can tell or promise you. This is such an outdated technology no one will put any effort in making this working with recent PC any more...

    Maybe it's time to transfer your VHS to HDD in a "modern" video format like MKV... This will save your old VHS from getting worse over time as all analoge Technics will get... Your VHS player also must be very old and at least the video heads are wearing over time so most likely the player also won't last for a much longer time period... I still have some Super 8 and double 8 films (lot older than VHS) captured on HDD, most of them are more than 70 years old. The "original" is no longer watchable but my digital graps are still as good as they were the day I grabbed them...

    There are companies that do the transfer for you all over the world, so there will be a solution next to your place, I'm sure. Or you can buy a not very expensive (10 to 30 bucks, have a look at eBay or Amazon) analoge capture card and transfer your VHS to HDD yourself. This will take it's time as you need to capture in "real time". A 30 minutes VHS last at least 30 minutes to be captured... But once you have your VHS transferred it's very easy to always use the most modern storing technologies (e.g, first store on DVD, then transfer it to USB stick and later transfer it into the cloud) without any further loss of quality. And you can have backups of your precious memories too, even give them away to family and friends without loosing them yourself...
     

    CyberSimian

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    it is an AVerMedia H334 MiniCard Hybrid ATSC/QAM card.
    The word Hybrid suggests that it is a tuner card that can work either as an analog TV tuner, or as a digital TV tuner, but not both. (My Dell HTPC was supplied with a hybrid Hauppauge TV card that behaves in this way.)

    In looking for the specs for your device, I came across this page on the HP web site. There is some indication that you may have problems finding a device driver that works.

    I have never used an analog TV tuner with MP, so I cannot speak from personal experience, but I think that MP's "TV Server" can handle an analog TV tuner. So you would setup your system like this:

    (1) Use the UHF modulator in the VHS recorder to send along the co-axial cable a TV signal containing the recording that you are playing. In the UK, VHS recorders usually used channel 36 for this purpose, but some VHS recorders allow you to change the UHF channel used (e.g. if it clashes with a real TV channel in your area).

    (2) Run "TV Server", select the analog tuner and perform a "Scan for channels". "TV Server" should find the channel from the VHS recorder. If you have other analog TV channels in your area, "TV Server" should find those too.

    (3) Once scanning is complete, you should be able to start MediaPortal and display the EPG. The EPG will be empty, but it should list the VHS channel (plus any others). Select the VHS channel to view the VHS recording.

    (4) You should now be able to press the RECORD button on the remote control to start recording the VHS channel. The digital recording resulting can be kept permanently, and you can store or discard the VHS tape.

    Note that using the UHF modulator in the VHS recorder may not give the best quality. The alternatives would be (in order of decreasing quality):

    (1) Use a component video connection (RGB). [best quality]
    (2) Use an SVHS video connection (Super-VHS). [intermediate quality]
    (3) Use a composite video connection. [worst quality]

    However, your tuner card may not have any of the above connections (I could not find the specs for your card on the internet), and your VHS recorder may not have any of those connections either.

    It is not clear whether you would actually notice any improvement in quality by using one of the alternative connections. It depends on the quality of the original recording, and on how critical you are. If you wanted to use the best quality connection, you might need to purchase a specific analog-to-digital capture card that has one or more of these alternative connections. Obviously you should check what connections your VHS recorder has before you purchase any additonal hardware.

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    TLD

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    If your TV card has software encoders MP2 may not support it, as with one of my cards.

    I have transferred many VHS to HD with MP1, just go to tv server configuration set up your card as a hybrid as per the instructions in the documentation. hook up the VHS player to the coaxial on the PC put a tape in and turn on play, scan for channels and the VHS player should show up on channel 3 or 4. after the scan completes go to channels and click the channel 3 or 4 and click preview to see the tape playing.
    I would edit the channel name to VHS or something in case you have a analog channel on the same channel for the epg.
    Finish setting up MP1 as per documentation.
     

    Lehmden

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    I have never used an analog TV tuner with MP
    I did, but this was many, many years ago. If an anlog TV tuner is working with MP at all depends on the needed Codec to decode the analog signal. Some of them are commercial and (still) not freely available. Best case is if the PC hardware (most likely the tuner card) can do the coding on hardware base. And some tuner card has proper support for FBas and or S-Video input connectors. Then those connectors will show up in TV server as own channels. I had an Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 MCE analog card for terrestrial analog receiving back in those days. They were made especially for the upcoming Windows XP- MCE edition and are working like a charm with Windows MediaCenter. It has two analog tuner, an audio stereo input (2 x chinch, red and white) a Video (FBas) input (1 x chinch yellow) and one S-Video (MiniDin black) input:
    15-116-620-06.jpg
    (This picture is the NTSC version, I had the same card with a PAL tuner as needed in Germany, of course...

    Those days the MP 1 TV server could use lot more tuner cards than MCE but those cards are also the best you could get for usage with MediaPortal. They had a chinch (= FBas) and a Mini- DIN (= S-Video) input connector. Both of them are usable from inside MP1 and MCE... Normally a VHS player has at least a scart connector (something like a "prehistoric HDMI connector" ;) ). Here you can always get the FBas and the audio signal from. If your VHS player is an S-VHS player it has the S-Video signal available on scart too... Tons of very cheap adapter cables are available out there.
    s-l1600.jpg
    This is one example out of thousands... The white and red chinch are audio (red = right, white = left), the yellow one is the Video (FBas) signal. The black one is the S-Video connector. On top there is a switch to reverse the adapter direction and on the back (not visible) there is the scart connector to be plugged into the VHS player... Those adapter are as low as 1or 2 $...

    The RF transmitter build into the VHS player always is the worst case possible. Also VHS did have an extremely poor picture quality compared to today's video experience but the RF transmitter make this much more worse than necessary.
     

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