techie toy questions: output PC stream to TV, convert tape to DVD

a bunch of years ago, i subscribed to DirecTV so i could watch "out-of-market" baseball games on my TV ... the package costs about $140 for the whole season ...

but Major League Baseball (MLB) offers a similar service that you can subscribe to on your PC ... i think it costs around $79 for a season ... MLB.TV streams most (all?) games to your PC real-time ... watching them on my laptop would be fine for one person; not so fine for a group ...

question 1 is: what's involved with projecting streaming video and audio to my TV after it's received by my PC? is there more involved than just connecting a cable between the PC and the TV? is any of this worth doing? fwiw, i believe my PC has an s-video output port ...

question 2 (totally unrelated): what's the best way (hardware?, software?, specific products?) to convert video tapes to DVD's??

If you have the correct video card, it's fairly simple, just a matter of connecting the cables from the A/V output to their proper inputs on the television. My ATI A-I-W does this rather seamlessly.

The only problem I have is that text on the computer screen is unreadable on a television screen and flaws in streaming video that are barely noticeable on a computer monitor become obnoxious on a standard television display. My A-I-W card has a secondary output that allows you to direct the video to an HDTV at 480i, which would probably reduce the problem of the text somewhat. But, I don't have an HD TV to try it.

Question #2 can be complex. There are hardware products that do this for you rather easily, but I think they can be expensive, and they won't help with copy protected tapes. I use my ATI card to capture the video real-time on my computer and then convert it. This takes a lot of time, but it works for non-copy protected VHS videos. (It actually works with some that are copy protected using a certain method, but it's hard to know what video tapes use what methods, and most newer ones won't copy at all.) For those with copy protection, you need a device that removes the offset signal that results in scrambling. These are becoming very hard to find, and they will be illegal to sell at some point, so get one now if you're needing to archive your VHS tapes. I'll check to see if the one I have is still available/legal and let you know if you're interested.

they were recorded with a camcorder so it doesn't sound like i have to worry about dealing with copy protected issues ...

so, on copying from vhs to my computer and then to DVD, let me see if i understand ... i would play the vhs tape on a vcr and use a cable to connect to my laptop's video card?? would the cable have separate feeds for video and left/right channel audio or does that all route through one plug? can i assume that the tape would be "captured" at the normal play rate (one hour of play = one hour of capture)?

also, can i do this with programs like Microsoft Media Player or Winamp?? is any other software needed to capture the vhs input?

thanks for providing so much info ... it sounds like this is going to be a bit of an adventure ...

Yes, you're in for an adventure because my previous comments only scratched the surface.

Understand up front that I haven't done this much, and I basically taught myself how to do it. What I do works for me, so that's all I go on. I know there are others in this forum who do this kind of thing more often or even professionally. Hopefully they'll read this and offer better advice. But, I'll go ahead and let you know what I do.

What kind of video capture card do you have, btw, and what kind of connections does it have? The answer to some of your questions depends on that.

My hardware setup works like this: I have a standard 3 plug RCA cable coming out of my VCR or digital cable receiver, depending on what I want to capture. One plug is for video, the other two for left/right audio. This plugs into an RCA -> S-Video adapter, which I then plug into the S-Video input of my graphics card. You can get the adapter at Radio Shack or another electronics store.

You will need software to do the capturing, and no, neither Winamp or Media Player will do it. You will also need video capture drivers, which are not a standard part of Windows and are specific to your card. Any installation software you got with that card should have it, or you could probably get it from the manufacturer's website. ATI, for example, has updated WDM drivers on its website that cover all its capture cards.

I haven't found any good shareware or OSS software for Windows that does capturing well, so I use Pinnacle Studio, which came with my video card.

Yes, the capturing would take place at a 1:1 time ratio. There's not any way around that with a VHS tape.

Now, after you've captured the video, you have to render it into DVD compatible files, and this can take a LONG time. If you do the capturing with Pinnacle or another suite like Nero Vision, they have included tools that take you from the capturing stage through scene creation to DVD menu creation, to rendering, to the finished product. I personally recommend this route because it can become quite complicated trying to use several different applications to do it all in separate stages.

Here are links to a few guides I've used:

http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/125/59/

http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/32/59/

http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/53/59/

Hope I haven't confused you even more.

P.S. You need to have a relatively fast machine with a decent amount of memory and ample storage space to do this at all. If you don't, the capturing process will drop frames and create a very poor DVD. For the sake of comparison, I have an AMD XP 2600+ that I overclock to 2.1 MHz when I do capturing and 1 Gig of memory with fast timings. When I capture something at high quality, 728x576 aspect ratio, I tend to drop 1 frame per 100. With a VHS tape capture, this isn't too bad, but you'll notice it. If I drop down to the next smaller aspect ratio, which I forget at the moment, I drop 0 frames.