You Can Use VP Without a TV!

Have you ever wanted to connect your VP to something other than a TV? Some of you have probably hooked it up to an external standalone recording device with some success. You can hook it up to your computer with the right TV card.

Most TV cards can handle this if they use the same kind of push-in plugs the VPs use. It's best to read your manual before you do this. Even I, a techie person, have to read manuals...

I have an older All In Wonder Radeon analog video card. It has external cables which allow you to use your TV as a display display as accept input from the VP plugs and the regular cable plugs. From there, the VP can be used normally provided the right drivers and utilities are downloaded and installed.

Look around for any good analog or digital video card that allows you to use the VP cables with them. Follow your card's manual to determine how to properly set everything up and record. You may need a few gigs of hard drive space free. I've transferred things from VHS. The files are normally in AVI or MPEG format. I then converted them to DVD format and then burned to DVD. This eats up a lot of processing power and hard drive space as well as time.

Your best bet is to use AVI2DVD for the conversion and Nero to burn. If you want to view the DVD/movie you just made, use Media Player Classic. I've used it often to watch regular subtitled movies. For viewing movies with captioning, there's a few good ones, including Cyberlink.

Here's a few places to go for video help. There's more, but these three should help get you started.

http://www.dvd-guides.com/
http://www.videohelp.com/
http://www.doom9.org/