the copying VHS saga

Having had no-one reply to my blog about my new tv tuner card with high tech geeky mumbo jumbo, I have been forced to slave along alone. This is what I have found;

After giving my frizbees to someone else to check on their DVD player, four of the eight variations I did have worked....but they won't play on mine. My DVD player won't play things other people have burned either, unless they have been burned on DVD-. So I tried that and lo and behold it worked. I have a DVD- player...I didn't think that players were that specific

I also bought a new aerial with FM/UHF/VHF/Digital TV compatable/adjustable gain. I opened the box and it was sitting loose and had no instructions. I couldn't get it to give me reception anywhere near as good as my 30yr old VHF aerial, so I took it back. I'll try another brand when I get over the trauma of that episode.

I also bought a set of swanky, gold covered video and audio cables so I'm not using the aerial cable to connect the video. This reduces the static but the noice is still cloudy, like my ears are blocked a little, though very loud. I found a site on the web talking about sound recording problems in general and how to fix them. Unfortunately most of the things they suggest, like setting the gain to 1x instead of 2-4x I can't even get access to. I don't seem to have the settings. (SoundMAX audio card)

I don't have an S-video video player, so I can't do that (apparently the audio is better on them)
I've checked the capture rates I'm using and they are better than the suggested ones.
I've tried turning down as much sound as I can find - apparently if the sound is set on max, the sound card can't cope. If the different parts are set on different sound settings, it can't cope.

So far this hasn't helped. I may try putting them just above zero, though it said signal to noise got crappy if sound was too low as well.

The last thing I still have to try is to look for ground loops - but I need to look up how to do that. The page I found had lots of stereo system stuff that I have to sort through to find sound card stuff.

Stay tuned. Heh.