[AG-TECH] Recommended Hardware

[Richard Naylor]

At 11:21 a.m. 29/10/2003 +1100, Markus Buchhorn wrote:
>At 14:44 27/10/2003 +0000, Stuart Poulton wrote:
> >Is there any prefered video capture card ? I've been looking at the
> >Osprey 220's do 4 of these cards work well with AG ?
>
>We use them in all our nodes just fine (actually 200's - unbalanced audio 
>and RCA instead of BNC). Very nice cards. The only issue is they are 32bit 
>cards, and the number of 32bit PCI slots is going down - getting 4 in one 
>box is getting harder. So, we have 3 in our video capture machines, and 
>another in our display machines where necessary :-) (Both machines are 
>Dell WS530's, and have I think another 3 64bit PCI slots to play with).
>
>I'd be interested to know of any good 64bit video capture cards. Hmmm - I 
>see there is an Osprey-230 now which is 64bit PCI-X! Something to look 
>at... So you could mix and match to suit the slots on your motherboard. 
>The 230 is a bit pricey, but could be a very good performer. Any others 
>out there?

I use Osprey 100, 220, 230 and 2000 in my webcasting boxes and they're 
great. I use Osprey 100s in 2 AG nodes as they're cheaper. The 3rd node has 
a Spectra-8 from ituner.com. Its a 4 port card and means I can build a node 
into a shuttle box, which is rather cute.

The Osprey 230 is a PCI-X bus and seems fine. I've got 2 of them in service 
doing just great.
  You can use something cheaper like the capture cards from Dick Smith 
(like Tandys or Frys). But I like the Osprey cards as you get very good 
support and they really do support multiple cards in the one chasis.

rich