ppepealdoropo wrote on 2025-07-27, 03:11:

Hi everyone. I'm new here, and whenever I have a question, I always turn to this forum, and I really appreciate it because it's been very rewarding for me, providing me with knowledge and clarifying ideas. Today I have a question that I hope can help me. I want to capture my old VHS tapes on my PC. The thing is, I want to buy a card that will work for this, so I'm hesitating. I saw one on sale, but I don't know if it's the right one for this. The card in question is the Real Magic EM 8300 from 1999, PCI. I also know the ones with the BT878 chip. But if the Real Magic works, and you could compare the two, which would be more advantageous to buy? Thanks.

The any Real Magic EM8300 based card is not a capture card, it is a DVD decoder.
A capture card with a BT878 chip would work, with an older PC. To do anything useful with one of those, at least a Pentium 2/3 class machine is needed. Personally, I avoid video capture on older machines, but that's me.

For advice about video capture devices, I suggest visiting the forum on https://www.digitalfaq.com/

I use a Kona LHE for my needs, and sometimes a JVC DR-M70 standalone DVD recorder, but YMMV.

If you are ready to go all in, there is https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode/wiki/CX-Cards and https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode but I would not recommend this for beginners as it requires tapping the RF head signal from a VHS VCR (and lots of software tweaking ), but it can, theoretically, give you better output than practically anything else. this would require a modern PC for video capture. Again, this is not for beginners.

I'm not sure the EM8300 is capable of capturing video - it looks more like a combination video/sound card in one with an onboard MPEG2 decoder (for DVDs and selected games).

In my opinion the bt848/878 cards were ok, but later cards that used CX2388X were so much better. Especially if you can find one on a PCIe card, you don't have to worry about framedrops no matter how heavy the system is loaded.
It also helps a lot if your playback device (the VCR) can output s-video or component rather than composite.

jmarsh wrote on 2025-07-27, 05:35:

I'm not sure the EM8300 is capable of capturing video - it looks more like a combination video/sound card in one with an onboard MPEG2 decoder (for DVDs and selected games).

In my opinion the bt848/878 cards were ok, but later cards that used CX2388X were so much better. Especially if you can find one on a PCIe card, you don't have to worry about framedrops no matter how heavy the system is loaded.
It also helps a lot if your playback device (the VCR) can output s-video or component rather than composite.

The EM8300 is the main chip of the Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus DVD decoder board. It is an MPEG2 decoder chip and has nothing to do with video capture. See http://www.digivision.it/docs/hollywoodplus.html

I agree with everything else.

I will add that there are also decent USB capture devices. https://www.digitalfaq.com has info on those as well.

Bit more info needed: what system do you intend to use to do this capturing?

If you specifically want this to be a retro project with retro system, a PCI solution would probably work best, but be aware these capture cards are PCI bus hogs, so ideally you will want a chipset with good PCI performance (usually: Intel chipsets; usually not: Via chipsets, although this can vary depending on exact period) and in any event you'll want to have a PCI slot with unshared interrupt, which can be fun to find.

If the VHS tapes themselves are the only retro element, and you'd be just as happy capturing on a modern system, then a USB solution with drivers for your OS (Windows 11? Mac OS? Linux?) would be much easier.

And yes, as jmarsh already said, the output quality and options of your VHS player will both determine quality and possibly choice of capture device.

In terms of quality:
Component > RGB > S-Video > Composite > RF modulated

Note that the connector doesn't automatically tell you which output the machine has. In particular, SCART/Peritel can be composite only, composite+S-Video or composite+RGB (but not S-Video + RGB at the same time as they use the same pins). If unsure, post the brand+model of your video player here.

In any event, your capture card needs to be able to capture an output of the VHS player, preferably its best.