There are a number ways to capture video -
1) Dedicated video capture card with S-VHS or RCA video
input connector.
2) WinTV type cards - like (1) but include a TV tuner
and in some cases FM radio etc. Typically based on
BT848 or BT878 chips.
3) Video card with builtin video digitizing (VIVO) capability.
4) Video card like (3) but includes a tuner and might
be called PVR or Personal Video Recorder.
5) USB capture devices (typically low resolution)
6) DV via Firewire connector.
Method (2) uses DMA transfer, directly from the BT8x8 chip
into the frame buffer of the video card (or chipset video).
The video card has to support this mode of operation, in
order to be able to watch TV. Hauppauge is one supplier of
such cards, and some of their information is here:
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/vgainfo.htm (explanation of frame
buffer feature needed for DMA of data via PCI bus to work)
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/VGALIST.htm (compatibility list)
While the SIS651 is not listed in their compatibility list,
extrapolating from the list would suggest that maybe your
video supports DIBDraw mode. But finding the information is
going to be hard, because there aren't many details on the
video portion of the SIS651 on the SIS site.
Note that another quirk of the BT8x8 solution, is if you want
to watch TV and record the program at the same time, the
recording resolution is reduced. If you record such that no
image is on your computer screen, then you can record at
640x480 NTSC, for example.
A safer bet is to buy a video card with builtin digitizing
capability. One advantage of doing this, is the video you see
on the screen of your computer doesn't have to cross the PCI
bus. So, potentially you can record at a higher resolution
and watch at the same time. The format they record in,
determines the bandwidth required of your disk drive and
on the PCI bus (formats like MJPEG or Huffyuv). After
recording, usually you will need to recode the content into
a format suitable for burning a VCD. Some of these cards can
be expensive - do plenty of research before buying, to make
sure they work at the resolution you expect (i.e. some 640x480
devices only worked at 320x240 for example).
As I've only watched TV with my Hauppauge WinTV card, I don't
know anything about post-processing of video. Perhaps asking
your question in a video group like rec.video.desktop would
help ?
Have fun,
Paul
