Postby markfm » 04 Mar 2005 17:01
For a PCI card, the Viewcast Osprey 210 is a decent, reasonably priced item with good performance, 640x480 resolution, full 30 fps. I use this one myself, both Win2K and WinXP.
For a USB frame grabber, the thing is to make sure that it has DirectX (directshow) support, as that's what VLC uses under Windows.
If I could live with 320x240 resolution, 15 frames per second (at best), I would probably try the Osprey 50 USB; based on what's in the manual, I expect it is a directshow device, though have not personally veified this. Alternately, stay with the 210 but pick up a Magma box -- it's an outboard PCI card holder, with PC card that goes into a laptop. I have not used either of these two approaches (I have, independently, used the Magma box, just not for this application; at near $1K, it's not cheap, but can be much simpler than schlepping around a full size PC if you just need 1 external PCI slot.)
Other vendors make fine products, too, just that I've had good luck with the Ospreys.