I agree with Handy. You can get the ATI All In Wonder 16Mb for about $100. A plain TV card probably for less, but with all you can do with the ATI card, it is a much better deal.
I have an old 19" Color TV that works (no remote, only dial tuner). You can have it if you will pay the shipping. Don’t know what that would be though.
I would go with the ATI card (since I have one, I love it).
Jeffery
Good idea! If you go that route, look for perhaps an old Commodore monitor (model number 1902 is what i have IIRC). Has a copule of rca jacks that a vcr would plug right into.
What kind of a video card do you have in your computer right now? A large variety of cards already come with a video in/out jack, particularly if your system is only a year or two old. If you happen to have a Matrox, Diamond, or ALi, all of those manufacturers offer a video-in upgrade that is fairly easily managed and around a hundred bucks. You don’t need a TV tuner, just a card with a video in.
The converse of this is that if you don’t have a video-in/out on your graphics card, you probably have a computer system on the verge of obsolescence that needs upgrading. In that case, you need a new CPU, motherboard, graphics card, more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a DVD player, and while you’re at it you might as well pick up a 21" monitor so you don’t strain the little tyke’s eyes. That option is a little more expensive, at about $1400.00.
Parental control on a tv means you can push a special button & the kids can’t turn on the tv.
If you have a reasonably fast computer, you could get a capture card (e.g. the ones mentioned here, or any number of others), you can digitize the video to MPEG-1 (if you have enough disk space) and your kids can play back on the computer. No VCR/TV problems. Just make sure you are using a card with hardware MPEG compression, they work much better. Software MPEG decompression is not much of a problem these days with the Pentiums and video cards in most modern machines. You do need lots of disk space depending on the size of capture. I found 320X240 to be quite adequate.
Okay, I went to a lot of trouble for you, and I can’t offer you much. Still, here goes…
Many educational supplies stores sell VRC/Monitor combination units. I myself used one in my rastaurant days when training films were to be watched. They do not have a TV at all, only a screen and a VHS player.
Try as I might - mainly because I do not know the technical name for such a unit (putting anything in search engines results in the TV thingies coming up) - I could find no concrete places to go.
However, I found many places that rent these items for presentations and the like. Here is one place:
http://www.rentcom.com/catalog/VHS_SVHS.html
Go to the bottom of the link and you will see the items. Here are their pictures:
http://www.rentcom.com/catalog/images/p149.jpg
http://www.rentcom.com/catalog/images/p27.jpg
Hope this helps…
Yer pal,
Satan
Thanks! And thanks to all of you. I’ll let you know what we end up doing.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Not an unreasonable thing really. One solution is to buy a moderately pricd TV that has line inputs for video and audio. They are fairly commonplace now and not as expensive as some hi end monitors. Get a couple of 75 ohm coaxial terminating resistors (dirt cheap at any electronics place) screw them in place over the antenna inputs of the TV and VCR and epoxy the suckers in place. There you have a moderately priced tape-only system that can’t recieve broadcasts.
The last one works.Also, if you just lose the antenna, you won’t see much. When my cable goes out, I see nothing at all. I have no idea where the rabbit ears antenna is.
Get a TV card for the computer. I have one and it works great. You can get them fairly cheaply, also. [Here](http://www.outpost.com/cgi-bin/bv.cgi?BV_EngineID=calglhhdhlkbfdmcfmjcfmjdgl.2&BV_Operation=Dyn_AppdRecv&BV_SessionID=727160056&form%destination=%2Ftemplates%2FOutpost%2Fpro duct%2fproduct_detail.tmpl&form%25destination_type=template&BV_ServiceName=Outpost&form%25bv_content_content_oid=127311) is one for $79 that’s $10 less after rebate…
If that link doesn’t work, just do a search at outpost.com for 72105
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O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com