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Digitizing VGA?
mvidal01 writes: "I have been looking for hardware to digitize the VGA output of a PC. After searching for a long time I have found a few solutions but nothing really great. If possible I would like to avoid converting the VGA signal to NTSC or PAL video with a scan converter because the quality tends to suck. So how about it Slashdot readers. Anyone know of hardware that will allow hires VGA to be digitized?"
The reason you find very few options for doing this is because there is almost always a better, cheaper, faster way of grabbing a screen without actually reading and interpretting the output.
A better Ask Slashdot tells us what you're trying to accomplish, and why you've dismissed the 'obvious' solutions (such as software, or a card inside the computer, etc).
The only reason I can see where you'd have to do it this way is if you don't have full access to the computer (can't load software, can't open case, trying to circumvent digital copyright protection, etc), but you still want to see what's on the screen.
I've been thinking about this for awhile mainly because I have to monitor hundreds of computers remotely. In some cases I need to control them before the system completes the boot-up process (ie, before software can be loaded), and in other cases I'm using operating systems for which inexpensive software is not available even after boot up. The solution I'm leaning toward is custom hardware (everything runs at 640x480 or less) which compresses and sends the signal over modem or tcp/ip. I haven't implemented it yet, but I enjoy thinking about it. Capturing higher resolution pictures is more involved.
Speaking of which, what do you need to do, exaclty? Do you just want to capture screen shots, or are you interested in spying on the stream in real (or near real) time? Do you need to capture those streams? How much color depth do you need? What's your budget? Does it need to be user friendly, or geek friendly?
-Adam