[bkolasin]

I am quite interested in the Hollywood DV-Bridge-- I believe I'm going to choose that over the formac firewire video capture device b/c I can use the money I will save to buy a VCR with a TV tuner that I will hook up the DV-Bridge. Anyhow, what I'm wondering if the Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge (or any of the reasonable priced firewire video devices, i guess) will allow you to mirror the video from your Mac on your TV. I am into this concept for many reasons, one of which would be to watch DVDs on a TV. Yes, I know about the other video-out options... but i'd rather have it all in one box. If this isn't a current feature of the DV-Bridge, do any developers out there know if it's possible to write a driver that'll 'trap' the video that's going to the VGA/ADC port on your Mac and spit it through firewire instead? Does anything like this already exist?

thanks!

[Brian McHale]

The August 2001 MacWorld had a review of Analog-to-DV Converters, which can be found at: http://www.macworld.com/2001/08/reviews/converters.html

Also, here's the Dazzle page: http://www.dazzle.com/products/hw_bridge.html

I believe that all of the devices tested will let you play back video out to a VCR or TV. Afterall, one of the things people will use this for is to create video tapes.

Good luck...

[Paul S]

The only video signal FireWire will send out is a DV signal from iMovie, Final Cut, etc. It does not send out the regular monitor signal. This is not an issue with the bridge, it's the nature of FireWire. Until Apple changes something, it will most likely stay that way.

[bkolasin]

now you've got me thinking... what about the USB-based video mirroring solutions out there? Take a product such as Eskape Labs' MyView video (MacMall link here) mirroring device... somehow it takes the video signal and pumps it out over USB to a device that'll let you mirror your computer screen. If the video signal from a Mac can be captured via software and converted into a stream of data that the MyView can interpret, why couldn't a similar thing be done for DV? Isn't there also a piece of software that will capture what you do on the computer to a QuickTime video?

If not, anyone care to write one?