First off, you should know that I have almost no knowledge about anything related to microchips or computer hardware. I have recently become interested in how a video capture device works, specifically capture cards for pc/game consoles etc. They make no sense to me. Why can't I plug cables directly into my computer? Why does there have to be a box in the middle? What does the box do? How does it do it? Why do some capture cards get higher resolutions/better pictures than others? How does a sheet of silicon with millions of electronic on/off switches process an image at all? What the hell are all the little boxes and towers sticking out of the microchip? It bugs me to no end that I know nothing about this and neither can I find anything about it on the internet. Please explain this to me or refer me to someone who can.
I assume with Video capture device you mean something like this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/include/...?EdpNo=612720&csid=ITD&Sku=O38-1022&imgcart=1 (How to make a Spoilerbox?) This is a Device that changes a Analloge Signal into a Digital. Its something like this you have 2 neigbours one is italian and teh other is german they can't understand each other so you have to put a translator inbetween. The analogsignal that comes from the TV has a special langue that wsa designed long ago by some engineer physicsist or whatever and the langue your PC needs was designed by someone else. Thats why they need a translator. How it does that depends on the signal you want to interpret and in what "langue" you want to intrepret it. in the case where you want to change an analog signal into a digital you have to at least use this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(signal_processing) I am sure there are even more steps which i dont know about. But the one above is one of the most important one. If they have a better quality depends entierly on teh samplingrate they have. Its all about informatin storing If you define a yellow ball has two out of five electronic "on/off" switches switched on "on" then you know that as soon as you see that out of your five electronic "on/off" switches 2 are on "on" you have to draw a yellow ball. now you can say you have a second set of electronic "on/off" switches the more switches are on "on" the bigger the ball and so on until you can draw a whole picture. (Only motionlesspicture video is even harder to comprehend) [Btw this explanation is very very very simplified, but to understand the harder more detailed stuff it best to learn a easier model first plus i learned how a picture is made in a lecture that was 4 hours long and we only scratched at teh surface] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format I guess you confound a circuit board with a microchip. well since a microchip can be seen as a really small circuit board i can't say you are wrong but lets look at 2 pictures this is a circuit board(of a roughtly 8 year old TV): http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j...ur-TV-Motherboard-Chassis-Kit-SC-2188-21-.jpg This is a microchip(more than one actually): http://de.rian.ru/images/25757/11/257571146.jpg The black towers sticking out of the circut board are capacitors, the black boxes are IC's,microchips and there are other names for them. the smallest one are called SMD-modules at least in german they look like this: http://www.sample-kits.de/images/smdchipresistorschipwiderstaende.jpg Well i hope i understood all your questions right and gave somewhat of a satisfiing answer regards centum
