As of tomorrow, I will have myself a brand-spanking new 15" PowerBook, which is a big step from the land of the PC for me. My question for those of you who know more about this sort of thing than I do is this:

How do I capture stills (or video) from a regular video source, like television?

I have a little blog where I make fun of ads - http://www.adsthatsuck.ca, if you're interested, and it's a huge pain to record ads to my PVR, save them on DVRW and then do a video capture on my PC. I'd much rather be able to plug in an RCA cable (or whatever) capture the stills then and there, and be able to edit and upload them.

Does anyone have an easy solution to this?

Look at the Elgato EyeTV 200 http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetvmain or Eskape Labs MyTV http://www.eskapelabs.com/tech.html . I think the Elgato product is more popular.

Interesting... I feel like there should be an easier way than this, but I suppose not many people want to do this sort of thing. Thanks for your help!

also consider the ConvertX by plaxtor...uses the EyeTV software...cheaper than an EyeTV 200

If you have a digital camcorder you already have a multi-step solution. Depending on the camcorder you can connect your PVR/VCR/TV-out to the camcorder and either passthrough via firewire directly to iMovie or record the content to the camcorder and then play it into iMovie. Use iMovie to clip the video as needed and export in a web-freindly format. Since you are just talking about ads, this won't take long at all and you'll love just how easy it really is.

There is no built-in video in on your PowerBook (or any current Apple computer). I use a MyTV2Go with my PowerBook but find recorded quality to be eratic. Sometimes good, usually not.

Try the iMovie route with the camcorder, it will do it for you.

The products mentioned above seem to also have TV tuners built in. Is there a USB device that will work on a Mac that doesn't have a TV tuner (to save cost). I know in the "other world" there are products by Dazzle, etc... that are just Composite Video or S-video capture devices. That's all I would need so are there any suggestions?

Great blog, BTW, RyanA.
I'm sorry I can't help you on that subject.

I know in the "other world" there are products by Dazzle, etc... that are just Composite Video or S-video capture devices. That's all I would need so are there any suggestions?Exactly what I need (USB of course). They are as cheep as $60 at TigerDirect but Mac support is nowhere mentioned.

I have a Dazzle 80 Capture device which is used under windows on my laptop. I was wondering if devices such as these can be used under WindowsXP running in "Parallels" on a Intel iMac??

b.