Among the most elusive celebrity exposures in the annals of obsessive screen grabbing is Gillian Anderson's momentary flash of the goods in a pre-Scully bit of film weirdness called The Turning. Desktop nude hunting and Gillian Anderson are a computerphile's match made in heaven. After all, Scully is the undisputed Geek Goddess, our fantasy lab partner. Unlike supermodels and chest-baring professional bimbos, Scully seems to have been custom-made for the nerd's libido. She seems shy, petite, and adorable in a non-threatening sort of way that won't send us from the room screaming for our mommies. We techno-geeks are not stupid. We fully accept the fact that unless a killer IPO comes our way, there's no sense even fantasizing about Cameron Diaz or Daisy Fuentes. Only booze-marinated, buzz-cut frat boys are brain-addled enough to think they have a chance with these poster babes. Let them idolize the glamour pin-ups. For the rest of us, Scully is more than enough. She knows her periodic table, which is always handy. And in case of alien invasion she can handle weapons or perform field autopsies on extraterrestrials. Let's see Pam Anderson do that! Though God knows she must have picked up some pointers during all of that elective surgery.
Getting my own flash of Scully skin turned out to be more of an adventure than I planned. There are loads of different screen capture and TV tuner options out there, but hardware reviewers seem to spend little time discussing their strengths and weaknesses. Screen grabber devices like the classic Snappy or newer Grab-It, are external single-purpose units. They run your video stream, from camcorder, VCR or even game console, through the parallel or USB port, letting you grab an individual frame. Since it's my job to be a sucker for anything new, I needed to sample the latest USB version of this tried and true technology, so LifeView sent me their line of recent capture/tuner products. The CapView ($79.99) is their version of the Snappy, but it plugs into the USB port, great for using on multiple machines or laptops. Setup is a breeze and both SVHS and RCA video inputs are available. The unit has a big honkin' button on top that lets you snap the frame you want from a rudimentary preview window of the video feed. I like this unit a lot. It works as advertised and provides acceptable images. The only trouble is that single-function capture devices like this are becoming superceded by much more versatile TV tuner devices, especially external ones like LifeView's own USB LifeTV. And as I learned early on, capture and tuner devices are different animals altogether. Both will capture that critical frame of skin, mind you, but I found the tuners more attractive.
The main practical difference between capture gadgets and tuners is that cap devices generally don't send to the desktop robust TV feeds, allowing for full screen video watching or channel changing. Grabbers like the CapView give you an acceptable enough preview of the video in order to snap the right frame, but that's about it. The preview feed from even the best capture devices tends to be jagged. In the case of our target, "The Turning," Gillian Anderson's bra gets squeezed out from between she and her lover (who's that doing our Scully?), so split second timing is of the essence. Among video voyeurs, getting maximum skin exposure in a frame grab is a much-prized skill, so we needed a more fluid video feed of the scene than a grabber could provide. Tuners, on the other hand, while a bit more expensive, not only let you watch video sources on your desktop but they handle pretty much all of the video or frame capture chores of a grabber. With a tuner, after all, you can surf the Web while watching X-Files reruns - kinda like Nerd Nirvana.
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