Sony DCR TRV19 Transferring to PC

[Coach17]

The software that came with this DV camera is Image Mixer 1.5. I am transferring from the camera to my PV via USB2. I have Windows XP Home version. I am transferring at the highest quality and have found out it not very good quality on my PC. I have 256mb memory. I have played the tape on my TV and it looks great.
I also have used Movie Maker in Windows XP and get the same low quality when it is on my PC. I have Adobe Premier which does not seem to reconize my camera and also seems to only be able to accept the transfer by Firewire which I do not have. I have been advised that USB 2 is better than Firewire. If I put a Firewire card in will this help and what is the connection I need on the camera? There is a port for it on the camera.
I assume if I ever get the movie to my PC in a good quality a DVD burner (which I do not have) would be better than burning it to a CD-R.
I am new to this , so all the help I can get will be most Helpfull.
Thanks

[jerryctx]

I can't answer your basic question but, until an expert comes along, I may be able to eliminate some possibilities.

1) PC monitors are much higher resolution than TVs (unless you are one of the lucky few to have a new HD TV). Its possible some part of the quality loss is actually more accurate rendering on the PC.

2) USB and Firewire should make no difference in quality. Assuming you use the same file format with each, the resulting files should be identical.

3) CD and DVD can both produce high quality. The primary advantage of DVD is larger capacity per disk. CD burners are now very cheap (I've seen some discontinued models for under $20 US) but, if you can afford it, get a DVD burner since they do it all (burn and read both CDs and DVDs). Get one that handles both the plus and minus formats.