TV Tuner Cards

[GT98]

I'm currently running an ATI R8500 AIW in my Shuttle Mini-box and I mostly use it for watching TV when the GF has control over the Big TV in the living room. I was considering getting a Hardware TV card to replace it with, but is it really worth replacing the R8500AIW with one? I figure I could use my Parhalia in the Shuttle Box with it, just have to take off the mods I did to it.

[K6-III]

I wouldn't think it would be worth it.

If you were to do so, I'd suggest an Avermedia...

[GT98]

Well part of the problem is that it runs like a dog at time if I'm doing intestive stuff like DL stuff off newsgroups and stuff. I usally surf and watch TV at the same time...so it slows the system down quite a bit and would think a hardware decoder would require less resources

[DentyCracker]

I have an avermedia and it works ok with dscaler most of the time. I don't know how much benefit you'll get from the TV card though, the allin wonder has hardware doing the decoding doesn't it? When doing intensive stuff I notice that the picture goes jittery. I only have a 700 MHz Duron though.

[Paddy]

I have an AIW 8500DV. Even with the one CPU I've never noticed any problems.

[K6-III]

The 8500DV is different because it uses a Digital tuner....

[Paddy]

I thought that all of the AIW 8500 series were 'DV's???

[K6-III]

The AIW 8500DV comes in 64mb, has the firewire connector, the digital tuner and core/mem speeds of 230/183.

The AIW 8500 128mb has an analog tuner, no firewire, and core/mem speeds of 275/275.

[GT98]

Originally posted by Paddy [MU]
I have an AIW 8500DV. Even with the one CPU I've never noticed any problems.

I'm an idiot...forgot that its a DV since its only a 64MB card at slower speeds. But anyway maybe I need to reload the system or something since I can't record anything and be able to watch it. The other reason I wanted to go the HW route is that WinXP Media Ed needs a hardware encoder to use it.

[isochar]

This is the 10-bit holy grail:

http://usa.asus.com/vga/tvtuner/overview.htm

You can pick it up for about $80 at Newegg with free shipping. It'll have Dscaler support soon, once the new Connexant CX23880 chip is included. So far the drivers are solid, and the PowerVCRII software is solid.

Blows away my old Hauppauge WinTV in video and driver quality.

[Jammrock]

I got some ZDNet linkage for ya!

http://www.zdnet.com/supercenter/stories/overview/0,12069,528889,00.html

http://www.zdnet.com/supercenter/stories/overview/0,12069,437691,00.html

Big anchordesk review thing with suggestions: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stor...909911,00.html

A USB PC TV Tuner: http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPa...08&Langue_ID=7

And so forth ... Jammrock