Recommandation of a TV/Radio card?

[chaoliang]

Especially between Haupauge and Pinnacle.
Thanks.

[Lambo-Fan]

It depends on the kind of card you want to buy. There are the analogue cards and the digital ones (DVB-T, DVB-C and DVB-S).
I would recommand the Hauppauge WinTV Nexus-s. It's a DVB-S TV card and I'm really satisfied with it. Good image quality and good sound. You can even use third party software (like WatchTV Pro, a very good program).

[The PIT]

Whatever you do don't buy the Nova-t pci. It doesn't work and unless they've revised it it still doesn't work.

[az]

Terratec Cinergy TV 400 or 600 (same, but with radio). Best analog TV card, picture quality wise, you can get, and a german firm with a sense of humour

AZ

[chaoliang]

What about the ability of recording films?

[Lambo-Fan]

With digital TV cards (DVB cards) you can record films in *.mpg format (mpeg2 compression is used for watching and recording) and music in *.mp2 (192 kHz audio). The quality is rel. good.

[albatorsk]

Stay the heck away from Hauppauge. Their drivers and bundled software are probably the worst software ever to be bundled with a piece of hardware, in the history of humankind.

I've had the unfortunate experience of trying to use a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR. The best description of this card I can give is that "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't". The sound will magically disappear, and then re-appear for no apparent reason. Sometimes it will record broken files, that not even the bundled player can open.

Hauppauge knew about the problems, but they didn't do anything. No updated drivers. No updated software. Instead they released a new card (WinTV PVR-250) which supposedly solved some of the problems, but those who didn't feel like buying a new card to get a bugfix were left in the cold.

100% crap.

[az]

My Hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM is OK, but from what I've read so far the Terratec is superior in almost all aspects, and I think it's even cheaper. You can of course record with that card (software codecs only, as with all analog TV cards, but that's no problem with today's fast computers), and you can even timeshift (watch something an hour after it begins on TV, then skip the commercial breaks).

AZ

[TnT]

I've also read good things about the Terratec cards and Flyvideo 3000 card. The Flyvideo 2000 is only mono. Both the Terratec Cinergies and the Flyvideos use the same chips.

I'm deciding which one to get for my HTPC. Although right now I'm using a Marvel G200 still.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Whatever you do, please prevent pinniacle PCTV series. I heard their drivers suck big time.

What about leadtek TV2000 XP? I have heard good things about them. Their new "expert" version also ships with a 10bit DAC AFAIK...

Otherwise, Hauppauge should be fine...

[chaoliang]

Thank you all. It's a nice feeling to be a member in this comunity.

[Kooldino]

For a low end card, nothing beats the leadtek winfast TV XP deluxe or whatever. They're $50 US now.

[az]

The Cinergy 400 can be had for 56 EUR as well, including remote control and lots of software, including timed recording.


The Cinergy 600 is ~80 eur, and adds RDS radio and timeshifting to that.

Quite cheap for the best analog TV cards, IMHO

AZ

[chaoliang]

The Cinergy cards sound to be very interesting.

[Indiana]

I had both, a BT878 based Hauppauge and a Terratec Cinergy that uses the Philips chip.

The Philips chip has a slightly better image quality, the provided TV viewer software is way better than hauppauges.
That said, for the BT878 based cards there are many great alternative freeware TV and capture tools (esp. MoreTV is great), but unfortunately NOT for the Philips based cards.

For capturing Terratecs software also has some flaws (but hen so does hauppauges), so I use iuVCR for capturing