TV Tuner Cards?

[GT98]

Anyone have any suggestions for a TV Tuner Card? I think I'm going this route instead of getting a TV for my loft...

[spadnos]

How about the pcHDTVâ„¢ HD-3000 (as mentioned on Slashdot)

Unless you want to use it with Windows.

Note that it's an HDTV tuner, and explicitly ignores the "broadcast flag" - allowing full resolution copies of recorded programs.

- Steve

[gt40]

or you can go satellite tuner card for about the same price.

[William]

i played around with various cheap tuner cards before finally splashing out on Hauppage's PVR USB2 (or some similar name). Quality is better than anyones TV around here, and CPU usage is low because it encodes the video to MPEG 2 in hardware.

I liked it so much I got a second one so I can record two channels at once...

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by gt40
or you can go satellite tuner card for about the same price.

Not with US satellite he can't. Well, you can pick up some of the free-to-air stuff, but nothing like Dish or DIrecTV.

Hauppage is usually considered the best, or at least one of them. ATi has their HDTV Wonder, but that requires a DirectX 9 video card to use. If you have the vid card, the HDTV wonder comes with HDTV tuner, PVR software, remote control w/ USB infraRed I/O job, and an HDTV antenna. For the price it's the best package you can get. And it packs 2 tuners, one HDTV and one SDTV, so you can watch and record at the same time.

Jammrock

[gt40]

Originally posted by Jammrock
Not with US satellite he can't. Well, you can pick up some of the free-to-air stuff, but nothing like Dish or DIrecTV.

Jammrock

Certainly not DirectTV, but Dish is do-able.
Some of these cards have Conditional Access Modules that allow you to watch using your subscribed access card - or there's the other way

[Dr Mordrid]

The Gainward TV 2 GO I reviewed on the Digital Video forum would be nice.

Nice TVR and scheduling software, grabs very nice stills, a load of cables (S-Video & composite input, audio this & that plus a very nice shielded USB2 extension cable) and excellent reception. Standard TV connect is 75 ohm coax. Also comes with some basic MPEG editing and CD/DVD burning software.

Here's the post and 250k worth of pictures;

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50350&highlight=gainward+tv2go

The main limitation is one induced by the USB2 support of the mainboard being used. With good support full frame video capture can be done with decent quality. These captures can be MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or *.avi.

With less than stellar USB2 support (or USB1) then you're limited to VideoCD or SuperVCD resolutions (352x240 and 480x480 NTSC respectively, though it can do PAL as well).

This does not, however, affect the TV reception which is VERY good.

It's also VERY small and comes with a credit-card sized, and comprehensive, IR remote control.

Dr. Mordrid

[Mehen]

My brother has a ATI tv wonder pro or whatever its called; and it sucks. It won't run properly in any machine with dual cpus, and it detects hyperthreading P4's as dual... :/

The remote is nice though

[GT98]

Originally posted by Jammrock


Hauppage is usually considered the best, or at least one of them. ATi has their HDTV Wonder, but that requires a DirectX 9 video card to use. If you have the vid card, the HDTV wonder comes with HDTV tuner, PVR software, remote control w/ USB infraRed I/O job, and an HDTV antenna. For the price it's the best package you can get. And it packs 2 tuners, one HDTV and one SDTV, so you can watch and record at the same time.

Jammrock

I was doing some investgating into this product and I didn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling from it. Seems to be a big headaches with installation of the card.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by Jammrock
Not with US satellite he can't. Well, you can pick up some of the free-to-air stuff, but nothing like Dish or DIrecTV.

rumour says, there's some software for educational purposes that takes care of that ...

[Maggi]

Re: TV Tuner Cards?

Originally posted by GT98
Anyone have any suggestions for a TV Tuner Card? I think I'm going this route instead of getting a TV for my loft...

is that for analog or digital TV ?

terrestrial, cable or satellite broadcast ?

[Dr Mordrid]

TV 2 GO works with broadcast, cable or antenna. For satellite I use the satellite tuner/remote with its video output to the TV 2 GO's input (can use S-Video, composite or 75 ohm). This tested using DishNetwork.

All you lose is the tuner (the satellite box/tuner handles that) and you can still schedule recordings (set both the satellite and TV 2 GO's schedulers) & use its remote for other functions.

Dr. Mordrid

[GT98]

Well I might have to can the idea of getting a TV Tuner Card...from what I've been reading my local cable company wants to go over to full digital except channels 2-13 and I'll need an additional box to get the channels on my PC if that happens