TV Tuner Card Recommendations

if you want to get a seperate HDTV Cable box for your PC, I'd go with the ATI HDTV Wonder Pro

 

speaking of capture cards..... My tuner card won't install ever since I installed SP2.

 

What's your price range? If you have few hundred bucks to spend, ATI All-In-Wonder HD would be the best.

 

the card may not be compatible or it may have a new driver? have you checked the manufacturers website?

 

I use the standard ATI TV wonder Pro. Its ok. Not great for capturing b/c the audio and video don't always sync. Of course I'm using integrated audio, so that hurts. Wouldn't mind having an HD version though. Maybe i'll sell mine and get the hd one...

 

Yep.

I tried to find a newer version. Can't find one.

It is a cheap card, I paid less than $40 (IIRC) for it last year.

Xpert TV-PVR
Vstream

 

thats weird...I use a ATI AIW Radeon and dont have any problem whatsoever with that.

I did find tho, that eventho they have options to capture to other formats....none of them work right except for mpeg2...which is fine cause if you are gonna do any processing on the video(editing, filtering,etc)...that is the format you want.

Pimp.....absolutely...go with the ATI AIW series..get the best one you can afford.

just keep in mind that your computer specs need to be up there to ensure painless video capturing...fast hard drives, plenty of RAM, preferrably a decently fast processor.

Im running a AThlon 2800XP+ with 1 Gig of 333Mhz DDR and capturing to 7200rpm hard drives(about 300Gigs worth)...need lots of hard drive space..capturing to dvd quality mpeg2 takes around 14G for 3 to 3.5 hours of video

 

I uses that too, and it works fine after I installed SP2

 

The initial batches of ATI's HDTV card was called the ATI Blunder (as opposed to Wonder) by people that bought and reviewed it. I don't know if they've improved it any since last year, but the thing could only do OTA HD channels - none from your dish or cable provider. ATI's hardware is usually good, but their software usually stinks.

Hauppauge used to make good tuner cards that were fairly cheap.

 

From what I understand, the ATI AIW cards don't play nice with the more popular PVR softwares out there (like MythTV).

Supposedly the Hauppauge brands are better.

-- droxford

 

I guess I have been lucky...

I've been using the ATI MMC for well over a year to record from my cable line...with great quality.....minimal problems...maybe 2 crashes during scheduled recordings in that entire time.

 

I am also looking for a TV/FM tuner but a USB version. Anyone know of a good cheap one?

I have PCI tuner now. The company is Leadtek and its called Winfast XP Deluxe and its very nice. It does TV and FM radio, has a remote control also..

 

Stay far far far away from USB capture cards....

If you just want it to use to watch tv/listen to radio...then fine....but dont even dream of using it to capture.

cant imagine whay you would want a USB since you already have a PCI one.

 

Because you cant stick a PCI card into a laptop

 

Really?! Damn. Well I am going to try to install it again right now. Earlier i was having problems with dos prompt but have recently fixed that.

 

ATI All In Wonder

 

I don't know what's wrong with mine.

I just tried to install it again. And it asks me for me XP cd to locate some finals (it never used to do that before). And I can't find them so I point it to a driver.cab file.

I don't know why it's asking for the XP cd now during the setup. ugh.

EDIT: Sumabi***. It just worked. I don't understand this crap!

 

LOL. You get what you paid for.

BTW, when you are capturing video with that card, does it have background noise in the video?