I just bought an ATI-TV Wonder VE(PCI) for 49.99 at Best Buy. It comes with a 10$ rebate. The card has the coax input and component input. No S-Video though.The card isn't too bad but it acts all funky in Windows XP. The TV screen will scramble when you record and then you have to change color depth to get it back unscrambled. ATI recognizes the problem on their website. All they say is to update the video card (64mb DDR NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS) - which I did - and then they say use the "workaround" of changing the color depth. That is BS. I am considering just rebulding the system in Windows 2000. Anyways do you guys have TV-Tuner? What kind? I wanted to get the Radeon 8500 all in wonder card - 200$ though. FYI - I got a sweet deal at Best Buy. 80GB 7200rpm Western Digital ATA100 EIDE drive for 199$. It came with 50$ in DVD's instantly with purchase plus a 75$ mail in rebate. The offer ended today though.
I've had a tv card since around 96-97 to watch Rockets games and whatever else while I work at home. They're pretty cool. I have about 3 or so of 'em lyin' around, all of 'em are Happauges. I have no problems in XP. The $50 dvd deal is pretty good depending on what it allows you to do. If it's $50 off any dvd combo you want to buy, it's pretty good. The $199 - $75 is not that great a deal. You can get the OEM 7200 RPM 80 GB drives for < $120 now, and no waiting for rebates you may or may not get.
I had a Voodoo 3 3500 with a TV tuner. I loved it, but I had to be in Windows to use it. Also, it had a really crappy recording interface. Scheduling didn't work for anything, but the problems were really all software. HW worked great.
Never....NEVER EVER !!! get an ATI card, their drivers are horrible, and their support simply sucks. Take it from someone who has to support their crap......stay away from ATI...get NVIDIA. DaDakota
The 50$ DVD deal was for any DVD's I wanted in the store. I didn't see any cheap 80GB 7200rpm IEDE drives on the net? MAXTOR EIDE HARD DRIVE 80GB 7200RPM MODEL # 6L080J4 - OEM, DRIVE ONLY D740X ATA 133 2mb Cache Buffer 8.5 ms Seek Time - 3 Year Manufacturer Warranty 80.0 gb 7200 rpm. (Click here for RAID Subsystems)(Click here for Ultra133 Controller card.) Model#: MXDX6L080J4 Special FedEx Saver Shipping $6.00 - Product Link (limit 5 per customer) 141.00 on Newegg.com is the best I could find. I think I came out OK. DA - what is a good card to get? I can take the Card back.
Wink, That was my mistake, I was typing 7200 RPM and thinking 5400 RPM. You're right. Good deal. As for what card to get, I always hate buying combo cards that do 50 different things because they don't seem to do any one thing right. ATI's driver support, like DaDakota said, is lame. It's one reason why the Radeon 8500 had a luke-warm reception when it first came out when it should've been the nVidia Ti-500 killer. If you can swing the $50-$100 get a dedicated TV tuner card like the ones Hauppauge makes (www.hauppauge.com). I've run one on about 3 different operating systems and haven't found any problems. I'm not sure what you'll be using it for, but I just use it for TV purposes... I'm still waiting a bit before I put together a digital video editing machine.
All I wanna do is record stuff when I am not home. I also like the still frames picture taking. Does hauppauge do that?
How is this card? It is like 49$ with a 10$ rebate WinTv-Go Video Card (Hauppauge) http://shop3.outpost.com/product/2702853/
I think you get 125 channels - so if you have cable you get the first 70 or so and then you need a digital cable box for the rest.
I want to get one of these too but dont have a cable jack near my computer except for the one RR is connected too. Can I just get a splitter and hook RR into one jack and then a TV or TV turner card into the other jack or is the RR jack special?
I'm not sure their lower-end cards do video recording. I'm almost certain they don't. I don't think mine does. It does do still pics, though.
I use a splitter to view the signal when I'm on my computer. I can't change the channels from my computer, though. I still have to use the digital video box to do that, meaning I still have to run into the living room to change the channels.
lol I dont have digital cable. I have regular cable and Road Runner. I want to be able to get a normal cable TV feed and a Road Runner feed out of the same coax wall jack. Is that possible with a splitter?
I believe it is, though I'm not positive. I think the cable guy was about to put one of those on my wall before he found out I had an active line in my den/office. Go talk to somebody at Radio Shack. They'd know. The splitter should only cost a few bucks.
Ok thanks This way I can get a TV Tuner card and then have yet another thing to distract me when I'm working at my computer. As if this BBS wasnt enough. God I love computers
DOD - my POS ati card does video recording. It has a VCR feature and you schedule it to record. When you hit record it even tells you how long you have left on your hard drive and when you stop it ask where you want to save the Movie Files (.mp2). It uses MPEG-2 compression. I am gonna rebuild my machine for windows 2000 and see if that helps.
Bringing this thread back up. DoD, It worked. I got a $10 splitter and run one cable into my RR modem and the other in to my TV and it worked just fine. Now I need a TV Tuner card. I run win 2k Pro and want to watch TV and hopefully be able to record some shows as well. What do you guys recomend?
Does that slow down your internet connection? I asked the rr installation guy when he installed rr(jan. 00)if I could get a router and watch tv and be on the internet at the same time. He told me absolutely not unless I want to be surfing like I was on a 28.8k modem.
I too was worried about that and I went and chatted with the guy out at Now Audio Video and he said to be carefull what kind of splitter you get they had 2 he recomended, one was 1ghz bandwith ($10) and the other was 2ghz ($20) he recomended the 2ghz b/c he said the 1ghz might degrade the signal but since the cable outlet I am using this on comes directly from the box outside he said that the 1ghz should be fine. So I went with that one and have not had any slow down in my websurfing. It is the same as it was before I put the splitter in.
