TV Tuner Cards

scottyd

Weaksauce
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Sep 2, 2004
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I'll be moving up to a dorm in about a week so I thought I would pick up a TV tuner card instead of bringing up a TV. I don't really have too much interest in recording TV, although I would like to try and get some over-the-air HD channels. The dorm itself has cable so I assume they will just give me a coax cable drop.

My motherboard is a Asus P5Q-E so I only have 2 pci slots, the top one is being used by my x-fi sound card (which may or may not be really needed). The other one is right under my video cards' fan, so I don't think it would be a good idea to put it there. That leaves me with my pci-e slots. I have been looking at the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1800, but I think it might be overkill. I've also been looking at the WinTV-HVR-1250 although I can't find any reviews on it besides the newegg ones which rate it pretty bad. Another thing about the HVR-1250 is that it uses software encoding compared to the others which are hardware. Not sure if that would be an issue since my CPU (Q9450) is probably more powerful.

Just wondering if anyone had any opinions or suggestions on these or any other TV cards.
 
Visiontek's PCIe Theater 650 HD combo is good too. Based on ATI's Theater 650 HD TV tuner chipset. It has hardware encoding / decoding for if you do ever record anything.

It can tune into QAM channels, standard cable and OTA analog and HD.
 
Do these cards need a seperate antenna to pick up OTA HD or do they work fine without one?

I don't have a media center PC, just Windows XP Pro.
 
The 950 comes with a mini-antenna, might work well, it all depends how close are you are to a tower, line of sight, that type of thing, but you'll need some type of antenna.

There are DVR apps out there, the Hauppage tuners come with one, never used it since I have Media Center.
 
Visiontek's PCIe Theater 650 HD combo is good too. Based on ATI's Theater 650 HD TV tuner chipset. It has hardware encoding / decoding for if you do ever record anything.

It can tune into QAM channels, standard cable and OTA analog and HD.


i have that card and it is awesome. u can use the software with it if u don't like WMC
 
Do these cards need a seperate antenna to pick up OTA HD or do they work fine without one?

I don't have a media center PC, just Windows XP Pro.

You just need a HDTV feed from either an antenna or a cable.
I also have Windows XP pro.
 
i have that card and it is awesome. u can use the software with it if u don't like WMC

I've yet to ever hear a compelling reason to use WMC over XP.
I also use the software that came with my Dvico, but I also use AutoGK to scale HDTV into smaller files and to eliminate any audio glitches.
 
I've yet to ever hear a compelling reason to use WMC over XP.
I also use the software that came with my Dvico, but I also use AutoGK to scale HDTV into smaller files and to eliminate any audio glitches.

Media Center is just a top notch app. That's not to say its the best but I've been using it for 5 years now, on both XP and Vista, and as far as stability, ease of use, and just plain cool, nothing beats it IMHO.
 
Media Center is just a top notch app. That's not to say its the best but I've been using it for 5 years now, on both XP and Vista, and as far as stability, ease of use, and just plain cool, nothing beats it IMHO.

But what does it do that my Dvico software+AGK can't?

I can record HDTV/SDTV, take 1080i snapshots, cut HDTV segments from my recordings, make scheduled recordings etc, etc.
 
But what does it do that my Dvico software+AGK can't?

I can record HDTV/SDTV, take 1080i snapshots, cut HDTV segments from my recordings, make scheduled recordings etc, etc.

Nothing really, the Dvico software is probably better, I've never used it. But the only thing you have to do with Media Center is install the drivers for the tuner and it works. Nothing fancy. If you want something straight forward and simple its hard to beat Media Center is all I was saying.
 
I was looking at that nice, black PCIe Dvico TV tuner at Newegg, but it doesn't have any hardware encoding like other TV tuner cards do.
 
I just moved into my room for next year. I bought an Avermedia M780 tuner for my PC. I can record 1 OTA HD channel while watching a cable channel or vica versa. I use Vista Ultimate and VMC, everything has worked wonderfully so far. I also love having access to my shows from my 360. I find it useful to record my shows while I do homework, etc then before I go to bed I just fire up the xbox and catch up on my shows. :)
 
Nothing really, the Dvico software is probably better, I've never used it. But the only thing you have to do with Media Center is install the drivers for the tuner and it works. Nothing fancy. If you want something straight forward and simple its hard to beat Media Center is all I was saying.

Vista premuim's implementation of MC must be better than XP's then:p
My point is that some people feel they need to ditch XP, but the truth is, as long as you get one of the better Capture cards, the software is decent enough.
 
I was looking at that nice, black PCIe Dvico TV tuner at Newegg, but it doesn't have any hardware encoding like other TV tuner cards do.

Do you mean hardware accleration?
I've used mine with a AMD 3000 and P4 3ghz, and it's fine, but if you buy a dual card, you'll probably need a dual core CPU....
 
I just moved into my room for next year. I bought an Avermedia M780 tuner for my PC. I can record 1 OTA HD channel while watching a cable channel or vica versa. I use Vista Ultimate and VMC, everything has worked wonderfully so far. I also love having access to my shows from my 360. I find it useful to record my shows while I do homework, etc then before I go to bed I just fire up the xbox and catch up on my shows. :)

This card looks nice, but again it looks like people are having problems with it on just plain Windows XP Pro. I don't want Vista or any of those MCE OSs.

I think I might just go for the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1800. I need this by the end of next week.
 
I just moved into my room for next year. I bought an Avermedia M780 tuner for my PC. I can record 1 OTA HD channel while watching a cable channel or vica versa. I use Vista Ultimate and VMC, everything has worked wonderfully so far. I also love having access to my shows from my 360. I find it useful to record my shows while I do homework, etc then before I go to bed I just fire up the xbox and catch up on my shows. :)

I have the ATSC only version of this card, it works great on both MCE OS's or just plain Windows XP with Avermedia's software.
 
HD over air looks damn good.
atihd.jpg


 
I'll be moving up to a dorm in about a week so I thought I would pick up a TV tuner card instead of bringing up a TV. I don't really have too much interest in recording TV, although I would like to try and get some over-the-air HD channels. The dorm itself has cable so I assume they will just give me a coax cable drop.

My motherboard is a Asus P5Q-E so I only have 2 pci slots, the top one is being used by my x-fi sound card (which may or may not be really needed). The other one is right under my video cards' fan, so I don't think it would be a good idea to put it there. That leaves me with my pci-e slots. I have been looking at the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1800, but I think it might be overkill. I've also been looking at the WinTV-HVR-1250 although I can't find any reviews on it besides the newegg ones which rate it pretty bad. Another thing about the HVR-1250 is that it uses software encoding compared to the others which are hardware. Not sure if that would be an issue since my CPU (Q9450) is probably more powerful.

Just wondering if anyone had any opinions or suggestions on these or any other TV cards.

My experience with the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 (which is the PCI version of the HVR-1800) is rather unpleasant: Although the most recent driver installed fine, and the tuner is much more sensitive than my previous ATi TV Wonder 650 PCI (which had a hybrid tuner which could receive digital or analog channels, but not both in the same iteration - which meant that if you programmed the digital channels, your analog channels get wiped out, and vice-versa), the analog picture quality on the HVR-1600/1800 is just plain poor, and the WinTV software interface for both the main program and the scheduler is just plain clunky (I much prefer Windows Vista's MC over either card's OEM software in terms of both ease of use and stability). The TV Wonder 650 PCI, on the other hand, has terrible digital tuner sensitivity and mediocre analog tuner sensitivity - but at least its picture quality is very good. Also, if you have antenna connections to both the analog and digital inputs on that ATi PCI tuner card, Windows MC will program only the analog channels by default.

Now I am trying out a VisionTek TV Wonder HD 650 PCI-e, which is so far so good (it is a combo tuner unit with separate analog and digital tuners, not a hybrid, software-selectable tuner unit like the same brand's PCI version of the card). Very good picture quality in both analog and digital, and much better tuner sensitivity than the PCI version of the card.
 
Ended up getting the Avermedia M780 which came today. Software is sorta buggy but for as much as I watch TV it will do. OVA HD looks pretty good. I tried some of that other open source PVR software and I coulden't get it to work. All I would use it for is live TV for right now.
 
You just need a HDTV feed from either an antenna or a cable.
I also have Windows XP pro.

XP Pro here as well. Still deciding on a 24-26" monitor, have digital cable.....Trying to understand my capabilities with the following (SD channels, etc). I don't want to use a cable box....my goal would be to use software to size the tv window and essentially have input PIP. Considering:

Hauppauge HVR-1800 MCE
 
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