Recommend me an entry level TV tuner.

I'm looking to do some HD, or at the very least 480p, TV recording @ 16X9. I have Charter cable and bypass my cable box (get a few extra channels). I have Windows 7 x64 Pro, so I intend to use Windows Media Center.

What I'm looking for is an entry level tuner. It can be either PCI-E or PCI. I was looking at this one. I'm also interested in some information on what codec to record in, if that's something you can even adjust. I'm looking for a good combination of IQ and space savings.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Digital...eo_Capture_TV_Tuner_Cards&hash=item4842ff142e

I've been using one of these for over a year with windows media center and have no complaints. using it for OTA programming. Ive considered picking up a 2nd one so I'd have two atsc tuners, but decided i really didn't need it. If your cable company still broadcasts some programming in analog you could make use of both tuners on the card.

what are you trying to record?

If only the locals then that should work

If you're recording digital signals (i.e. QAM), it is already encoded when it reaches you in mpeg2 at the bitrate and settings your cable company wants to provide it to you. There will be no differences in the file you receive between any of the tuners in that case - what you do with it for post processing will be what makes a difference, and that doesn't rely upon the tuner.

If you want to get anything other than the OTA channels in HD, you will need a cable card based solution (unless charter in your area doesn't encrypt everything else, but that is the norm these days). For cable card tuners, there's only 2 games in town - the Silicon Dust HD Homerun Prime and the Ceton InfiniTV 4 (of which, I have the latter). The Ceton is a breeze to install, actually easier than QAM tuners that I've used in the past (as the whole channel mapping thing is handled automagically).

I picked up the Diamond.

When using it in WMC it cannot detect ClearQAM digital cable (all I need). It will detect a few channels then suddenly disconnect and lose all channels. Supposedly this is an issue with this card, if the signal degrades it drops the connection. Plus I read WMC doesn't officially support it. WMC will properly display and record analog channels. I tried both the drivers through the website and the drivers through WU.

When using the tuner through the included software, I receive all digital and analog cable channels, but when I record the sound is nothing but a high pitched squeal. I tried the different audio sources in the application settings but it's all the same. The software also has a 'gpu acceleration' feature which actually slows down the framerate and causes serious av sync issues.

I'd like to find a tuner that works with WMC so that some day I can build a HTPC for recordings and Internet TV. BTW, who here uses the Internet TV through WMC and how do you like it?

I ended up sending the Diamond back. Audio recording was all bugged and would constantly squeal.

Anyways, I'm still looking. One feature I would like to do is to start watching a program at the beginning from recording while it continues to record the remaining time in the background, similar to how you can do it with a cable/dish DVR (Timeshift?)

Windows Media Center, with both tuners I've bought, will scan and find channels, then error out and say no channels were found.

bigdogchris said:

Anyways, I'm still looking. One feature I would like to do is to start watching a program at the beginning from recording while it continues to record the remaining time in the background, similar to how you can do it with a cable/dish DVR (Timeshift?)

Click to expand...

IIRC, you need a dual TV tuner in order to do that.

bigdogchris said:

Windows Media Center, with both tuners I've bought, will scan and find channels, then error out and say no channels were found.

Click to expand...

Have you looked at the Hauppauge HVR-2250? Seems to be a very popular and decent TV Tuner.