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Budget TV Tuner?

rea[k]tor

n00b
Joined
Jun 2, 2004
Messages
63
I'm planning to hook up my XBOX to my monitor... The problem is, i'm on a tight budget, and saving up isn't an option. I need a TV Tuner with inputs that wouldn't require me to purchase a converter to use it with. Resolution isn't a problem as long as the image quality is somewhat decent. I've also been looking at XBOX VGA adapters, but they seem too expensive for a decent model. I didn't know where to put this topic, so I put it here...
 
Umm...no, that won't work.

The problem is that for a TV tuner to work on a PC, it needs to encode the signal it is receiving for display by your OS's display drivers.

Hauppauge cards ($150) can do that in hardware, and you are thus looking at only a few fractions of a second delay between what the XBox is doing and when you see it (I think something like 250ms).

For the Leadtek card mentioned, there is almost a 3 second delay.

Obviously, 3 seconds between what is coming in on the tuner and what is displayed is no problem at all when watching streaming TV....but it makes playing games on the XBox totally impossible.
 
I bought a KWorld Xpert PVR Plus from Newegg for $35 and it works great. As expected, the low resolution of many console games doesn't look too hot on a monitor, but it'll do. I don't know what this "delay" that people keep talking about as I've never run into such a thing, even with fast paced games like DOAU. Though I must warn you that the cheaper TV Tuners don't have a hardware encoder, so it uses up nearly 100% of the CPU.

Here's some screenshots of Suikoden III that I took:
http://www.rreactor.com/18.143.0.0.1.0.shtml
 
Hmmm...maybe it's not so bad on newer CPUs. Last I read on the topic was PS2s running on P-IIIs. Just didn't work too well.

I guess I'll change my comment to:

Give it a try, but make sure to buy it from someplace you can return it to if things don't work out.
 
dderidex said:
Hmmm...maybe it's not so bad on newer CPUs. Last I read on the topic was PS2s running on P-IIIs. Just didn't work too well.

I guess I'll change my comment to:

Give it a try, but make sure to buy it from someplace you can return it to if things don't work out.

That was probably the case. If I do anything other than Dscaler, the video will either stutter or pause completely, so it's not a complete fallacy.
 
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