differences between intergrated tv tuner card and stand alone pci ones

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Xeero

Gawd
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Oct 30, 2003
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i'm plannin on buildin an ht pc in the next month or so, motherboard of choice is gonna be an nforce2 shuttle xpc. the dd encoding won me over :D. well my question is, what would be a good tuner card? i'm really liking the aiw 9600xt because of its features and bundle of the remote wonder 2. game performance is not much of concern to me. however, i want to see what other options i have. so i'm wondering why get a stand alone pci tv tuner card? are there any advantages besides giving me the option to upgrade my grahpics card? does a stand alone card offer better image quality?
 
ive heard really good thing about the all-in-wonders. if gaming isnt a concern why not try to save some money and get a 8500AIW?
 
The problem with a combined graphics/tv card is that when it comes time to upgrade your graphics, you're forced to upgrade your TV capability at the same time. Whereas a seperate pci-tv card solution is more flexible. You can migrate it from system to syetem, and it'll still be there when you upgrade your graphics.

That being said, ati's newer offerings make it a difficult decision so you probably can't go wrong either way. It all depends on what your future needs will be.
 
i just want a tv tuner card that offers the best features, most ease of use and best imaqe quality. any suggestions?
 
i'm having the same problem. i want the best image quality and easiest to use media center app. i'm not sure whether the ATI hardware/software combo is the way to go. i've heard very good things about the app SageTV. but even if i use that, is the ATI hardware still the way to go?

thanks
 
Get a pvr-250, hardware mpeg2 encoder. It will record tv at quality well beyond what a aiw will get you at 1-2% cpu usage.
 
can u supply us with a link? how about remote support? also don't they have a newer model out?
 
Hauppauge

Good pricing and support from PC Alchemy

They have a PVR-350 card, but just get the 250. The difference is the 350 has an FM tuner built in, and not many people want/need it.
 
I think the question is what do you really want to do with your Shuttle box? Is it going to be a gaming rig with the option to watch TV? Or is it going to be a dedicated HTPC staying on 24/7 and recording shows all day?
The difference between an AIW card and a Hardware encoder are akin to night and day. If it's going to be a gaming rig and has a powerful CPU then I'd think that TV isn't it's biggest mission in life so a powerful video card that doubles as TV input is okay but if it's going to be a HTPC then you're suckering yourself into thinking that the AIWs are going to be good meaning that you should click on over too PC Alchemy and get a Hauppauge PVR 250 (or a 250 MCE). The newer version is the 350 but it doesn't offer much more then MPEG encoding/ decoding and an FM tuner.
 
for me gaming is a distant second. this is going to replace a DVD player, and i want to record a lot of tv. i want excellent quality as someday in the not-so-distant future i will have a widescreen HDTV and i don't want to some crappy image quality pumped to it from the HTPC.

so it seems the hauppage is the way to go. i knew the AIW do software encoding, but i'd thought if you had a powerful enough system that could keep up you'd get the same results quality-wise.

thanks a ton for the input.
 
yeah its going to be strictly for recording purposes only. the reason why i was looking in to the aiw 9600xt is cause of the software set that sorta makes it work like xp mce. but if you guys really suggest to go with the stand alone tv tuner, that i will do then.
 
Which video card? Well just pick out a favorite. Nvidia cards seem to look better on SDTVs but when going HDTV it doesn't matter much since you'd use something like a transcoder. Easy thing to do is use Sage TV with one or two tuners cards (one card to watch live TV the other to record in the background). If your going HDTV I'm not too sure since I don't have one but it looks like the HDTV Tuner cards aren't as mature as Hauppauge but head over to HTPC new's forum and look/ ask there about them.
 
it should be mentioned that AIW cards WILL NOT work most linux htpc software
 
ProphetSix said:
Hauppauge

Good pricing and support from PC Alchemy

They have a PVR-350 card, but just get the 250. The difference is the 350 has an FM tuner built in, and not many people want/need it.
Click to expand...
The pvr-350 also has hardware encoding and decoding whereas the 250 only has encoding. The FM tuner is nice as well :) I love my pvr-350. If you're going to use linux you can use the 350's TV out to display MythTV and you get a little better picture.
 
sp00 said:
The pvr-350 also has hardware encoding and decoding whereas the 250 only has encoding. The FM tuner is nice as well :) I love my pvr-350. If you're going to use linux you can use the 350's TV out to display MythTV and you get a little better picture.
Click to expand...

well gbpvr.com can do the same under windows.. but i agree my 350 rocks.. i use the tv for mythtv and you can not tell the diffrence between it and the direct cable feed.. where as my gf4 svid out is some what blurry..
 
so there are the pvr cards from hauppage and there is also a wintv-hd card. it appears the wintv-hd has component video out whereas the pvr250/350 only have composite video or s-video out. is the hd card not an encoder/decoder either? it's just a tuner?

is there any benefit to having the digital tuner? i would guess that if you have a cable box then there is not- the box is doing the work right? it's too bad there's no component out on the pvr cards.
 
big daddy fatsacks said:
so there are the pvr cards from hauppage and there is also a wintv-hd card. it appears the wintv-hd has component video out whereas the pvr250/350 only have composite video or s-video out. is the hd card not an encoder/decoder either? it's just a tuner?

is there any benefit to having the digital tuner? i would guess that if you have a cable box then there is not- the box is doing the work right? it's too bad there's no component out on the pvr cards.
Click to expand...

why would it need component out when its just an analog tuner? all hd sets have svid and composite inputs..

honestly i would wait on buying any HD tuner card... i believe the law was recently passed to require all HD cable systems to enable and or include a Firewire port.. then we could all plug it in to our pc's and "download" the video using some software.. i believe people are doing this all ready
 
I wouldn't get a HD tuner now, spoty QAM support and encripted cable signals make it near impossible to get it to work.
 
it would still be beneficial to have a component video output from the video card though so DVDs playback would be output to the tv through component right? no?
 
big daddy fatsacks said:
it would still be beneficial to have a component video output from the video card though so DVDs playback would be output to the tv through component right? no?
Click to expand...

but the card intention is to play and record analog tv..it doesnt do anything more then that..

I'm still waiting for that magical piece of hardware to do it all.. divx/dvd/HD/analog/mp3/whatever elese :)
 
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