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Question About Tv Tuners

S

SquallRealm

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2004
Messages
405
I would like to have a Tv tuner in a near future..
But before i get into buying :
Does it work with the agp video card?
How much money do i need to spend?
Is there anything else i should know?
 
there are several more details you need to supply to us to help you out
#1 What do you want to spend?
#2 Are you planning on just watching tv, or caputring tv shows for playback later?
#3 What formats would you like to be able to capture if you DO capture?

As far as answering your questions, here goes:
#1 Yes tv tuners work with agp cards, as they are PCI cards(unless you get an external usb version that you plug in to usb port)
#2 $$$$ pertains to what you want/are planning to do
#3 hopefully I have given you some ideas from the statements above.
 
The one in my sig works awesome and it can be had for less than $50.

~Adam
 
I always preferred the ATI TV Wonder series... the pro version even comes with a remote, similar to that of the ATI All-In-Wonder AGP series...if your computer room warrants it.

I wonder when the TV-cards will gravitate towards PCI express. I won't be replacing my TV Wonder PCI until then.
 
I have a dvico fusion II hdtv tuner FS. If your interested shoot me a pm. I have it on a neo2 as well.
 
I have the same one CleanSlate does and it worked great and the price can't be beat. I didn't really use it to record TV but it can. One thing I did record was and L.A. City Council meeting, very easy to use.

Not using it now because I fubard the drivers on my Windows install and I can't get the thing to install correctly :mad:
 
Okay well, i'll be buying one next week.
What i am hoping to find is under 50$ to keep my mom from
lecturing me...
I really have no knowledge on how tv tuners work but a cousin has one
and it's really cool, u can watch tv and its really good quality.. i don't need hdtv, and maybe some recording features, but what i want most is something that won't give me a hard time in displaying a good quality picture and why need a remote when u got wireless keyboard?.

i just want to watch history channel while i download, do hw, or just to not having to leave pc to go watch a tv show..
 
CleanSlate said:
The one in my sig works awesome and it can be had for less than $50.

~Adam
Click to expand...


I have the same card (Winfast TV2000xp Expert from Leadtek) and it works great.
 
guys with tv tuners please take the screenshots, i MUST see the quality and please tell me the tv tuner u have
 
I'd go with that 20.00 Hauppauge but that website doesn't seem legit to me...
why free shipping and a product cut in 1/2 :confused:
 
SquallRealm said:
guys with tv tuners please take the screenshots, i MUST see the quality and please tell me the tv tuner u have
Click to expand...

Some quality loss due to compression. The first one is DTV and the second is hd.

hd1.jpg


hd2.jpg
 
HybridHB said:
I have a dvico fusion II hdtv tuner FS. If your interested shoot me a pm. I have it on a neo2 as well.
Click to expand...
I wanted to get one of those Dvico HDTV tuners with 2 inputs...but they're all discontinued and replaced with a 1 input version! What the hell is that? There's only one place where I can even find them for sale. Where did you buy yours? And are you using the included software for those caps? Does it do timeshifting?
 
I bought mine a yr ago. Yes it does time shifting, and yes im using the included software for the caps. I have mine for sale so if your interested drop me a pm. Mine has 2 coax inputs as well as other ins and outs.
 
Also the one in my sig comes with a non-mouse remote (it doesn't control the mouse from the remote, some do but this one doesn't).

~Adam
 
I'll say one thing. Don't get the TV Wonder VE. Even DScalar with internal resolution set to the max can't make it decent quality. It's so blurry and everything and there's this constant static even when I use the composite in (obviously can't handle any interferance at all.) I don't bother with a screenshot because I'm saying stay away from the blurry madness. d-:

If I were you, I'd shoot for the most expensive that I could afford. If your limit is $50, don't get a $20. If it's $100, don't get a $50. The difference in prices shows up quite painfully sometimes with these.

I can't attest to the quality of the tuner in that Leadtek, but, I can point out that Leadtek has been working to aquire a bit of a reputation for quality products (maybe not best, but, definitely known for quality,) and I can personally attest to their ability to make high quality video cards (this thing can nearly meet the specs of the next card up.) I know that you can't really compare the two, but, I am saying that they seem to be trying to keep that reputation up.

Oh yeah, in your question about if there's anything else you should know. I'd recommend that if you plan on doing captures, you try your best to make certain you get one that has standardized WDM drivers. That way you can use any software instead of being limited to proprietary stuff that may or may not work in the future. (Just ask ATI users who were playing around with capturing when Win2K first came out, and that sort of thing.) For what it's worth, there are some universal drivers for the Brooktree BT8x8 series, so any card based on that should work with them even if the manufacturer only offers proprietary drivers.

Also, if it is a card that is in this list: http://www.dscaler.org/card-support/index.htm I strongly recommend you at least give DScalar a try. It has some nice filtering that can get rid of some of the noise that you get if you use cable, that sort of thing. If nothing else, it's nice for the higher quality resizing and deinterlace than most manufacturer provided players.
 
so ok, when someone asks whats the least money to dish out on a video card, people say 200$ and you'll be set for all games in 3-4 years..

What is the satisfactory budget to use for tv tuners? i want the same quality HybridHB has.
i don't want to spend 50$ more for something that's not necessary or a small problem everyone can live with... :eek:
 
You get what you pay for. It's that simple. Same as with video cards. Buy an el cheapo video card and it's useless a year later. I feel sorry for all those people who bought the Geforce 4 MX when it pretended to be so good. Have you seen the complaints and questions in forums for games like Deus Ex 2 and so on? It's almost laughable if it weren't so sad that nvidia would do that to people. (Why not call it the GF2 TI400 or something? Lol, I mean, really.) Oh, but, 3-4 years? In 2 years you'll find those $200 cards to be rather slow. In 3-4, you'll be barely eeking by. Technology moves FAST. Mind you things are looking just a tad stagnant at the moment, but, IMO, that proves beyond a doubt that it's about time for something new to come out. (No, I don't mean X800XT or something like that, that's just an uber X800.)

Personally, I would say don't get anything that sells for noteably less than $50. $50 is the absolute rock bottom if you ask me. At that point, they are pretty darned low quality usually. The question is, just exactly what level of quality are you looking for?

PS. I didn't buy this card myself btw. d-:
 
I'm very happy with my Hauppage PVR-250 (which has been replaced by the PVR-150).

I've had All-In-Wonder cards before and I think they're a waste of time. They have non-standard head-sink mounting and are released long after the card they are based on.

With a Hauppage card, you can just use any video card and not worry about buying expensive All-In-Wonder cards every time you need better gaming performance.

The selling point of a Hauppage card is definitely the hardware MPEG2 encoder. This saves you TONS of processor load. Any card that does not have a hardware MPEG2 encoder will really take a lot more of your CPU to work.
 
bubblethumper said:
I'm very happy with my Hauppage PVR-250 (which has been replaced by the PVR-150).
Click to expand...

Gotta agree right now as I write this and watch the Speed channel I'm using around 16%
And between the color adjustments I get a pretty decent picture. The Hauppauge site has a pretty good support forum too
 
OPUS1 said:
Gotta agree right now as I write this and watch the Speed channel I'm using around 16%
And between the color adjustments I get a pretty decent picture. The Hauppauge site has a pretty good support forum too
Click to expand...

16%?? This never goes over 10% and it always hovers about the same cpu usage as playng MP3s!!!! (which is 10%)

You have a slow system?

~Adam
 
SquallRealm said:
so ok, when someone asks whats the least money to dish out on a video card, people say 200$ and you'll be set for all games in 3-4 years..

What is the satisfactory budget to use for tv tuners? i want the same quality HybridHB has.
i don't want to spend 50$ more for something that's not necessary or a small problem everyone can live with... :eek:
Click to expand...

The real question is which channles do you watch the most? If you say local channels then getting a digital card is a no brainer, the difference is like night and day. If you watch cable channels the most, then an analog tuner may suite you better.
 
^^^how can you tell the difference?

I want to watch dish network in my room, but in the case that I can't afford that or it just doesn't happen and I go with basic tv, what would be the best?

and I want to be able to play ps2/xbox/dvd's on it.
 
i have normal cable tv.. coax line.. nothing fancy, i don't want hdtv and i don't watch many channels.. just history channel and there is this tourist show i like to watch sometimes...

i really don't know what kinda quality u guys are talking about.. i want to watch it on side of my screen, i want the quality to be like divx movies or something
 
Basically, we're talking calrity/etc. With my current video card, TV is a bit blurry. Even composite input with internal resolution set as high as it goes is a little blurry. My PS2 looks better on my TV than it does in DScalar with this card through composite video. Ok, no deinterlace filter is perfect, so I didn't expect greatness, but, it looks like it's actually 352x240 internally being resized upwards before it gets to the software to try to trick us (and not suceeding.) Oh, and that was an IVTC, not just plain move the second lines deinterlace.

The more you spend, the clearer and better the picture is -- up to a reasonable amount that is. So, the question is, how much quality are you looking for? How clear? I'm afraid that you can't say "like divx" because divx has a huge range from very low bitrates and looking insanely blurry with artifacts everwhere all the way up to huge bitrates that look nearly as good as mpeg2 at it's best (you'll have to pause it at a specific frame, save the frame, and then repeat with the other codec, and open both in an editor/viewer to compare and find the differences. Even then you won't notice much.) Like the tuners, quality is dependant on what is put into it.
 
Mine has much better quality than divx, it's about the quality of the posted pictures or better.

~Adam
 
barefootbilly said:
^^^how can you tell the difference?

I want to watch dish network in my room, but in the case that I can't afford that or it just doesn't happen and I go with basic tv, what would be the best?

and I want to be able to play ps2/xbox/dvd's on it.
Click to expand...

What do you mean how to tell the difference? The local channels have 2 simultaneous braodcasts, 1 analog and one digital. You can switch between the 2 channels and see the same material playing. The quality difference is drastic. Dont forget that there was quality loss taking those screen caps, and taking screen caps dont come out as clear as they really are. The only way i could capture what it really looks like to to use my cam. heres another pic from "ice age" that i recorded a while ago on Fox.


1.jpg
 
I, too, am looking for a good DTV/HDTV tuner card for my rig. I need it by May 1, (new Family Guy *grin*), and am looking to spend under $150 or within a reasonable shot of that price. Can someone put a list together of decent DTV/HDTV tuners that I can research? Or maybe a comparison somewhere? I've been hunting all day but the results tend to be pretty sporatic.
 
I bought the VS-TV878RF from Newegg. Less than $40.00 with shipping, it worked for me. Probably not a serious TIVO replacement, but I just wanted to copy some stuff on VHS & VHS-C to DVD. It works. A lot of people talk about the quality of the software bundle it comes with, but it works for me just fine.
 
ok sorry what i meant by divx... but i am looking for quality like this...
untitled6fj.jpg

sure u can see some dots, and the quality isn't dvd, but its watchable.. i don't have
many channels and i don't plan on recording anything to burn on disk.. i just want to have a tv show like SNL on the side of my screen while i download or hang out on the pc, not even full screen needed because the tv is literarlly 10 feet around the corner... so is 50$ really going to damage me.. ? :(
 
HybridHB said:
What do you mean how to tell the difference? The local channels have 2 simultaneous braodcasts, 1 analog and one digital. You can switch between the 2 channels and see the same material playing. The quality difference is drastic. Dont forget that there was quality loss taking those screen caps, and taking screen caps dont come out as clear as they really are. The only way i could capture what it really looks like to to use my cam. heres another pic from "ice age" that i recorded a while ago on Fox.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I did not remember that they simulcast it in digital and analog. Obviously I'd like to get digital for it's better reception, but that would mean the dish network box I have to get would have to be one of their more expensive ones (digital reciever) right?
 
your dish box is digital internally only. The coax out on your dish box is an analog signal. The fusion card i have has 2 coax ins, an analog and digital in. The digital in pulls the digital stations off the air with an antenna. If you want to use both at the same time you would have to use the digital in with an antenna, and the coax out of the dish box will go into the analog in on the fusion card. The tuner program will have to be set to channel 3 and you will control the dish channels using the box. Or if you dish box has an svideo out, then you can just use that to the fusions svid in.
 
SquallRealm said:
ok sorry what i meant by divx... but i am looking for quality like this...
sure u can see some dots, and the quality isn't dvd, but its watchable.. i don't have
many channels and i don't plan on recording anything to burn on disk.. i just want to have a tv show like SNL on the side of my screen while i download or hang out on the pc, not even full screen needed because the tv is literarlly 10 feet around the corner... so is 50$ really going to damage me.. ? :(
Click to expand...

Just get the leadtek. Sounds like it will suite your needs.
 
1. Is the pvr-150MCE analog or digital? i can't tell.
2. And why does that card have 2 coax inputs?
3. Can you link me to that card you have.


thank you all for being so patient.
 
HybridHB said:
Just get the leadtek. Sounds like it will suite your needs.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree with him. If that blurry encode is good enough for you SquallRealm, then a $50 capture card will do just fine. I won't even seem very blury when at 1x resolution in a window on your desktop.
 
Nazo said:
Yes, I agree with him. If that blurry encode is good enough for you SquallRealm, then a $50 capture card will do just fine. I won't even seem very blury when at 1x resolution in a window on your desktop.
Click to expand...

Your right Nazo, but sooner or later he's gonna want to go to full screen and go
"Dang it all, shoulda gotten the better card :eek: "
 
Good point.

Well, SquallRealm, it's your card, so it's all up to you. Like I said, you get what you pay for, so put down the amount directly equal to the quality you want essentially. He makes a good point though, so consider the possibilities of full screen.

Don't forget that DScalar can be used with many cards to make that fullscreen a tad better though.
 
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