SD TV Tuner Card suggestions

[thejavabuddha]

I've dug through the threads for hours now and everyone seems to have an HDTV except for me! I have a few questions and would love some suggestions.

First off, I am looking for a TV tuner that does standard definition television well. HD ability would be fine as I'm going to have to upgrade my TV some day and I'm getting an HDMI able mobo just to future proof myself, but it is not absolutely necessary. Hopefully by the time I get an HDTV there will be a tuner card that can get encrypted HD channels and I'll have to buy a new card then anyway.

Secondly, I understand about all the all the HD channels and formats (like I said, everyone has one but me) but I don't understand about plain old cable. While looking at cards I see some that work with "analog channels". Is that the same as the "digital cable" that I get through my comcast box? I've also seen "NTSC", is that just standard cable too? I've also seen some claiming to be "125 channel cable ready tuner", but my cable has more than 125 channels. Does that mean I would not be able to record premium channels like HBO?

Thirdly (well my "secondly" wasn't really something I was looking for in a card, just wanted clarification), I would like to be able to record one show while I watch another. Onboard MPEG encoding is strongly desired.

FM tuner would be really nice, but if a card has everything else but that, I could live without it (BTW, do they make HD Radio tuner cards for your pc yet?)

I'm probably going with an AMD system with a GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard . I'll be using the onboard video and sound (for now; I'll upgrade later if I have to, i.e. gaming, or HDTV). I'd like to stay away from vista if possible, so vista compatibility isn't much of an issue. Let's see, what else might be usefull to know...um, I'll probably be using 3rd party PVR software so that's not a big issue. God it's late, my brain's not working. If there's anything I forgot to mention just ask.

Thanks!

 

[ambientZ]

Analog cable / Analog antenna channels are NTSC. This is what you get when you use your tv without a cable box. this is only channel 1-99 or so.
Digital cable requires a cable box to receive, the tuner will not tune these channels. However, many "tv tuner" cards also have analog video input via composite (yellow rca cable) or svideo. Then you need an ir blaster so the card can tell your cable box to change the channel.

NTSC is at max 640x480 so Computer monitors are 'high def' resolution allready, so if you can get a HD signal you might want to get a hdtv card. I just get all my tv from an antenna in HD.

An example analog tuner is the Hauppauge PVR150 the hauppauge website says newer models of it include an IR blaster to control your cable box.

 

[thejavabuddha]

Analog cable / Analog antenna channels are NTSC. This is what you get when you use your tv without a cable box. this is only channel 1-99 or so.
Digital cable requires a cable box to receive, the tuner will not tune these channels. However, many "tv tuner" cards also have analog video input via composite (yellow rca cable) or svideo. Then you need an ir blaster so the card can tell your cable box to change the channel.

NTSC is at max 640x480 so Computer monitors are 'high def' resolution allready, so if you can get a HD signal you might want to get a hdtv card. I just get all my tv from an antenna in HD.

An example analog tuner is the Hauppauge PVR150 the hauppauge website says newer models of it include an IR blaster to control your cable box.

1) So I don't need any special kind of "decoder" (either hardware or software) to record/watch what comes through my cable box, I just need something to change the chanel, correct?

2) I guess I can only record one chanel at a time if it's comming throught my cable box, is that correct also?

 

[E4g1e]

I am going to throw in a wrinkle to this:

Most television stations in the U.S. are scheduled to cease over-the-air broadcasting in analog on or before February 17, 2009; at that time, they will broadcast over-the-air in digital only. An analog-only TV tuner will not be able to receive any of those over-the-air digital channels without a digital-to-analog converter box. The exceptions are a few low-power television stations with extremely low viewership and (if a pending exemption/extension is passed by Congress) those full-power television stations whose city of license and transmitter are both located within 50 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border (those stations will then have until 2014 to convert to all-digital).

By the way, if you are already a cable subscriber, and you are already using a cable box, then you can connect the box to the analog-only tuner. Just be advised that unless you use two cable boxes and an A-B switcher box, you will not be able to watch one cable channel while recording another; in fact, you can only watch the cable channel that's being recorded. And cable companies are required to serve their analog-only customers with analog cable signals until at least 2010. And the major over-the-air TV networks will continue to provide an analog feed - but after the conversion to digital takes place, the analog feed will be available only to cable providers.

 

[thejavabuddha]

I am going to throw in a wrinkle to this:

Most television stations in the U.S. are scheduled to cease over-the-air broadcasting in analog on or before February 17, 2009; at that time, they will broadcast over-the-air in digital only. An analog-only TV tuner will not be able to receive any of those over-the-air digital channels without a digital-to-analog converter box. The exceptions are a few low-power television stations with extremely low viewership and (if a pending exemption/extension is passed by Congress) those full-power television stations whose city of license and transmitter are both located within 50 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border (those stations will then have until 2014 to convert to all-digital).

By the way, if you are already a cable subscriber, and you are already using a cable box, then you can connect the box to the analog-only tuner. Just be advised that unless you use two cable boxes and an A-B switcher box, you will not be able to watch one cable channel while recording another; in fact, you can only watch the cable channel that's being recorded. And cable companies are required to serve their analog-only customers with analog cable signals until at least 2010. And the major over-the-air TV networks will continue to provide an analog feed - but after the conversion to digital takes place, the analog feed will be available only to cable providers.

So, I guess there's not tuner card out there yet (other than the ones you have to buy prebuilt in a system) that can tune plain ol' (non HD) digital cable?

Any more suggestions for specific tuner cards? So far the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350 looks pretty good on paper; it has hardware mpeg encoding (and hardware mpeg decoding...is that good for anything?), has FM radio tuner, seems to get good reviews. The bad: tuner will stop working next year, a bit pricey, no HD (not a real negative, but for the price you would think it would)

 

[ambientZ]

Any more suggestions for specific tuner cards? So far the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350 looks pretty good on paper; it has hardware mpeg encoding (and hardware mpeg decoding...is that good for anything?), has FM radio tuner, seems to get good reviews. The bad: tuner will stop working next year, a bit pricey, no HD (not a real negative, but for the price you would think it would)

The PVR350 is an older card. It has a hardware MPEG decoder that some machines needed years ago. The PVR250 was the same card without the decoder.

The PVR150 is the replacement for the PVR250, they combined a couple of the chips to make it cheaper and work better. Some of the current PVR150s come with USB ir blasters as well. If you are thinking of getting an ntsc hardware Encoder from hauppauge, i would recommend the PVR150.

 

[twan2128]

Since the OP mentioned that they want to watch one show while they record another, wouldn't the PVR500 actually be the best choice?

 

[thejavabuddha]

Since the OP mentioned that they want to watch one show while they record another, wouldn't the PVR500 actually be the best choice?

Well, since I have to use the comcast cable box, looks like I'll have to record one channel at a time...

Thank you all for your input! Does anyone else have any suggestions?

 

[thejavabuddha]

Since the OP mentioned that they want to watch one show while they record another, wouldn't the PVR500 actually be the best choice?

This card is MCE (at least the ones I saw). Do I NEED XP MCE to use this card or whill plain ol' XP sp2 work? I'd hate to spend more money if not necessary.

 

[twan2128]

Well, since I have to use the comcast cable box, looks like I'll have to record one channel at a time...

Thank you all for your input! Does anyone else have any suggestions?

If you split the cable before the cable box, you can have one line coming in through the cable box and the other line going directly into the card. You could even skip the cable box if you weren't looking to get anything over channel 125.