TV Tuner <$200

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zachary80

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Oct 15, 2002
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I am looking for a good TV tuner under $200. I will mainly use it for recording TV (so a schedule program would be nice). Coaxial and regular component video input would be nice, along with a TV. I have a Leadtek WinFast TV 2000xp (something like that), it used the WinTV software which I really disliked. The video quality was bad when it worked and most of the time it rendered my entire system unusable (not sure if it was the card, the drivers, or the software). Would an external (USB2 or Firewire) card be less likely to conflict?

What formats do most save the files in to? DivX or something small would be nice.


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I would get the Hauppauge PVR-150MCE. It only costs $69+shipping from PCAlchemy and it a great card. I have the non MCE version and use it with BeyondTV and love the card. If you want a complete hardware/software package then I would suggest looking into some of there bundles. Most people here prefer SageTV for its customizability. You can get the PVR-150MCE + SageTV + remote + nvDVD for $164 and that would solve all your software issues.

PVR-150MCE

SageTV Bundle
 
Just wanted to echo Scar's comments, the PVR150 is exactly what you want and takes very little resources as well. They record into MPEG2 but both SageTV and BeyondTV have tools to transcode them into Divx.
 
Bought my bundle from pcalchamy - just before Christmas. This is just what I was looking for, I have had software based tuners before, (including the Voodoo TV200 woot!) and the 150mce is hands down the best looking ever.

Now, the qestion of transcoding to divx, that has me intruigued... :) Would be nice to shrink down my episodes of Lost from 2gig, to something a little more managable!
 
I recommend the Hauppauge as well. s ome people are usign the ATI e-home wonder. the key is the hardware encoding to ease the stress on your PC. as for software, sage and beyond are the most popular. I have heard good things about GotTV, but never tried it myself.
 
GotTV is pretty good, I use it on my desktop with my 150 but GotTV is also intergrated into GotAllMedia.
 
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