TV Tuner and 360 Quality

[next-Jin]

I'm straped for cash and space atm, so I was looking into laptop tv tuners that I could run my Xbox 360 with.

Has anyone done this or have any experience with it?

looking at http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/PCTV+Tuners/PCTV+Analog_Digital+PVR/PCTV+HD+Pro+Stick

I am not sure of what to expect as I really want HD and not horrible quality. My native res is 1680x1050.

 

[JBark]

I've been using a VBOX 3650 for the past 6 months to receive OTA HD, and it's worked perfectly the entire time. I got it from J & R, it has a different name there, but it's the same thing:
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4096019

There's also the Artec T14A, which seems like a decent USB HD tuner for the price:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=324900

Note that to use the 360 to watch TV you must be running MCE on your PC, and to watch TV in MCE you must have a regular tuner installed as well. I've heard there are ways around the regular tuner requirement in MCE, but it doesn't seem like the fix works for everyone. And the regular tuner is only needed when you actually setup the TV channels. Once you get everything configured, you can just delete all the regular channels and remove the regular tuner.

As for actually using the 360 to watch TV, it works just fine. Since it's pretty much a Remote Desktop connection to the MCE PC, it's just like using the PC itself. About the only issue I have is that the audio sync can be slightly off sometimes, but I have that problem on the PC as well.

 

[next-Jin]

Let me clarify I do not intend to use the HD Tuner for HDTV, I will only be using it for XBOX360 game play. I was wondering about the quality of the games and video.

But thank you for that information because I might on day use it for TV

 

[JBark]

Let me clarify I do not intend to use the HD Tuner for HDTV, I will only be using it for XBOX360 game play. I was wondering about the quality of the games and video.

But thank you for that information because I might on day use it for TV

Ahh, in that case you won't be happy at all. You can only use an HD Tuner to capture OTA HD feeds, nothing else. As of right now, there's no way (at least for less than a couple grand ) to input HD feeds into your PC.

Even most SD tuners (480i) are horrible for game play because they lag by a second or two. There is a way to bypass this delay with some cards using dscaler, but I'm not sure which ones. Even then, it's frankly going to look like total ass.