TV Tuner/Video Card for College

A

adamadekat

Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2004
Messages
527
As the title says, I'm looking to buy a TV tuner card for college as I'll be heading off to USC in the fall. They provide free cable in the dorm rooms (around 70 channels I heard), so I was wondering if anyone knows a good tv tuner card for this purpose. Also how are the ATI All-In-Wonder cards for this?

Oh also, are there some specific cards made for widescreen monitors? I have a Viewsonic VX2025.
 
I have the x1800xl all in wonder card.

watching tv on my 20.1" widescreen looks great.

plays games like a champ too.

PM me if you're interested in getting one cheap.
 
I would recomend against a AIW card.

-MMC software is buggy...still
-you can not disable TV on demand without a reg hack which results in channel changing audio skipping and higher than normal CPU usage
-you can not set ATI TV to use VMR mode which restricts ATI TV to using only overlay, which is only available on the primary display...so no ATI TV on secondary monitor
-The All In Wonder Series is done, so I doubt we will see MMC updates anymore if not much longer

Get yourself a Hauppage card. I wish I had.
 
Whatever you get, I would get it quick. I dont know too many details, but there are some new laws that are going to make it hard getting your hands on a tv card. Ati even dumped the AIW series card.
 
lloose said:
Whatever you get, I would get it quick. I dont know too many details, but there are some new laws that are going to make it hard getting your hands on a tv card. Ati even dumped the AIW series card.
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They dumped it because it was not RoHS compliant. All that means is that the chips are not made to be enviromentaly friendly:

The RoHS Directive stands for "the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment". This Directive bans the placing on the EU market of new electrical and electronic equipment containing more than agreed levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.
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I'd just get a cheap TV tuner card to go in an empty PCI slot.. they work great. In my HTPC I'm using the Avermedia M150. I got it for around $55 and its also Windows MCE compadible. No audio lag/jumps, clear picture, fast channel changes, good drivers, zero problems.

Since you are in a dorm, you don't have that much space to work with I'm guessing. This is probably why you don't want a seperate TV? From your point of view, it would be easier just to have a 20'' LCD or something so it can double as your computer monitor and TV. They also make computer monitors with built in TV tuners just as another option.
 
Mike Ryna said:
are there any PCIx1 tv tuners on the market?
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Powercolor makes one based on the ATI Theater 550 chip. It's ok...I had one for a few weeks, but I hated the software so much I got rid of it.
 
w1retap said:
I'd just get a cheap TV tuner card to go in an empty PCI slot.. they work great. In my HTPC I'm using the Avermedia M150. I got it for around $55 and its also Windows MCE compadible. No audio lag/jumps, clear picture, fast channel changes, good drivers, zero problems.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with this. Personally, I use a cheap Leadtek TV2000 Expert that I got for less than $40. It doesn't have a hardware encoder, but if all you're doing is watching TV, it's fine. No audio lag and fast channel changes compared to ATI cards. The picture quality isn't quite as nice, but you don't have to wait around for 5 minutes while the card decides to change the channel, plus you can use RCA inputs with it for console games.

If you're just watching TV though, I'd get an external box. I'd only get a PCI card if you want to record to your HDD.
 
Just finished college...


All through my dorm days I used a PCI Hauppage WinTV card and Dscaler. Dscaler blew the picture quality of the software that came with my card out of the water (but that was years ago). And after I moved to an apartment the tuner card let me have my own TV in my room. Unfortunately, if your computer is your only TV and you have a roomate who wants to watch TV and you want to use your computer to do homework on the computer you either have to watch TV in a little window while you do your homework, tell your roomate to go to hell, or not do homework.
 
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