What's a good value HD tuner card?

R

Rozal0

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
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I was planning on investing in a HD tv tuner card. What are some good ones around 100 bucks? What's the difference between brands and features?
 
I would not recommend that. If you are looking for HDTV tuning only (ATSC + QAM) then look for a digital only tuner, which is cheaper. You don't need the hardware encoders, so it is cheaper and produces less heat to get something like this. Dual tuner too.

-darkmatter08
 
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if you can get a hardware based tuner it is always better. the dxva ones are nice, but i have noticed if you play games when media center is recording you will have framerate lag. the extra heat can always be taken care of.
 
It seems the OP has gone missing. I was wondering the same thing though as my current TV Tuner is a pos and barely works half the time. I see a recommendation listed twice but the reviews are mixed. Does anyone have firsthand experience or any other recommendations. Also, some people on the reviews for the AverTV one seem to wish they had purchased the full retail version. Is there any real benefit to it?
 
chinspecial said:
It seems the OP has gone missing. I was wondering the same thing though as my current TV Tuner is a pos and barely works half the time. I see a recommendation listed twice but the reviews are mixed. Does anyone have firsthand experience or any other recommendations. Also, some people on the reviews for the AverTV one seem to wish they had purchased the full retail version. Is there any real benefit to it?
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You take Newegg reviews serious? Some of those people have no idea WTF they are talking about.

Anyways, buy the Duet. There's no reason not too if you're looking for an ATSC/QAM tuner for HD.
 
CrimandEvil said:
You take Newegg reviews serious? Some of those people have no idea WTF they are talking about.

Anyways, buy the Duet. There's no reason not too if you're looking for an ATSC/QAM tuner for HD.
Click to expand...

It wasn't the newegg reviews I was referring to. I know those are garbage and 90% of them don't know what they are doing. I was searching around amazon and other forum sites too. Just wondering about some firsthand experience.


The duet seems pretty good though, and a good price point too, thanks.
 
the hardware tuners he's referring to is the NTSC support that the hauppauge card has. however the heat part that he's talking about do not really apply to the card since it's tuners are chip based. (it's a low profile card) He's right that if you don't really need NTSC support then why pay for it, however you should be aware of the support of the card on whatever you plan on using. For example of its a older version of MCE you need to have at least one NTSC tuner for it to work properly. and other programs may not directly support that card (not aware of any but it is always possible)
 
I'm also in the market for a HD tuner card, but there are a lot of choices and I'm not sure what to get. I'd like to have a card that I can hook an antenna up to for OTA, and also that I can hook up my basic cable to (for clear QAM hopefully... if not the analog cable). So a card that can meet all those standards, and has 2 coax inputs would be great. I'm running a dual boot XP SP3 and Windows 7RC, but favor the former. Motherboard is Asus M3A78-EM AM2+ 780G. I don't think I have any intention of digital recording, so I could live without a card with onboard encoding. The Dual tuner posted above looked good, but it only has one coax input, and I'm not sure it could read my analog cable (though Comcast will probably be getting rid of that sometime in the future). And if I do get clear QAM through my cable, then I don't need to worry about analog cable (or possibly OTA either). I just want to make sure I get a card that can see all my possible viewing options (OTA, analog cable, and possible QAM cable) Also, i have a 2560 x 1600 resolution 30" monitor, and HD and decent picture quality are important to me. Finally, I think having a remote would probably be convenient. So, given that, any tuner recommendations? The Hauppauge WINTV-HVR-2250 may be overkill for what I need, but then again it may have everything I need and then some for the future.
 
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