Any reason to upgrade from an ATI TV Wonder 650?

[TurtleCrusher]

Here's the DTV tuner that I have.

I bought it from Free Geek (donated hardware thrift store here in Portland) for $4. Drivers installed fine and it works well with Windows Media Center. All I have a use for is watching over-the-air sports, so dual-tuners or anything is useless. Is there a preferred free or super cheap program better than WMC?

I keep reading online about using different decoders. The picture looks very good but if I can get even better, I'll go that route. What is the deal?

 

[tential]

Windows Media Center isn't free first off. Maybe if you're using an older Windows or something or you had it bundled with your pc/capitalized on the free wmc deal but you have to pay now.
Secondly you could use xbmc if you want instead of wmc. That's what I used. Simply download Server wmc and set it up with xbmc.

 

[Lorthreth]

I'd recommend giving MediaPortal a go. I've found WMC clumsy.

Specifically MediaPortal 2 10th Anniversary Edition - Update 1. You need to manually install TV-Server 3.5 for it and do bunch of manual settings but it uses SQLite instead of MySQL used in 1.x. Although MP2 is still very much in development, that version works well enough to use daily for me. And the TV server settings are explained in the wiki. And the TV Server settings have a good number of decoders to use.

If installing MySQL is fine, MediaPortal 1.10 is good also.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I have heard the drivers on that card in Windows 7 sucks. That is the only downside I can think of.

 

[Raincity]

I have heard the drivers on that card in Windows 7 sucks. That is the only downside I can think of.

I had a dual set running in Windows 7 WMC on the Intel 775 platform and they ran issue free until one day the Antec PS decided to take the whole system out.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I had a dual set running in Windows 7 WMC on the Intel 775 platform and they ran issue free until one day the Antec PS decided to take the whole system out.

There you go OP! Seems like a winner.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Windows Media Center isn't free first off. Maybe if you're using an older Windows or something or you had it bundled with your pc/capitalized on the free wmc deal but you have to pay now.
Secondly you could use xbmc if you want instead of wmc. That's what I used. Simply download Server wmc and set it up with xbmc.

I have WMC and it works without issues, besides the fact when I have it check signal quality it's just either 4/5 bars or no bars, meaning it works or it doesn't. That doesn't help me get a better idea what my signal is.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I have heard the drivers on that card in Windows 7 sucks. That is the only downside I can think of.

It must have been corrected then. It went plug in, install driver, restart, open WMC, watch tv.