Best PVR/TV Tuner Card?

[leekent]

I just purchased a Compaq X09 (P4 3.2Ghz, 1MB RAM, nVidia GeForce FX 5950 256MB). I love the computer but I need a card to watch/record television and burn it to a DVD. The question I have is....what is the best card? The only requirements I have are:

- The card should be a stand alone. I already have an awesome graphics card and I don't want a new one.
- The recordings should be very high quality. I have several friends with TV tuner/PVR cards which allow them to record tv into small screens. I need to be able to watch my recordings in full screen with crisp, clear images.

Any suggestions?

 

[azntiger0586]

Leadtek tv2000 XP Deluxe here

Thats all there is to it.

 

[jdogg707]

This Hauppauge card supports more programs and is a little more versitile I have heard than the Leadtek. I have the Leadtek card and love it, but even with a custom designed codec, the full screen recording looks a lot better than a VCR, but not as good as say a Tivo.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Going by what everybody over on http://www.avsforum.com/ says if you are serious about recording you want a card with a hardware encoder like the Hauppauge PVR-250. They are just suppost to have a better quallity capture.

 

[scooter1]

LeadTek has a new tuner card called the Winfast XP Expert which does 10 bit video decoding which is supposed to produce a better picture than normal 8 bit decoding. I don't have it so I can't make any claims about how good it is.

 

[p4crusher]

I have the hauppauge pvr-250 mce and it works great at 640x480 29.97 fps 4 mbits per sec with no dropped frames and low cpu useage about 10-15 percent on a p4 2.53b realtime. For great quality get good coaxial cable.

 

[Schadenfroh]

what about the asus one for 55 with the remote, its 10 bit, is it stereo?

 

[DaCurryman]

So which one would be better between the PVR-250, the Leadtek TV2000 Expert, and the Leadtek DV2000?.

I'm looking for something that will give me the best quality when I display full-screen or output to my TV.

 

[DaCurryman]

bump for an answer.

 

[Boogak]

Why not go all out and pick up a HDTV tuner card? You'll be able to pick up over the air digital and analog channels with a good antenna. It'll also let you record HD and analog broadcasts.

 

[Megatomic]

For the money I'm gonna have to say the Leadtek cards are great. Their software is very robust and stable, the remote works really well, and the connectivity is good. $48 shipped is an excellent deal.

 

[lifeguard1999]

I would say that the Hauppauge PVR-250 is better than the Leadtek TV2000 Expert, but is it 3.5 times better? After all, you would be paying $174 for the PVR-250, and $48 for the TV2000.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Originally posted by: lifeguard1999
I would say that the Hauppauge PVR-250 is better than the Leadtek TV2000 Expert, but is it 3.5 times better? After all, you would be paying $174 for the PVR-250, and $48 for the TV2000.

The pvr-350 with hardware encoder and decoder is $175. The 250 is $140. If you want higher quallity recordings it probably is worth it plus the 250 is supported in just about every HTPC program there is including linux ones.

 

[newtond]

Originally posted by: Boogak
Why not go all out and pick up a HDTV tuner card? You'll be able to pick up over the air digital and analog channels with a good antenna. It'll also let you record HD and analog broadcasts.

i second this...i have the MyHD and it is great. although not so great for analog capture, when you start watching hdtv you will forget all about ntsc crap

 

[DaCurryman]

I'm wondering what the main differences between the PVR-250 and the Leadtek in terms of result. I know that the 250 encodes via hardware and I guess Leadtek is through software. Is there a difference in result. This will be used in a standalone HTPC so it wont be doing any other CPU processing unless it's streaming an audio/video file to a networked machine.

Also why get the 250 if the HDTV cards are the same price. What does the HDTV card lack that makes ppl still get the 250. I'm basically building an HTPC and want to make sure that I get right video card for the job.

 

[thedarkwolf]

http://www.avsforum.com/
Go skim through their HTPC section and see what all they use. Most of the people over there are pretty serious about their HTPCs.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Interestingly enough, I own an ATI TV PCI card. It "theoretically" maxes out captures at 640x240, and has VCR-like quality on the TV tuner.

I just tried a third party app that fixes the VCR-like quality on the TV tuner, and captures at 640x480. And here I was about to go spend money on a new TV tuner card, which I may yet do anyway.

*sigh*

Too bad ATI has not put the time and effort into the TV drivers like the have into Catalyst.

 

[DaCurryman]

Microcenter has the PVR-250 for $150 - $30 MIR ... how is that in terms of pricing?

 

[thedarkwolf]

I just read somewhere, I think on the avsforum, that Circuit City had the PVR-250 on sale for $150 with a $50 MIR over the weekend. I am about to head out and see if they are still doing it since I planned to pick one up anway.

$120 isn't bad. The cheapest I have found one online sofar is $140 other than E-Bay and I really don't want to deal with that.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: thedarkwolf

Originally posted by: lifeguard1999
I would say that the Hauppauge PVR-250 is better than the Leadtek TV2000 Expert, but is it 3.5 times better? After all, you would be paying $174 for the PVR-250, and $48 for the TV2000.

The pvr-350 with hardware encoder and decoder is $175. The 250 is $140. If you want higher quallity recordings it probably is worth it plus the 250 is supported in just about every HTPC program there is including linux ones.

Just FYI, the PVR-350 has a rather stupid design oddity - the hardware decoder only works when the card's TV out is enabled. Otherwise, it uses software to decode. There is supposedly a tweak to bypass the coders completely, from this page:

Enable Live Preview , bypass encoder for 0 delay and fast channel change
This will bypass the decoder and result in a 0 sec image delay as well as faster chanel change. Very useful if you plan to hook up your gameconsole.

Note : Live preview won?t work with all driver version, most of the 1,7 version work and some of the 1,6 just. There are to many drivers to list every driver here, so just test it and see if it works.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hauppauge\hcwTVWnd]

"LivePreview"=dword:00000001 (1 for on, 0 for off)

I can tell you though, hardware encoding is definitely a good thing - you can encode at high quality, full-resolution MPEG2, and still be able to use the computer. The decoding is what hits the CPU the most, since it isn't done in the hardware. No idea why they chose to mess up the card like that.
I had also used the 250 and 350's predecessor, the PVR-PCI, which is no longer supported by Hauppauge. It featured the Livepreview thing as a standard feature - it only displayed an MPEG stream when it was timeshifting. Otherwise, it was a direct TV stream. The x50's always display an MPEG stream. With the PVR-PCI, recording full-res MPEG2 would only result in around 5% CPU utilization on an XP1700 (Palomino) CPU. That's how much of a load it can take off of the processor.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Well if the pvr-250 was on sale at CC it isn't anymore.

 

[DaCurryman]

Does anyone use the SnapStream software? According to their site, they don't support the Leadtek WinFast card and you cant stream tv with the PVR-250/350 (due to their hardware encoding). Basically it seems like it's your best bet to use an ATI AIW card.

Just wondering if anyone here is able to use it with the WinFast Deluxe/Expert or PVR-250/350?

 

[DaCurryman]

bump for some help.