Best TV tuner card for PCI or PCI-E 1X slots

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Thor86

Thor86

Diamond Member
May 3, 2001
7,888
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I'm currently looking to buy a decent digital TV tuner card to do min TIVO-like capability, which ones would be best for either PCI or PCI-Express 1X cards out there?

:beer:
 
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SynthDude2001

Lifer
Mar 19, 2003
18,289
2
71
There are not yet any digital/HD tuners available in PCI-E, though there may be one coming soon (actually, it was supposed to already have been released, but I haven't heard anything about it lately). For PCI, you have a few choices...will you be doing only OTA/antenna reception of HD channels? Or will you want to receive (unencrypted) digital/HD channels over cable as well? ATI has the HDTV Wonder, which I have no experience with and only works for OTA digital/HD (and analog cable, not digital). Then there's the MyHD MDP-130 and DVICO FusionHDTV 5, both of which can also receive unencrypted digital/HD cable channels - I have the MyHD card myself, and I'm very happy with it. The Fusion card is pretty decent too, and cheaper. Both will allow you to record and timeshift, although the Fusion card seems to have issues when timeshifting cable. There are one or two more cards out there, but I don't know much about them and haven't used them myself.

If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer...(if I remember to check this thread again :p)
 
Thor86

Thor86

Diamond Member
May 3, 2001
7,888
7
81
No HD tuners, as I already know my cable provider encrypts it. But, the other non-HD digital channels a friend is able to use a Hauppage card to capture digitial channels.
 
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SynthDude2001

Lifer
Mar 19, 2003
18,289
2
71
Originally posted by: Thor86
No HD tuners, as I already know my cable provider encrypts it. But, the other non-HD digital channels a friend is able to use a Hauppage card to capture digitial channels.
Click to expand...

hmm....I wasn't aware that Hauppauge had a card that supported QAM (the modulation used for digital cable, including HD). I just noticed that your profile lists you as being in Canada though, and I'm not sure what differences there are, if any, between the systems used there and in the US. If there are differences, then probably nothing I said will apply to you :p

If it's the same however, then any one of the HDTV tuners that supports QAM will be able to pick up your unencrypted digital cable channels (whether they're HD or not; the modulation is the same).
 
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