High Quality TV Tuner

[Punisher007]

I recently bought the Leadtek WinfastTV 2000XP and am satisfied with its performance. It's reliable and does not have many compatibility issues with Win2k. However, I would like to know what my options are for getting a high end tv tuner/video capture card setup.

My main problems with my current card is the shitty mono sound. The picture quality is pretty good but the mono sound is garbage.

Any suggestions?

 

[LarryJoe]

Unfortunately, there really aren't many "high end" TV Tuners out there. The Hauppauge WinTV-PVR is about the highest end that I am aware of at $250. This is also the only tuner that has a hardware mpeg encoder and I believe it does Dolby 5:1 decoding as well.

For me, I use the Avermedia TV Studio under XP. The video quality is very good, capturing is perfect, and PVR functions work as advertised. The sound is stereo and it plays nicely through my TB SC soundcard. I paid about $65 shipped. Drivers are tight and 2K drivers are available.

 

[powerMarkymark]

I have the exact same card (Leadtek WinfastTV 2000XP ) and mine has excellent stereo sound.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: LarryJoe
Unfortunately, there really aren't many "high end" TV Tuners out there. The Hauppauge WinTV-PVR is about the highest end that I am aware of at $250. This is also the only tuner that has a hardware mpeg encoder and I believe it does Dolby 5:1 decoding as well.

For me, I use the Avermedia TV Studio under XP. The video quality is very good, capturing is perfect, and PVR functions work as advertised. The sound is stereo and it plays nicely through my TB SC soundcard. I paid about $65 shipped. Drivers are tight and 2K drivers are available.

I have the WinTV-PVR card. As you can see in my sig, it's got problems. Unfortunately, TV-tuners aren't a high-profit market, so there's little motivation to tweak and test drivers. The PVR card will only work on my secondary system; it locks up constantly on my main system. It has WinXP drivers, but they are VXD based; don't know if they're ever going to make WDM drivers. Stinks, because when the card does work, it's very good.

 

[LarryJoe]

Sorry to hear of your problems. Sorry to say that I gave up on Hauppauge a while ago with the model 401 because of the instability of the drivers. My card kept crashing, leaving the audio locked on and requiring a shutdown and reboot. I sent multiple emails and phone calls to their support. Suffice to say, the quality of the customer support left a lot to be desired. The only thing I can say about my Avermedia PC Studio is that it is rock solid stable and they were one of the first to have quality XP drivers available last fall. I had an ATI TV Wonder after the Hauppauge and I can't say I had a great experience with their XP drivers and support either. This is why I got rid of the ATI TV Wonder as well. I still don't think they have good XP drivers for the TV Wonder over a year after XP has been out. So from my experience, beware of ATI and Hauppauge. I also am not a fan of the all-in-1's as it makes swapping your video card limited.

 

[CheungMoKee]

I believe Punisher007 may have bought the standard version and not the deluxe?

CheungMoKee

 

[brxndxn]

I have a Pinnacle Studio Pro that absolutely blows...

Screwed up company and messed up card. I hate them. I don't care to go into detail... just if you buy one, make sure you're running Windows 98 or less.