How do you choose PCI TV tuner?

[Montek]

I wanna know how you can chose yourself PCI TV Tunner, what specs should you look for or they all same?

Also question is there one that will allow you to record one channel (or e.g. 3+ channels) and watch another meanwhile, it requires some extra $ or any tuner can do it?

Also will cheap tuner preform well?

 

[ViRGE]

1) Stick to name brands; ATI, Hauppauge, etc
2) Probably the best dual-tuner is the Hauppauge PVR-500
3) Cheap tuners are a no. You want one with hardware MPEG2 encoding, that means it can't be too cheap

 

[PCTC2]

if you want to watch one and record another, then you're going to need two cards, or just a single dual-tv-tuner card.

for example, i have the Hauppauge PVR-500 MCE Dual TV Tuner PCI Card that i got here. It's a bundle with TV Tuner software that allows you to record and watch simultaneously. It's pretty nice. The software allows you have to have multiple cards, so if you have 3 cards, that's 6 tuners, so you can record 6 shows at once!

EDIT: I type too slow. But I forgot, hardware encoding is a must. The PVR-500 MCE has it. Also, if you get the PVR-500, check the revision number when you get it and cross-reference it with the Hauppauge support forums. You want the Phillips TV Tuners, not the Samsung.

 

[Shooks]

Another PVR-500 owner, and it rocks. The dual tuners are awesome and the card is just great overall.

 

[Montek]

Thats the list of cheap tuners i have locally, which one is better?
ProLink TV/FM Tuner PlayTV Pro2
Kworld TV/FM Tuner Terminator PVR-7131RF
Hauppauge TV Tuner WinTV-Express
Kworld Media XPERT DVD MAKER
ProLink Media ProLink PlayTV X Capture card
ProLink TV/FM Tuner PlayTV DVC 1000 GT
Kworld TV Tuner Expert PVR-7134RF

 

[Montek]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
2) Probably the best dual-tuner is the Hauppauge PVR-500
3) Cheap tuners are a no. You want one with hardware MPEG2 encoding, that means it can't be too cheap

2 Hauppauge TV Tuner WinTV-NOVA-T-500 cost 3 times more than i ready to pay for tuner, Hauppauge TV/FM Tuner WinTV-PVR-500 MCE cost 4.5 times more, which is price of internet pc without display, that i planning to buy.
3) why hardware MPEG2 encoding is so important what difference with software that it use CPU time or that quality difference?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: Montek
3) why hardware MPEG2 encoding is so important what difference with software that it use CPU time or that quality difference?

In short, performance and quality. If you are going to do nothing other than watching TV, then a software-based card should be OK for performance, and the picture might look good enough for you, but still not as good as a hardware-based card.

Spend a few extra bucks and go with the PVR-150MCE. You could always add another down the road if you really want dual-tuner capability.

 

[Montek]

Originally posted by: Slugbait
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Montek
3) why hardware MPEG2 encoding is so important what difference with software that it use CPU time or that quality difference?</end quote></div>
In short, performance and quality. If you are going to do nothing other than watching TV, then a software-based card should be OK for performance, and the picture might look good enough for you, but still not as good as a hardware-based card.

Spend a few extra bucks and go with the PVR-150MCE. You could always add another down the road if you really want dual-tuner capability.

to freaking much, i rather buy cheap one since we only have analog tv down here 4:3 and i only need watch it sometimes just to not mis vital info and news maybe, and want to be able to record it sometimes to watch later, not going to make any TV-Rips, just for myself, will cheap TV tuner quality be same as normal CRT tv set?

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Slugbait
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Montek
3) why hardware MPEG2 encoding is so important what difference with software that it use CPU time or that quality difference?</end quote></div>
In short, performance and quality. If you are going to do nothing other than watching TV, then a software-based card should be OK for performance, and the picture might look good enough for you, but still not as good as a hardware-based card.

Spend a few extra bucks and go with the PVR-150MCE. You could always add another down the road if you really want dual-tuner capability.

There are no "software based" cards. The video digitalization is /always/ hardware, any MPEG chip on the card just a post-processor - and MPEGization always inherits a /loss/ of quality, never a gain. As a general rule in information processing, one cannot add to the processed data. Any actual processing of data inherits a loss of data. Even if it's just 2+2=4.

For /watching/ TV and for high quality encoding, the cards without MPEG hardware are actually better. The raw, uncompressed stream can go straight into the graphics card with /no/ CPU load at all - the graphics card GPU does the colorspace conversion, scaling, deinterlacing and filtering then. And if you have no hardcoded MPEGizer on the card, you can have your recording software use any codec you please on the card's raw stream.

DVD-quality software encoding doesn't require much CPU ... about 400 MHz worth of an AMD K8 or Intel Core processor.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: Peter
There are no "software based" cards. The video digitalization is /always/ hardware, any MPEG chip on the card just a post-processor - and MPEGization always inherits a /loss/ of quality, never a gain. As a general rule in information processing, one cannot add to the processed data. Any actual processing of data inherits a loss of data. Even if it's just 2+2=4.

For /watching/ TV and for high quality encoding, the cards without MPEG hardware are actually better. The raw, uncompressed stream can go straight into the graphics card with /no/ CPU load at all - the graphics card GPU does the colorspace conversion, scaling, deinterlacing and filtering then. And if you have no hardcoded MPEGizer on the card, you can have your recording software use any codec you please on the card's raw stream.

DVD-quality software encoding doesn't require much CPU ... about 400 MHz worth of an AMD K8 or Intel Core processor.

Wow. First I've ever heard of ANY of this. Thanks for the hedz-up.