Movin out!! Anyone know of a good tuner??

[CrewXp]

Hey, I have the Gateway 21 inch HDTV monitor. But it doesn't have a coaxial input slot.

And I'm headin out to college.. but they have cable instead of satelite!!

So I'm in need of a tuner card for my pc. What's a good quality card under 100 or 200 dollars? Preferably 100 of course.

I have a 150MCE right now, but when I did try to tune chanels, it seemed to pause for like a second before changing. It's not instant.

Are there any tuners that change channels fast?

Thx!!!!

 

[Lord Evermore]

It's not instantaneous with any PC tuners. Even digital satellite or cable TV boxes aren't instant, though they're a little faster than a PC tuner (one major reason I don't bother with digital cable, it drives me nuts having to wait for the channel change).

Some reviews of tuners specifically address channel change latency. The AnandTech ATI 650 review found them all at 2 to 2.5 seconds. I would expect any tuner to be about the same, between 2 and 3 seconds.

I'd stick with the 150MCE. Besides, you should be timeshifting everything anyway, not watching live TV and flipping channels!

 

[Trevelyan]

What does time-shifting mean?

 

[Raduque]

Recording now watching later, FF/REW, skipping commercials.

 

[Dman877]

I used to use a cheap hauppage (think it was a wintv 2000 or something) and it changes channels almost instantly. I loved it. I had a couple ati tuners and they were much slower. When looking for channel change speed, you want one of the tuner cards with the big non-silicon tuner. They are much faster than silicon based tuners.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Most tuners use the analog tuner, including the new ATI 650. The nvidia DualTV uses a digital tuner. My PVR-150 uses an analog tuner and still takes a couple of seconds to change channels. Whether it uses digital or analog tuners is not in and of itself an indicator of channel change speed.

Tuners that use hardware encoders with onboard framebuffers may be a little slower at tuning. I haven't really used a software tuner in a long time so I can't remember if they're faster. Reviews of some might indicate this.

 

[CrewXp]

I JUST FOUND a packet of places I get large discounts from and ATI is on there. Here's what they offer for TV devices. Which is best?

HDTV Wonder Remote Control Edition - 60.00
TV Wonder USB 2.0 NTSC - 47.40
TV Wonder Elite PCI - 53.40
TV Wonder Pro Remote Control PCI NTSC - 59.40
All-in-Wonder 2006 Edition PCI-E: 89.40


Or is the nvidia still better? THX!!!

 

[imported_Crusader]

Hauppauge has worked the best for me. Also have tried ATI and a few offbrands like Leadtek that typically dont support their product as well as Hauppauge.
NV makes a good tuner, but Ive never used one.