need recommendation - tv tuner card

[GeekN0R]

hi y'all.

looking to buy a TV tuner card, but i have absolutely no idea how to read the stats on these things! haven't really been watching the market for some time around video cards, so i'm a bit out of the loop.

basically, looking to 1. watch TV 2. capture video at up to lengthy periods, say anywhere from 2-30 minutes.

do ALL cards only capture at shoddy mpegs, or is it possible to capture data as 'raw' so that i might transfer it digitally and keep as much resolution as possible? or to us a codec like DivX to retain as much information as possible??

like i said, i'm really not in the know on tv cards at the moment, so any recommended cards, companies, sites to go for research material, would be greatly appreciated! thanks!

 

[Peter]

Technically all those TV cards do capture raw uncompressed, that's what you get to see when you feed the stream into the graphics card overlay.

Question is, how would you go about storing the uncompressed stream? Are you aware of the amount and speed of data that need to be written to disk? Think dozens of megabytes per second. Most IDE HDDs aren't even able to handle the write rate, and even if they were, files would quickly get unmanageably huge.

 

[Fallen Kell]

If you are looking for something easy, from what I have read, the ATI TV Wonder Pro is the way to go. 125 channel TV tuner and video capture software. Software can read the menu+ which is sent on just about all cable and satilite signals. You can schedule it to recored your favorite shows etc, and it saves to mpeg 2 (at least I believe it does). There is a USB version as well, but it only supports "mono" sound. The internal Pro version supports "stereo".

 

[chsh1ca]

Fallen Kell: http://mirror.ati.com/products/pc/tvwonderpro/index.html
You're bang on with regards to the features.

I'd also recommend a TV-Wonder card, I have the Original ATI TV-Wonder, and it is well supported on both Windows/Linux and is a really nice card. No complaints here, apart from the problems with ATI's driver software with the original Radeon 64MB VIVO. Even then, a simple change in the order of installing the software fixes the problems.

 

[ricercar]

The MSI TV@nywhere sux0red.
- dismal 1-page incomplete documentation
- required three different software installers, but never told you
- TV audio was mono
- picture quality was marginal.

I RMA'd mine after a few hours of frustration.

 

[pulse8]

Get the Asus TV Tuner.

I've had it and have had NO problems with it. The drivers are solid, the software is great and I've recorded many things with it.

You can record to mpeg1, mpeg2 or DV. (Recording 30 minutes of uncompressed video will never happen on a standard IDE drive without problems)

It's a fantastic card with great quality.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: pulse8
Get the Asus TV Tuner.

I've had it and have had NO problems with it. The drivers are solid, the software is great and I've recorded many things with it.

You can record to mpeg1, mpeg2 or DV. (Recording 30 minutes of uncompressed video will never happen on a standard IDE drive without problems)

It's a fantastic card with great quality.

Yep, I've had it for some time now, got in November I believe. Very high quality build all around, with included peripherals that are also excellent. The remote receiver is USB and not cheapo serial, and has a little LED in it (for what, I have no idea), and the mouse is comfy and doubles as a mouse. It also has a break-out box for component inputs and S-video and the card outputs in stereo. The software is all good quality CyberLink and is eligible for any patch on their site. AsusDVD (PowerDVD 4.0) is the best softDVD player I've used and the card also supports Titan CyberEPG for web-based recording. I had some problems with it due to 9700pro drivers, but they've been fixed and everything is working without problems now. Also, its now supported by Dscaler ver. 4.1.6

Chiz

 

[GeekN0R]

hey thanks a lot everybody!

yeah if i'm more realistic with my figures, i'll *really* only be recording about 3-5 minutes at a time, small segments, and my HDD can handle that fine.

I really trust ASUS products, so i'll look into that card, compare it to the ATI card and then it's really down to what i can actually get ahold of and for how much. so thanks for the posts!

 

[Roots]

I'm looking for a TV tuner card also. I like what I've heard about that ASUS card, but I have a couple questions (by the way I have an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro if that matters).

1. Can I hook up my PS2/Gamecube to it without buying any converters? Will it look "good"? (I know that it would look better on a real TV than any TV Tuner).

2. How would one get around the problem of HD recording speeds being too slow? If I buy a USB HD, or something else non-IDE would that work better?

Thanks

 

[Fallen Kell]

Roots:

The only things that will work better would be solid state hard drives, or SCSI. Since solid state drives are extremely expensive, SCSI is the only real choice there (well the next generation of true SATA drives will probably be good).

 

[Alex]

ati tv wonder

 

[Roots]

Doesnt the ATI Wonder have a graphics card on that board as well? I alreaydyhave a RADEON 9500 Pro, and I want a solution that is budget minded. I want the card with the best performance/price ratio

 

[Fallen Kell]

No, the ATI TV Wonder is just simply a TV tuner, the RADEON TV Wonder is a video card and TV tuner. They used that name before coming up with the All-In-Wonder (AIW) marketing idea.