Thinkin about gettin an HDTV tuner for a HTPC im debating building. I cant seem to find the ATI HD TV tuner card. Do they still make it?
No more HDTV tuner cards?
- Thread starter GoingUp
- Start date
- Aug 22, 2001
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The nV dual HDTV is a interesting product, hopefully it'll be available for a fair price after MIR or such soon. The review is right here@AT
- Aug 22, 2001
- 32,294
- 33,121
- 146
videopho
Diamond Member
- Apr 8, 2005
- 4,185
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Ditto here. I still have my ATI HDTV Wonder card in my pc and hardly use it. Its colors are horrible and picky with reception. It took almost a rocket scientist to fugure how to install and make it work, go to avsforum site and search for it then you'd know what I mean.
My advice: stay away from ATI HDTV wonder tuner card.
The newer software for the ATI HD Wonder hasn't given me any trouble, but it is complicated to setup in that you have to install 4 or 5 downloads in the right order.
But mine wirks great, picture on my 32inch HD tv, via dvi connection, is flawless.
But mine wirks great, picture on my 32inch HD tv, via dvi connection, is flawless.
Any particular reason why you're only looking at the ATI HDTV tuner card? There's more options available than them. I use a MyHD and a FusionHDTV card on my HPTC's and they work great.
Edit: Boogak beat me to it
I had the ATI HD "Blunder", you don't want it, I sent it back after a week of headaches. Setting it up is a pain and the picture quality is sub par compared to other options. Like videopho said go to avsforum and look around. One of the better software based, like the ATI, HDTV tuners is the Divco Fusion 5. One of the best HDTV tuner cards overall is the MyHD 130, it's hardware based so it is more expensive but by far a more complete option for watching and recording HD. You can find them both at digital connection. I chose the MyHD and have loved it, no problems, easy set-up, and a great picture with almost no CPU utilization. It?s great to be able to play games or do other things on my PC with out my HD card sucking CPU cycles.
I had the ATI HD "Blunder", you don't want it, I sent it back after a week of headaches. Setting it up is a pain and the picture quality is sub par compared to other options. Like videopho said go to avsforum and look around. One of the better software based, like the ATI, HDTV tuners is the Divco Fusion 5. One of the best HDTV tuner cards overall is the MyHD 130, it's hardware based so it is more expensive but by far a more complete option for watching and recording HD. You can find them both at digital connection. I chose the MyHD and have loved it, no problems, easy set-up, and a great picture with almost no CPU utilization. It?s great to be able to play games or do other things on my PC with out my HD card sucking CPU cycles.
qft
if you have a nvidia gpu, your best bet is to avoid ATI tuners, since it seems ATI wants ATI gpus only!
IMO we either need capture cards that accept HD via component, or cable card compatable capture cards. Until either is released, I don't think HDTV on a PC will be ready for 'primetime'.
I mean who wants to *only* watch/record OTA broadcasts? With a *component* capture card you could use an STB from any cable or satellite company and timeshift HDTV. Hopefully when available these cards will support a more advanced form of compression also.....maybe mpeg-4 or h2.64.
Right now imo, if you really want to timeshift HDTV you're better off with one of the DVR boxes from the cable/satellite company or waiting for the Tivo series 3 (supposedly due in late september/early october).
I mean who wants to *only* watch/record OTA broadcasts? With a *component* capture card you could use an STB from any cable or satellite company and timeshift HDTV. Hopefully when available these cards will support a more advanced form of compression also.....maybe mpeg-4 or h2.64.
Right now imo, if you really want to timeshift HDTV you're better off with one of the DVR boxes from the cable/satellite company or waiting for the Tivo series 3 (supposedly due in late september/early october).
The MyHD 130 supports QAM, so you can record and timeshift HD from your cable or satellite company. I believe the Divco might support QAM as well.
While component or cable card would be nice, it is far from necessary, same with more advanced compression. If you want it smaller you can easily compress the HD video after you have recorded it.
Why pay a satellite/cable company or TIVO monthly fees when you can get full HD recording and timeshift with a small one time investment of a HD tuner card and maybe a new Hard Drive. Plus with a tuner card in your PC you have full control over the content, you can edit it, compress it, put on an ipod or PSP, or put it on a DVD. Thing that as of yet are impossible or more difficult with a set-top box.
Essentially, you've got three options for HDTV on your computer:
1. Over-the-air (OTA) broadcast.
2. QAM
3. Cablecard
OTA is relatively easy to get going, looks good, but is generally unreliable, since you're exposed to tons of atmospheric interference. If the towers aren't all in the same direction, you've also got to fidget with the antenna - not fun.
You can use QAM with digital cable to get unencrypted channels. IIRC, the FCC mandates that all OTA channels be carried unencrypted, so if you've already got digital cable, this is a nice option. Unfortunately, there are multiple QAM standards (eg, QAM-64, QAM-128, QAM-256), and your card may not support the one your local provider uses. There's also the matter of compression - many digital cable providers heavily compress channels, so OTA may look better.
Cablecard will let you watch all channels, and presumably will involve fewer setup hassles. The downsides are a potential quality loss due to compression, and that the initial spec of cablecard doesn't support PPV and on-demand. There's also the little problem that the hardware hasn't been released to anyone yet (remember Anand's OCUR article?).
In short, I wouldn't bother with QAM. If you can hold off, Cablecard is better. If you need it right now, your best bet is OTA.
-Erwos
1. Over-the-air (OTA) broadcast.
2. QAM
3. Cablecard
OTA is relatively easy to get going, looks good, but is generally unreliable, since you're exposed to tons of atmospheric interference. If the towers aren't all in the same direction, you've also got to fidget with the antenna - not fun.
You can use QAM with digital cable to get unencrypted channels. IIRC, the FCC mandates that all OTA channels be carried unencrypted, so if you've already got digital cable, this is a nice option. Unfortunately, there are multiple QAM standards (eg, QAM-64, QAM-128, QAM-256), and your card may not support the one your local provider uses. There's also the matter of compression - many digital cable providers heavily compress channels, so OTA may look better.
Cablecard will let you watch all channels, and presumably will involve fewer setup hassles. The downsides are a potential quality loss due to compression, and that the initial spec of cablecard doesn't support PPV and on-demand. There's also the little problem that the hardware hasn't been released to anyone yet (remember Anand's OCUR article?).
In short, I wouldn't bother with QAM. If you can hold off, Cablecard is better. If you need it right now, your best bet is OTA.
-Erwos
Another issue for me in regards to PC HDTV recording is that there is no really acceptable way to archive any programing. Sure you can try to archive to a format like WMV or Divx on a DVD, but then these will only play in PC's or a small number of STB's that support these formats. You definitely can't just hand one of these disks off to anyone to pop in ther standard DVD player.
This will change once Blu-ray recordable drives hit the PC, and then by the time we'll hopefully be able to timeshift HDTV, edit out the commercials and then burn it to a Blu-ray disk that we can hand to anyone to play on thier stand -alone blu-ray player. How far away is this from being an actually reality? Honestly I think *at least* 1yr, and probably longer.
This will change once Blu-ray recordable drives hit the PC, and then by the time we'll hopefully be able to timeshift HDTV, edit out the commercials and then burn it to a Blu-ray disk that we can hand to anyone to play on thier stand -alone blu-ray player. How far away is this from being an actually reality? Honestly I think *at least* 1yr, and probably longer.
Why worry about that now? Encode HD-DVD / BluRay compliant H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) and AAC audio, and archive it on your hard drive for now. Whenever recordable HD media becomes cheap, start making the DVDs without re-encoding your video!
Open source software tools exist that are very capable of doing this easily, though they do require a bit of experience dealing with video compression.
The guides and forums at Doom9.net are tremendous resources.
~MiSfit
Open source software tools exist that are very capable of doing this easily, though they do require a bit of experience dealing with video compression.
The guides and forums at Doom9.net are tremendous resources.
~MiSfit
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