PCI-Express HDTV Tuners?

Mar 19, 2003
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I'm looking into building an SFF box as my next machine; specifically, the Shuttle nForce4 one. I could probably sell my AGP 6800GT in the FS/T forums here without too much trouble, and while availability of PCI-E high end video cards is still not great, at least they exist.

I've been looking into buying an HDTV tuner in the somewhat-near future. With the SFF boxes generally only having two slots, it would of course fill the second slot. The problem is - the nForce4 SFF boxes from Shuttle look like they're going to have only PCI-E slots; one x16 for video and the second either x16 for SLI or just a plain x1.

Are there yet any HDTV tuners in PCI-E, or does anyone know of any that are going to be released within the next month or two?
 
Mar 19, 2003
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lol

It might as well have though. :(

I haven't heard anything at all...maybe I should just give up on the PCI-E and/or SFF idea...
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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I'm not familiar with it, but Sasem has their "OnAir USB HDTV" model using USB2.0 which supports ATSC and QAM. It maybe worth looking at and plugging into the search engine at AVSforums, surely someone has used it there.
 

gobucks

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
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there definitely will be some, but not yet. I'm kinda intrigued, too, cause in a year or so i'll likely be throwing a dual core into my current rig, and maybe a new GPU, so it'd be nice to make a HTPC with a HDTV tuner using my old parts. My guess is ATI will port their HDTV Wonder over first (which I've heard isn't that great), and maybe Hauppage will follow suit soon after. ATI has been pushing PCIe for graphics, so it only makes sense to push it for TV capture as well. Personally, I'd really like to see nvidia come out with a TV-Wonder competitor - I have a TV wonder PRO, and half the functionality has been cut out simply because I don't use an ATI graphics card, and I get nice little remiders of that fact every time I try to do anything. Like it won't let me playback DVDs cause I don't use ATI's decoder, even though most DVD decoding is done through the CPU anyways (PowerDVD and WinDVD don't require one type of video card). I think it's extremely dishonest to cripple a product simply because you bought another component from a competitor. It would be like Intel disabling SSE2 and SSE3 if you use a VIA chipset rather than an Intel one.
 

kylebisme

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2000
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Originally posted by: gobucks
Like it won't let me playback DVDs cause I don't use ATI's decoder

That shouldn't be an issue, I don't use ATI's decoder either and I play back DVDs just fine.
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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Like it won't let me playback DVDs cause I don't use ATI's decoder, even though most DVD decoding is done through the CPU anyways (PowerDVD and WinDVD don't require one type of video card). I think it's extremely dishonest to cripple a product simply because you bought another component from a competitor. It would be like Intel disabling SSE2 and SSE3 if you use a VIA chipset rather than an Intel one.

Whats a TV tuner have to do with DVD playback anyway? What are you talking about?