A few years ago I bought the Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe card and still love it. However now I need another tuner for another system. What do you recommend nowadays? Just for basic cable TV, as I know I won't be getting HD anytime in the next three years. I'd also prefer PCI-E if at all possible and reasonable.
Recommend me a TV tuner
- Thread starter archcommus
- Start date
i've read excellent things (and have had recommended to me) the DVICO FusionHDTV5 Gold Plus tuner.. great if you have digital and comes with a remote.. supports a host of other features such as pausing/rewind for your tv shows etc.. check it out
Shouldn't I go with a cheaper option since I don't need HD capabilities? But are there any decently priced PCI-E cards?
Well, yes, I could get a Leadtek PCI card for only $30-$40. The problem is that my motherboard only has 3 PCI slots and two are currently filled. I wouldn't be able to cram a card in the third slot, and I have 3 open PCI-E x1 slots. Especially considering that PCI is being phased out, it just seems logical to get a PCI-E card, like this PowerColor card that uses the ATI Theater 550 chipset. But it'd be about $90 shipped.
I wonder if the picture would be any better than what I'd get with a cheap PCI Leadtek card, though.The cheaper Leadteks use old technology (single-standard tuners, old framegrabber chips). KWorld 7131R is a cheap, complete, and modern card. $30 at newegg.
But PCI-E is almost necessary due to my current setup and for the future. I can't find anything cheaper that's PCI-E than what I linked to above.
Heh.
Well I guess I have no choice but to pay up then. If I got a PCI card, I'd have to replace my USB card with a PCI-E USB card. That just seems silly.
So I doubt I could go wrong with that PowerColor Theater 550 then.
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/htpccases
Black Gold DVB-T Freeview TV Card (OEM)
these are supposed to be the muts nuts (scroll to the bottom if it doesnt link you straight to it)
Black Gold DVB-T Freeview TV Card (OEM)
these are supposed to be the muts nuts (scroll to the bottom if it doesnt link you straight to it)
i think it just might be, ill try dig up some reviews
they do full and half height too
another good one.... Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT DVB-T TV Tuner (PCI-Express)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/TV_Cards.html dual DVB-T tuners on a card with a PCI-e x1
The first one you linked to is $120 USD and the second is $140 USD. The PowerColor Theater 550 chipset card is only $85 and suits my needs fine.
I hope the quality is damn good, though.
Just another Q, are there ANY PCI-E tuners at all besides the one made by PowerColor? I literally can't find any.
The US doesn't use the DVB system so those aren't something you'd be buying anyway
Other than the ATI Theater 550 PCI-E thing (or whatever it is that it's called), I know of a dual-tuner ATSC/NTSC (HD/digital+analog, including unencrypted QAM) PCI-E card coming out in the next few months, but it'll probably make that $90 price look like pocket change...I still want one though
Sounds sweet!Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
The US doesn't use the DVB system so those aren't something you'd be buying anyway
Other than the ATI Theater 550 PCI-E thing (or whatever it is that it's called), I know of a dual-tuner ATSC/NTSC (HD/digital+analog, including unencrypted QAM) PCI-E card coming out in the next few months, but it'll probably make that $90 price look like pocket change...I still want one though
For me, though, I'll be in college for the next three years so HD is NOT in my near future (I doubt Pitt will be giving us digital cable anytime soon!
). So when it comes to PCI-E analog tuners, the PowerColor Theater 550 seems to be the only one, which really surprises me. I'm afraid this card won't stick around so I'm just going to order the thing now I think.Yes I have. Video inputs on the 713x series produce noticeable better gamut and depth than the old BT8xx chips - you'll notice when you play console games through the TV card. The new "silicon" tuners (no tin box on card) produce a good reception too, and are somewhat less prone to in-computer interference than older ones used to be.
The one general problem with (analog) PCI TV cards is, they all don't like weak input signal too much. The 7131 improves over the older chips by pulling the latter half of the tuner silicon into the main chip; improvement over the 7135 with weak signal was pretty obvious in my place.
Originally posted by: archcommus
Sounds sweet!Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
The US doesn't use the DVB system so those aren't something you'd be buying anyway
Other than the ATI Theater 550 PCI-E thing (or whatever it is that it's called), I know of a dual-tuner ATSC/NTSC (HD/digital+analog, including unencrypted QAM) PCI-E card coming out in the next few months, but it'll probably make that $90 price look like pocket change...I still want one though
For me, though, I'll be in college for the next three years so HD is NOT in my near future (I doubt Pitt will be giving us digital cable anytime soon!
Yeah, I'm sure that Theater 550 is a good tuner - and PCI-E tuner cards seem to be coming out so slowly that I wouldn't really recommend on waiting for anything else in the PCI-E world (especially if you only want an analog tuner).
I'm in college now myself and we just get regular basic/standard analog cable provided, but the cable company also transmits the digital channels on the same lines (as I assume all cable companies do; YMMV however) - most of those digital channels are encrypted (again YMMV, but at my mom's house with regular analog cable I can pick up 50+ digital cable channels that aren't encrypted), but all the local HD channels are unencrypted (and often are on most cable systems), which is how I pick them up (since I go to school in a black hole for OTA HDTV reception...)
In any case I'm not recommending that you go out and spend a lot of money on an HD tuner if you don't care for one, I'm just mentioning this because being in college (dorms) doesn't necessarily limit your HDTV options as much you think it would.
(Though of course if you're like my friend at North Texas, the crappy local cable company in the small town there doesn't do any HDTV over cable at all, so unfortunately his HDTV tuner is just being used for analog channels right now...)So I guess it's more possible than I thought! Still, I don't think there are ANY PCI-E HDTV tuners, so the Theater 550 remains the only option.Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Originally posted by: archcommus
Sounds sweet!Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
The US doesn't use the DVB system so those aren't something you'd be buying anyway
Other than the ATI Theater 550 PCI-E thing (or whatever it is that it's called), I know of a dual-tuner ATSC/NTSC (HD/digital+analog, including unencrypted QAM) PCI-E card coming out in the next few months, but it'll probably make that $90 price look like pocket change...I still want one though
For me, though, I'll be in college for the next three years so HD is NOT in my near future (I doubt Pitt will be giving us digital cable anytime soon!
Yeah, I'm sure that Theater 550 is a good tuner - and PCI-E tuner cards seem to be coming out so slowly that I wouldn't really recommend on waiting for anything else in the PCI-E world (especially if you only want an analog tuner).
I'm in college now myself and we just get regular basic/standard analog cable provided, but the cable company also transmits the digital channels on the same lines (as I assume all cable companies do; YMMV however) - most of those digital channels are encrypted (again YMMV, but at my mom's house with regular analog cable I can pick up 50+ digital cable channels that aren't encrypted), but all the local HD channels are unencrypted (and often are on most cable systems), which is how I pick them up (since I go to school in a black hole for OTA HDTV reception...)
In any case I'm not recommending that you go out and spend a lot of money on an HD tuner if you don't care for one, I'm just mentioning this because being in college (dorms) doesn't necessarily limit your HDTV options as much you think it would.
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