T. V. tuner card

[crashem]

I am building a new high end system, in July it seems when the quads drop in price, and I would like to install a nice t.v. tuner card that I can watch cable on my soon to buy Dell 24. I was told by someone that you could easily push a button and the t.v. pops up on screen. I do have high def boxs and if I can use it that would be great. Any recommendations

 

[bearxor]

hmmm... If all you're wanting to do is watch live tv off a cable signal, you have a pretty wide selection. Most will provide the same kind of quality as long as you pick a well known brand like Hauppage, ATI, nVidia or Dvico.

If you're wanting to watch hidef, you should buy a nice OTA tuner card. ATI, Dvico and VBox make good ones, and hook up a antenna to it. if you're wanting to watch hi-def over your satalitte or digital cable box, make sure the tv you buy to use as a monitor has component or a spare dvi or vga inputs and then use the built-in picture-in-picture function on the tv.

 

[etech]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...056345&highlight_key=y

 

[tRaptor]

If your not looking for hi-def then go with Hauppage. I use a PVR-500 which is a Dual tuner on one card, should run about $140. From what I have seen the Hauppage cards are very well supported by most PVR applications.

GB-PVR is GREAT, and I know there are several others. Never watch live TV again.

But if all you wana do is watch, the PVR-150 will run you $70ish. A word of warning, there are plenty of cheapo PCI tuner cards, stay away from them they dont feature hardware encoding, you will be dissapointed.

 

[ra990]

AVerMedia - AVerTV Combo PCIe is great. I purchased it recently to use with Vista Media Center. It is a hybrid HD and SD tuner using PCIE and unlike other hybrids, you can use both the HD and SD tuners simultaneously. Two thumbs up from me.

 

[teo]

If your buying the dell 2407 or a monitor with multipal inputs and just want to watch TV,connect from one of the Hi-Def outputs on the cable box to one of the Hi Def inputs on the dell and use the input switch on the dell to WATCH hi-def TV.Connect the audio out of the cable box to line in on your audio card for the sound,no new hardware needed.

 

[manimal]

frys has the hauppage 1600 for 69 I think, thats a good buy with the later revisions QAM capable with beta drivers.

 

[zylander]

If you can get an external HD box or cable box you can hook it up directly to your Dell monitor and just use the button on the front to switch over to the box. But, if you want to go for a computer TV tuner card, check out this;

http://www.9thtee.com/hdhomerun.htm

Dual tuners, network support and does ATSC and QAM.

 

[Synomenon]

TV tuner cards with ATI's Theater 650 Pro. chips are pretty good. They're also supported by BeyondTV by Snapstream (pretty good PVR software).

 

[CKent]

I have a $40 Hauppage card, I'm happy enough with it, but then I don't really watch much TV or record much. If I did maybe I'd spring for a more expensive one.

I do have a question, am I limited to the software that comes with it, or is there something else out there, preferably freeware? I just got a new LCD, 22" widescreen, and I'd like to either a) stretch the screen (keeping the aspect ratio) so that it's as wide as the screen. Most Discovery shows I watch are 16:9 anyway, and I don't mind chopping the top & bottom off anything that isn't or b) getting fullscreen on my second monitor, a 4:3 AR LCD that's my 2nd monitor hooked up to my PC.