TV Tuner Card

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
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In about a week and a half ill be moving into my college dorm. Instead of getting a TV for the dorm, im taking me desktop PC. So we decided to get a TV Tuner Card.

Right now i am stuck between 2 cards:

Powercolor T55E-O03

This one uses the ATI Theater 550Pro chipset and is PCI-E. So i know it is top notch.

However, i noticed that all the upscaling makes the pictures look grainy on computers (We have a Hauppauge PVR-150 at home) and i began looking at this:

ATI HDTV Wonder

I know this one is essentially the same only it is HD. Are there any drawbacks to getting the HDTV Wonder over the THeater 550. (I heard something about the HD card lacking MPEG2 Acceleration)

Can someone just clear this up for me. The cable will be a standard Coax cable coming into the dorm from a wall outlet. No cable receiver or anything so ESPN and a few others would be the only HD channels we will get.

-Kevin

(The monitor we will be using is a Dell 1905FP, and it is connected to an EVGA 7900GT; PC is in sig)

Edit: I just found the ATI card for 69.99 After MIR, so money isn't a factor between the two anymore
 
Mar 19, 2003
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If you are using cable and not an antenna, you will not get HD channels with the HDTV Wonder (which doesn't the support QAM modulation used for digital cable). You have to do OTA (antenna) if you want HD broadcasts with that card. There are other cards that do unencrypted HD over cable (I have one), but that is not one of them. Unless you know with any reasonable certainty (or could find out) that your cable provider there even sends any unencrypted HD channels, or unless you want to use an antenna for HD locals in addition to your analog cable, I'd probably just go for the Theater 550 card. I'm personally waiting for the Theater 650; it should essentially be the two cards merged into one and I don't think I'll be using QAM anymore since my university replaced the cable company with another crappy company no one's ever heard of and doesn't do HD :p

Edit: And yes, the HDTV Wonder probably doesn't encode MPEG2 in hardware for recording analog broadcasts.
 

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
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Well i dont remember who has the contract for the University Cable, but isn't ESPN broadcast in 720P regardless?

What would be my downside to getting the ATI HDTV Wonder as opposed to the Theater 550Pro? Is it just cost?

Also what will the lack of H/W MPEG 2 acceleration do? I have a 7900GT with the Purevideo chip and Purevideo software, will that do anything?

-Kevin
 
Mar 19, 2003
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Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Well i dont remember who has the contract for the University Cable, but isn't ESPN broadcast in 720P regardless?

What would be my downside to getting the ATI HDTV Wonder as opposed to the Theater 550Pro? Is it just cost?

Also what will the lack of H/W MPEG 2 acceleration do? I have a 7900GT with the Purevideo chip and Purevideo software, will that do anything?

-Kevin

Yes, assuming your cable provider does HD in the first place, but they'll also be on regular analog cable. In any case, on most (probably almost all) cable systems, ESPN and other non-local digital/HD channels are encrypted. Current PC tuners can only decode unencrypted digital streams, and this excludes most of digital cable (including most of HD cable). So there's about a 99.9% chance (estimated:p) that you won't be able to view ESPN in HD without a digital cable box from the company.

I'm not all that familiar with the ATI tuners, but from what I understand the main thing you lose with the HDTV Wonder is the realtime MPEG2 encoding in hardware, which will lessen your CPU load while recording or timeshifting analog TV. This doesn't affect digital/HD since that's broadcast in an MPEG2 transport stream to begin with (thus recording it only requires writing data to disk, not encoding anything). If the two cards are the same price and you don't care about hardware MPEG2 encoding (I imagine it wouldn't make much of a dent in any recent CPU) then you might as well go for the HDTV Wonder to have the option of using an antenna to pick up local HD channels. In any case you're not going to be receiving HD channels on cable with the HDTV Wonder, it only supports the 8VSB modulation for OTA broadcasts and not the QAM used for most digital cable. It'll work just fine for analog cable, analog OTA (kind of pointless if you already have the channels on cable), and digital/HD OTA.

I don't believe Purevideo will do anything for encoding, that I know of.
 

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
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OH so in order to take advantage of the HD broadcast i would need a Cable Box. I understand.

So i might as well pick up the HDTV Wonder instead. I am running an A64 X2 3800+. It isn't overclocked yet, but can be if necessary. Im on the 10th floor of the dorm, so i assume that the likelyhood of me picking up HD OTA broadcasts is greater since i am so high up. The only thing is that im in Blacksburg Virginia (Virginia Tech) so more than likely there isn't a whole lot of HD OTA signals like there would be in a major US city or something.

Purevideo is only decoding...will that come in any use while watching TV?

Thanks a lot for all the help, im leaning towards your suggestion of getting the HDTV Wonder card. The only thing that is pulling me back towards the Theater 550 is the fact that it is PCI-E. Correct me if i am wrong but isn't analog picture quality virtually the same on both cards or would the Theater 550 be better.

-Kevin
 
Mar 19, 2003
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Being in a building so high (especially if you have a window facing the direction of the broadcast towers) will definitely help you out, assuming you're close enough to pick up a signal in the first place (check antennaweb.org to see what kind of distances you'd be looking at). I don't really know where Blacksburg is or how big of a city it is, but you should be able to find out most of your local broadcast tower into on antennaweb. Hopefully it's not a black hole for OTA HD reception like my college town is. :p

To be honest I'm not 100% sure what situations benefit from Purevideo...maybe in playing back recorded MPEG2 files. Can't say for sure. I don't have an Nvidia card anymore, and even when I did, it was a 6800GT that had crap broken Purevideo support anyway. :p

AT just did a comparison of analog quality between the Theater 550 and 650 recently...I know they've done a review/article on the HDTV Wonder in the past too. I can't imagine that there would be too much difference in analog TV quality, ATI seems to be generally good in that area.
 

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
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http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Gamingphreek/untitled.JPG

Ok that is what it reported back as. I understand that the higher up the better chance that i will get that reception but what exactly am i looking at. And then what am i looking at when i click on "View Street Level Map". I tried to understand exactly what im looking at but im not 100% positive im right.

-Kevin
 
Mar 19, 2003
18,289
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Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Gamingphreek/untitled.JPG

Ok that is what it reported back as. I understand that the higher up the better chance that i will get that reception but what exactly am i looking at. And then what am i looking at when i click on "View Street Level Map". I tried to understand exactly what im looking at but im not 100% positive im right.

-Kevin

Basically that's a list of all the stations (both analog and digital) broadcasting in your area, and their distances and directions from the location you entered, as well as their actual channel frequency. It looks like all four of your local digital broadcast towers are only 15ish miles away, which is good. That's easily doable with an indoor antenna, even more so if you're 100 feet off the ground. :p Of course, this assumes that the stations are at a decent power, which not all are. You can do an FCC search for those stations (or I could in a minute) to detemine their power.

The Street Level Map, assuming you entered your exact address or something close enough, basically just shows line segments radiating outward from your location, each line representing a direction that a station (or a group of stations) is in. Unless those stations are at a ridiculously low power (certainly not unpossible), all you should need is a regular indoor UHF/VHF antenna to get them, preferably directional since they're all in the same direction. That would only get you three of the national networks in HD according to that list (PBS, CBS, NBC), but then again that's all I get when I'm in the dorms (replacing NBC with FOX, good thing since I'm a 24 fan ;)).
 
Mar 19, 2003
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It looks like the local NBC there is at 950kW, CBS is at 460kW, and the NBC seems to be at 7.25kW, which, while low, might be sufficient for low-VHF. My local PBS at my university (actually run by the university) is only at 3.2kW and I always get 90-100% signal strength, but they're also only 1.6 miles away. The first two should be no problem for you, and I'd venture to say that in such a high building, if you're lucky enough to have a window facing in the direction of the towers, you should get NBC without too much trouble as well. YMMV of course :p
 

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
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Wow i cant thank you enough for all the advice and even going so far as to look up the channels. Thanks a lot man, looks like im getting the HDTV wonder!

-Kevin