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TV Tuner: Leadtek, Hauppauge or Emuzed

A

applesseed

Senior member
I've heard two good reviews on Leadtek and Hauppauge in Anandtech forums... but which one is better?

I plan to record live TV shows so - good quality picture is a must.
I also plan on transferring Hi8/VHS tapes to my computer

Features that I like.

Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert
[*] 10 bit Video Encoder
[*] Stereo
[*] Picture-in-Picture
[*] FM Tuner
[*] Remote Control


Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350
[*] FM Tuner
[*] Remote Control


Emuzed Maui-III PCI PVR-C with FM Tuner
[*] FM Tuner
[*] Composite In
 
I've used the Leadtek expert for about a month and just got the Hauppauge 250 the other day and installed it last night. The leadtek is nice, but you can't do anything on the pc while recording because it messes the recordings up...voice/pic not insync, etc....so am putting this on my other pc i use in the bedroom to watch tv. Since i haven't used the hauppauge 250 much yet....just a couple of tv recordings...can't comment too much, but it uses much less cpu useage and the picture....to me looks better, so i'd go with the Hauppauge 250 or one of their other higher end cards. robert
 
vroom, any idea if the 250 suffers from any kind of picture delay? As I said in a prior thread, I'm thinking of getting one, but am hesitant because I've heard it has a slight delay in displaying the picture, which would leave PS2 usage out of the question.
 
The 250/350 are hardware encoder cards and yes there is a delay. Cards with a hardware encoder should have a better picture then ones without. I have a pvr-250 and the picture quallity is really good but I don't have anything else to compare it too.
 
Recieved my Hauppauge WinTV PVR 350 yesterday. Love it so far. Look in my sig under "Tivo" to see system specs. Just realized I need a bigger HD for it though(Have a 80Gb now going to 160Gb). If ya got any specific questions I can try to answer them. Going to go play with it now.
 
Yea, it has both hardware encoder and decoder. Also the FM radio, which I won't use much. Wasn't much more to go with the 350 so thats what I did.

P.S. It also has S-Video out(RCA video and left/right audio with adapter) which I'm not sure that the 250 had. Good since I just connect the computer directly to the TV via S-Video out on the video card and RCA out on the Tv card. I'll see which I like better and stick to one or the other in the future though.
 
Decoder meaning you can bypass a video card or it just assist in DVD playback? It seems to be $60 more, that's quite a bit IMO.
 
Originally posted by: Todd33
Decoder meaning you can bypass a video card or it just assist in DVD playback? It seems to be $60 more, that's quite a bit IMO.
Click to expand...


Newegg
PVR 250 for 145 *free shipping*
PVR 350 for 179 + $5 shipping

= $39 difference 😉


Not saying I'll ever use the extra feature but its nice to have them there just in case, given the money's right.
 
I'm still confused what the extra features do, except the FM tuner. Sorry, I was looking at the SageTV bundles, it was $169 vs $229 or something.
 
Any physical store that has the Hauppauge 350? I kinda prefer getting it that same day rather than online - had bad experiences with online purchases. I just saw the Leadtek Expert $49.99 at Fry's Electronic - wonder if that's good. Does the Leadtek have hardware encoder?
 
With SageTV you save $40 (which I'm using for the PVR), I order online all the time, only once had to RMA some RAM. I doubt anything that is <$100 is hardware decoding.
 
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