TV Tuners and aspect ration controls

[Dman877]

I have two tv tuners, an ati tv wonder ve and a hauppage wintv go. They're both low end cards. The ati has bad reception but it can control the aspect ratio to fill a widescreen monitor with analog cable tv. The hauppage card looks a lot better but as far as I know, it cannot change the aspect ratio to fill my monitor. Consequently, the hauppage card has black bars all over. During 4:3 stuff theres bars on both sides but when something is broadcasted in widescreen, I get bars on all 4 sides (ie Conan Obrian show).

What I want to know is if anybody here uses a pvr 150 and knows if it can change aspect ratio. I like the features of the pvr 150 and was thinking about upgrading to one anyway. However, if it doesn't support aspect ratio settings I guess I'll look into a newer ati card cuz widescreen tv is too sweet to pass up on my display.

 

[Peter]

This is an issue of the software on the replaying end, not the capture card. You might want to try the free alternatives before ditching a card.

 

[Dman877]

Any suggestions? I had no idea there were free tv programs...

 

[Traire]

http://www.tv-cards.com/apps.php

 

[Dman877]

Thanks for the link Traire, that will give me something to play with for a while .

 

[v8envy]

Depends on your capture software, too. In my case, I can tell the driver to record in 480x480, 720x480, or really, just about any resolution I want. For my purpose, 720x480 from analog NTSC is as good as it gets.

Who needs these fancy shmancy tv apps. cat /dev/video0 > pr0n.mpg is all you need!

When my gentoo upgrade broke the whole system, I actually watched a few shows live with mplayer /dev/video0, changing channels with that nasty perl script. good times.

 

[rbV5]

Try Media Player Classic? Its free and supports filters, AR control ect...small footprint.