What is the best HDTV tuner card

[OneOfTheseDays]

I currently have HD-cable. A majority of my viewing is watching TV-shows that run on the local networks throughout the week. It would be nice to be able to download those shows and archive them.

So my question is, what is the best HDTV tuner out there. I will not be using an antenna, just hooking up the card straight to my cable outlet. Thanks.

 

[chizow]

I could be totally off on this, but from my limited research on the subject I don't think its possible to get even your local stations through your cable feed. From what I understand, the signals are encrypted because of all that HD copyright protection red tape, so unless your cable company leaves those unencrypted, then you'll still need an HD antenna.

People get HD from their cable feed on their "PC" by using a digital cable box and hooking it up directly to their HDCP compliant monitor, which satisfies the HDCP requirements. Looking into setting this up myself once I get a panel that does fixed 1:1, but of course, I won't be able to record anything directly to my PC with this set-up.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

You are wrong. Most cable companies offer the locals in HD over unencrypted QAM. I just checked and mine does this so all I need is a tuner that supports QAM.

In any event I just order the Dvico Fusion USB tuner for $149.00.

 

[Mloot]

I have a Dvico Fusion5 Lite PCI card (which supports QAM), and when hooked up to my cable line there are constant dropouts, and alot of channels don't show up. It doesn't work well enough to put up with the headache of trying to use it that way. It works much better with an antenna for OTA reception.

 

[hellokeith]

The HDHomeRun is a new dual tuner for OTA HD and unencrypted QAM. It's getting rave reviews with SageTV users.
http://www.silicondust.com/

 

[Childs]

Vbox has good HD tuners. I can personally vouch for the external USB versions. I had two Fusion cards, and replaced them with Vbox tuners.