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Which TV Tuner?

Fenixgoon

Fenixgoon

Lifer

I ended up buying the ATI HDTV Wonder - between cost and what it came with, it best fit my budget/needs 🙂 Thanks for everyone's input!

Looking at picking up a TV tuner. ATI's HDTV wonder has a nice $20 MIR right now, so I was thinking of buying it since it can get OTA HDTV. However, I know hauppauge tuners are very well regarded. both the HDTV wonder and comparable hauppauge cards have roughly the same ratings on newegg. what says AT?

also, what's the difference between the Hauppauge WinTV 401 and theHauppauge WinTV PVR 150?


Thanks 🙂
 
The wintv 401 is lower grade, but includes an FM tuner. Personally, I think the best quality tuner is the ATi tv wonder elite. A couple of my friends have it and it looks spectacular. If the the HDTV wonder is anything like that, (I havn't seen on personally) go for that.
 
I had a bad experience with the HDTV Wonder, don't even bother if you have an Nvidia based video card.

There have been a few driver releases for it since I yanked it ouf of my system, so it may have improved since then.

Edit - I was looking at the TV Wonder 650 or 200, but now it seems the 650 was recalled. Either way, I am looking at the Theater 650 chip for my next tuner.
 
Originally posted by: Bateluer
I had a bad experience with the HDTV Wonder, don't even bother if you have an Nvidia based video card.

There have been a few driver releases for it since I yanked it ouf of my system, so it may have improved since then.

Edit - I was looking at the TV Wonder 650 or 200, but now it seems the 650 was recalled. Either way, I am looking at the Theater 650 chip for my next tuner.
Click to expand...

i have an X850 XT, so that *shouldnt* be an issue. i did also see that some issues may arise if you have a non-intel CPU. i have an AMD sempron (which kinda worries me)
 
TV Wonder Elite here w/Beyond TV 4. ATI makes a good tuner, but crappy software, especially now that they license Cyberstink's player.
 
Originally posted by: Markbnj
TV Wonder Elite here w/Beyond TV 4. ATI makes a good tuner, but crappy software, especially now that they license Cyberstink's player.
Click to expand...

MMC is that bad?
 
I'm sure they will get the theater 650's bugs worked out quickly and it pretty much will rock your world. I have a 550 based card and the analog picture quality is outstanding and the bundled software is pretty useable, i prefer yahoo's goTV right now (which is just meedio but free) and it will recieve OTA hd as well.....the hdwonder has the drivers from hell (sorry richard lewis)
 
ATI, i have a Hauppauge tuner and emailed them about 64-bit support a while back. Nope, no plans to support either. Bobthelost also has a good point, their SW just absolutely BLOWS!
 
I would pick the ATI Theatre chipset tuner. I have both a PVR150 and Theatre 550 based tuner and I like the ATI tuner better. I just looks better
 
I just purchased a PVR 150 and it works excellent! I also bought Beyond TV 4.4 w/remote for around or less than $200 on beyond tv's website; bundled deals. Its an excellent combo IMO.

P.S. Works great with my 7800GT
 
Originally posted by: mshan
I would check out http://www.antennaweb.org to see what HDTV channels and what type of reception and what type of antenna is recommended for your location before you buy anything.
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What type of antenna is this one? I know my brother has it and he said it works very well. Antenna web gives me the following:

8x small multi-directional channels
1x medium multi-directional
11x medium directional
3x medium directional + preamp
39x large directional + preamp
 
That is the antenna included with an ATI HDTV Wonder (it's a clone of the Zenith Silver Sensor, but the base is styled slightly different).
 
I have the ati hdtv wonder. A lot of problems with it. Looks like a software problem and ati's software on this is very very poor. They have many updates but things just seem to get worse. With the old hdtv wonder software, the digital HD tv (DTV) and the analog tv (TV) was two sep programs. Now ati has combined the two so the dtv and analog is one. Analog works of but the hdtv DTV part is awful. It freezes, stutters BADLY and so do recordings of HDtv programs on playback. Unusable!!!
Luckily I kept the old HDtv software and had to revert back to that, with DTV and analog tv being two sep programs. It still stutters and is VERY flakey, on the HDtv part, but better than the newer ati software.

I'd skip the ati HDTV wonder...period!

I've seen newer external USB HD computer devices for around $175. No link or brand but its a USB HD tuner for the pc. Maybe someone has more info.
 
I just got a Dvico Fusion HDTV5 RT Gold, but.. if with move to digital over analog.. if you can wait just a little longer.. the VBox Cats Eye Dual ATSC tuner will be out at the end of this month.

Check out AVS forums.. there are some better options than what Ati and nVida have to offer.

 
Longterm Hauppauge user here. Bought one in the 90s and it still works. The more recent ones I own, being the Hauppauge PVR-250 (should be close feature wise to the 150) and the PVR USB 2. The software is very minimalistic, but you can always buy SAGETV or MythTV to fix that. No complaints here, and I believe the 150 has XP64 support now.

I love not having my CPU cycles being eatin alive when recording, so I can blast the crap out of something in Battlefield 2.
 
Originally posted by: thestain
I just got a Dvico Fusion HDTV5 RT Gold, but.. if with move to digital over analog.. if you can wait just a little longer.. the VBox Cats Eye Dual ATSC tuner will be out at the end of this month.

Check out AVS forums.. there are some better options than what Ati and nVida have to offer.
Click to expand...

damn.. that vbox looked great - but the bundle was way too much extra $$ for me 🙁
 
Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
Originally posted by: Markbnj
TV Wonder Elite here w/Beyond TV 4. ATI makes a good tuner, but crappy software, especially now that they license Cyberstink's player.
Click to expand...

MMC is that bad?
Click to expand...

I never used it, but heard good things about it. They stopped including MMC and with the card I purchased (TV Wonder Elite). I received PowerCinema, and it blows. That was the primary reason for purchasing BeyondTV 4, which rocks. Completely stable, never had a single hiccup, and the program guide is great. The Firefly Remote from Snapstream also works much better than the ATI remote I received with the card, which crashed repeatedly.
 
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