ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI TV Tuner Card 89.99 shipped

[bloodthirster]

Originally posted by: Broncowolf
How good is the quality of the taping? I only have Tivo Basic and only standard def with it on my new HD TV so I currently can't tape HD programming. But my computer is in the next room. I assume I can tape HD with this card and run some component cables from my computer to the TV to watch taped HD programming? Would I really get HD looking programming or would it look more like SD?

You can only record OTA HD content with the HD Tuner.

 

[GeezerMan]

The 650 has a onboard DRM chip, that probably will be used to restrict, in some way, recording or the number of times you can watch a recorded HDTV program in the future.

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: jalaram

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: GeezerMan
You get better analog, a FM tuner, but no antenna with the 650. I have the same question as to if the HDTV portion is any better. I'm thinking that digital is digital.

Digital is digital... all the HDTV cards do is convert the digital stream to MPEG2 so there's no encoding like there is on the analog cards.

If all you're going to use if the analog portion I would get the 550. I've seen the 550 and 650 side by side and I can't see any improvement that warrants the price premium. I currently run a HDTV Wonder and 550 in Dual tuner on Vista MCE. I tried the 650 but saw no improvement over my 550 for analog or HDTV Wonder for digital so I returned it. It's a shame there's now way to get the 650 to be both OTA and Analog at the same time so that I could have dual tuner for any signal.

The HDTV cards still vary as to the sensitivity to the digital signals.

Probably true, but I live 6 miles from the antenna farm in my city so I don't have any signal issues with any cards.

 

[jalaram]

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: jalaram

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: GeezerMan
You get better analog, a FM tuner, but no antenna with the 650. I have the same question as to if the HDTV portion is any better. I'm thinking that digital is digital.

Digital is digital... all the HDTV cards do is convert the digital stream to MPEG2 so there's no encoding like there is on the analog cards.

If all you're going to use if the analog portion I would get the 550. I've seen the 550 and 650 side by side and I can't see any improvement that warrants the price premium. I currently run a HDTV Wonder and 550 in Dual tuner on Vista MCE. I tried the 650 but saw no improvement over my 550 for analog or HDTV Wonder for digital so I returned it. It's a shame there's now way to get the 650 to be both OTA and Analog at the same time so that I could have dual tuner for any signal.

The HDTV cards still vary as to the sensitivity to the digital signals.

Probably true, but I live 6 miles from the antenna farm in my city so I don't have any signal issues with any cards.

I live in NH, so, other than a couple of nearby stations, everything is in MA. For me, QAM would probably be better anyway.