Future of TV Tuners

[CandyKid]

I've had a voodoo 3500 and another tv tuner by phoebe.

I understand why the quality is poor on these units. Has anyone heard anything about them actually trying to improve the picture quality. Seems like all of them use the same phillips reciever.

I have never seen what the picture quality looks like on the Radeon AIW or the matrox 450 etv cards, or the high end Hauppauge. Are they any better?

I've heard a unit called Bungee scheduled to come out soon by Pinnacle which is a PVR for you computer with a USB interface. Will that allow the picture quality to look similar to a standard Television.

Thanks in advance

 

[T2T III]

I wasn't too thrilled with my Avermedia TV98 card until I found this tuner software - dTV

Since then, the quality of my TV viewing on my PC has been outstanding!

 

[CandyKid]

I checked out that software. Kind of funny it supports the video but doesn't support the Audio it says.

So i don't think it'll help. Maybe they just mean the FM part of the card... Unlikely but it'd be nice if it solved my problem.

How does the quality look on your monitor now. Does it resemble TV quality at all?

I have a phoebe tv master + FM

 

[NeoMadHatter]

i have the ati all in wonder radeon. the quality is amazing to me. i had a wintv-d and hated the quality. the quality of the ati tv wonder is better than the wintv-d on standard cable but the only plus was that it supports dtv.

 

[frostgiant]

USB video products are crap.
The reason video doesn't look like TV is your monitor isn't interlaced. When viewing an interlaced source, things just don't look as good.

 

[CandyKid]

neo - is that because of the software the ati card has or is the hardware on the ATI just better?

I had come to the conclusion all the cards were using the same phillips reciever.

 

[NeoMadHatter]

i think you might be right about the software because the wintv-d that i have is a phillips and so is the radeon AIW DDR. but the ATI looks so much better. if you want some screenshots i think i can get them.

 

[CandyKid]

I'd love to see some screen shots... How is the quality compared to regular TV?

 

[rbV5]

The picture quality output to my TV from my AIW is similar to the quality from the TV's own tuner. As mentioned before, Broadcast TV on the computer is going to look different on your computer's monitor due to interlacing, pixel aspect, and overscan, ect.......but, an important fact many miss is the fact that you sit inches away from your monitor and perhaps several feet away from your TV set. From about the same distance I sit from my monitor, the TV's picture is unwatchable for me, and if I back up and watch TV on my computer monitor from a few feet away....very nice actually.

 

[bevancoleman]

Picture quality on many TV tunners often comes down to the software. This is because they mostly use the same tuner and chipset (Brooktree)

The Software that comes with my LifeView 98FM can deinterlace the image but uses pixel duplication to resize to full screen. The resulting blocky image looks REALLY bad.

dTV can also deinterlace the image but it can also resample the image to full screen using a interpoling filter. The end image is nice and smooth and looks quite good.

I would be interested in what other people use, and what the image is like.

 

[NeoMadHatter]

candykid,
i will get screenshots for you this weekend. i have to work tomorrow and need to hook up the antenna and set up the tv since i reinstall win2k.