TV tuner needed. Suggestions?

[jonessoda]

Here's the deal. I have 1 PCIe x1 slot, 1 PCIe x16 slot, and a goodly amount of USB 2.0 and some IEEE 1394 (alas, no regular PCI, all used up). And I'd like a TV tuner. Preferably one that can handle HD, and FM radio wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, if it has PVR capability and a remote, that's a bonus, too. Must work with XP Pro.

I've heard good things about Hauppauge, but I haven't seen any of their tuners I can use that look good. What about the Powercolor T55E-P03 (Here)? Any good (the reviews on Newegg seem to indicate such, but I've learned that Newegg reviews can be total BS)

Suggestions?

Edit: I may be able to get a PCI slot free, but I'd need to get a PCIe NIC (my mobo's on-board LAN is busted, haven't been able to get it to work through 3 fresh installs).

 

[jonessoda]

Hey, everybody, I'm an idiot!

I can get rid of the NIC card and free up a PCI slot, so I guess that opens up a whole range of options. You see, I decided to try downloading and installing the LAN drivers from the Gigabyte website.

A-duuuuh.

And now my onboard LAN works.

So now I can install a PCI TV tuner card, and get rid of my PCI NIC.

 

[jonessoda]

Bump with one:

Is the Leadtek PVR2000 any good?

 

[jnmfox]

If you're looking for HD support try the MyHD 130 or the FusionHDTV. Link I have the MyHD and love it, and I?ve heard great things about the Fusion. The MyHD costs more but it has a hardware decoder so it won?t offload the work to you CPU. Just make sure you can receive OTA HD in your area. If you don?t want HD support look to a Hauppauge or a card that uses an ATI theater 550 chip.

 

[jnmfox]

Here are some cards that use the ATI 550 chip. I read a review, I believe on htpcnews.com, that the ATI chip had superior image quality.

 

[jonessoda]

What about the ATI HDTV Wonder? I've heard mixed reviews about it. Do you know if it's any good?

Edit: also, what about PVR capability on any of these cards? Encoding at a reasonable size would be an excellent feature.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

the ATi HDTV Wonder gets bashed pretty hard for being insane to get get working properly and can only handle OTA (over the air) transmissions while the FusionHDTV and other can handle QAM as well (think HDTV signals from your cable company)...as for the MYHD I haven;t heard much on it, but the haware encoder sounds sweet...I have an ATi TV wonder elite and use like next to nothing in terms of cpu resources to watch SDTV

 

[jnmfox]

I first tried the ATI HDTV "blunder", save your time and hassle. It never worked quite right. What type of set-up will you be putting this in? The MyHD supports QAM as well, but like all current QAM cards it can only read un-encrypted signals from cable or satellite. Like was stated, watching SDTV won't use many CPU resources, it?s the HD that starts taxing your CPU.

 

[jnmfox]

Are you going to be watching mostly HD or SD? I don?t know about what type of experience nismotigerwvu has had with his ATI card but with my MyHD the SD picture is noisy. I could be my set-up, never took much time playing with the SD options, I?d just rather watch it in HD. Plus the SD picture is stretched to fit on my 20? widescreen which magnifies the noise and roughness of the image.

 

[jonessoda]

It'll be a pretty good mix of HD and SD, so I'd like to have the SD look un-craptastic. The HD I'll be getting will mostly come OTA.

As to the setup, Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (dual-core 2ghz), 300gb expanding to 620gb HDD space, 2gb RAM. See rig link in sig for full details.

 

[jnmfox]

Here is a great review covering the exact cards we are talking about done by the excellent anandtech .

 

[Sarphram]

It may be worth it to wait until the Theater 650 comes out too.

 

[jnmfox]

After re-reading the anandtech review it looks like my poor SD image quality has more to do with me not setting it up right than the MyHD 130 card. I just downloaded the DivX trial and I?m going to set-up the analog recording using the same settings anand used. Considering you have a similar set-up as the review you could probably get a good SD image with the MyHD. I feel that even though the MyHD is more expensive the hardware decoding and the two antenna inputs is well worth the price. It?s nice to be able to watch or record HD and still do whatever else I want on my computer.

 

[scandalousjack]

Originally posted by: jnmfox
If you're looking for HD support try the MyHD 130 or the FusionHDTV. https://www.digitalconnection.com/store...List.asp?CID=3&CAT=HDTV%20TUNER%20CARD">Link</a> I have the MyHD and love it, and I?ve heard great things about the Fusion. The MyHD costs more but it has a hardware decoder so it won?t offload the work to you CPU. Just make sure you can receive OTA HD in your area. If you don?t want HD support look to a Hauppauge or a card that uses an ATI theater 550 chip.

Umm... is the link bad or something? When I click it it sends me to Wikipedia's article on "http". Anyone else have that problem?

Edit: Oops, looks like I broke the link and can't fix it.