tv tuners with no display lag

[Ojannen]

I am looking for a tv tuner to play console video games on. I live in a dorm small enough that there is no room for my computer setup and a tv. I am looking for an internal card with hardware decoding. I am going to avoid hd tuners unless the price is under $100.

I am concerned that many tv tuners have some amount of display lag, to allow for decoding or caching for pausing. Because I will be playing video gaems on this, I need a card that either does not have this or makes it very easy to turn off. When I did a search of the forums here, none of the questions specifically addressed this point.

Any suggestions?

 

[heyheybooboo]

I assume you wish to attach your console to your PC via the tuner card. That being the case I would suggest you ask a mod to move this thread to Console Gaming where posters could provide a bit more expert advice ...

 

[SickBeast]

Are you using analog coax?

If you're using digital cable or satellite, I would suggest simply purchasing an LCD that has component and RCA inputs. That will allow you to hook up pretty much anything you want to it. I used to do that with my Dell 2405FPW.

I have an old ATI TV Wonder that I can sell you if you want.

 

[Peter]

There is no such thing as zero-lag TV, lest you use an old style cathode ray TV unit.

PCI cards produce the least lag on the input side, since they push an uncompressed isochronous stream into the system. When combined with a TV viewing application that employs "direct to overlay" mode, output lag can be as low as one half-frame for deinterlacing.

 

[DerekWilson]

Originally posted by: Peter
There is no such thing as zero-lag TV, lest you use an old style cathode ray TV unit.

PCI cards produce the least lag on the input side, since they push an uncompressed isochronous stream into the system. When combined with a TV viewing application that employs "direct to overlay" mode, output lag can be as low as one half-frame for deinterlacing.

you are correct ... there's no zero lag anything these days ...

the major issue the OP is referring to is the fact that most tv tuner cards also act as capture cards that encode the signal in line to something like mpeg2. this can add a second or two of lag (!) in some cases, and is also one of the reasons for channel change delay when using modern tv tuner cards.

i had a matrox tv card that was great for what you want to do back in 2000 (before all the emphasis on tv cards as hardware accelerated encoders for DVRs and the requirement of the same by Windows Media Center Edition) ... but i haven't paid attention to the issue lately ...

if you want cheap and easy, old stuff might be the way to go.


but there's help that may be closer than you know ...


... what video card do you have?

some cards support vivo (video in video out) without hardware acceleration which should work fine for you (as long as you don't need the coax input -- even then you can buy a coax to composite converter that will "tune" channel 3 or 4 for you from radio shack).

ati pushed this openly for a while, but i'm not sure if the majority of cards today only support video out or full vivo ... you may have gotten a dongle with your card to plug into this port (the round typically 9pin connector on the panel with your DVI ports), and it might only support outputs like component or composite ... but if its got a video input as well, you should be good to go.

 

[Ojannen]

Sorry for not being clear enough. I will check the console forums as I did not realize they existed.

Getting a new monitor is a little more than I want to spend right now.

I am putting the card into my current computer which is getting turned into an htpc sometime this summer. It has an opteron 144 with a geforce 6600gt. I don't believe it supports video input.

The reason i asked this question is that my brother has a hauppage pvr 150. It has a minimum of 1 second of video buffering before it outputs to screen making it completely useless for video games. A few years ago, I used an ati tv wonder which did not have the delay and I believe it did not have as many buffering/pause options. However, it worked fine for video games. I am sure there was a tiny amount of lag, but it was not enough to be gamebreaking. The card is currently broken or does not work with nvidia graphics cards (could someone clear this up for me).

Are there any cards that work with my current hardware that address my problem?

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Small update:
I found this really cool search engine called google. It turns out there is a wii to vga cable for around $40. I am still interested in tv tuners because for about $40 more I can get something with more than one purpose.