What tv tuner do you recommend for my PC.. What specs should i look at first in choosing a good tv tuner... Which is better internal or external.. Pls help..

These are the best on the market.


peace

How bout the TV tuners in ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5142552165&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5143403380&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5143349606&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5143367720&rd=1

What made you say that those are the best TV tuners?

This is not my personal opinion, but the general agreement that has been talked about for along time here:

Home Theater Computers @ The AVS Forum.


peace

I have one of these Asus TVFM cards.

Overall, I'm satisfied with it, it has S-Video and composite inputs, which I have not yet tested to their capacity. Currently, I'm using it to "tape" TV shows, which I then edit out the commercials, and archive on DVD.

Pros: Video quality and capture performance is good. There is occasionally a tendancy to dither colours, but otherwise the system captures video from broadcast quite acceptably. I believe that the file capture is actually superior to the "live" display, actually.


Cons: The ASUS home theater software is a sorry lot. I've never been able to get the scheduled recording to work more than once. A complete uninstall/reinstall gets it working one more time, then it quits. (This has for various reasons entailed a complete reinstall of the operation system on 2 occasions. (Once for a motherboard upgrade, WinXP doesn't like changing motherboards! Once for a hard drive crash.) I've come to the conclusion that the scheduled recording just doesn't work. The pause/resume live tv works, though, and the remote is decent.

This may also be a "feature" of the software, but the highest res capture is 640X480. It seems to only allow 3 settings, 320X240, 320X480, and 640X480. All three playback in 4:3 aspect ratio. No provision for widescreen at all. I'd have liked to see a 720X480 capture resolution, so that I don't have to re-render the video to send to my DVD authoring software. (Even if it's still limited to 4:3 resolution.)



I'd give it a 3.5/5 overall

I would have to agree with SIMJEDI.....The Hauppauge cards are probably the best on the market. I have the PVR-250MCE and the WINTV-Radio(Installed in my sons PC), they both work flawlessly. I just today install a dual-tuner eVGA Nvidia card into my Media Center 2005 box(Pulled PVR-250 for my projector) and it also is working great. The ability to record one program and watch another at the same time is nice, and the fact that it only takes up one pci slot is pretty sweet.

I use MCE 2005 hooked up to my regular TV set for everyday tv viewing, so a quality picture is critical. Both the Hauppage cards and now this Nvidia card give a great picture. When people come over, they cannot tell it is running through a PC.



Cycloneman

I'm looking for cards now too and am interested in the model number of that nVidia dual tuner card.

jfunk, here's the link :

eVGA dual tuner

Don't pay $199 through their website. A search on Froogle will hit it for around $140


Cycloneman

Excellent Now just need to find out how it does with Linux. Any MythTV'ers out there that can share info?

The hauppauge PVR500 is a high end dual-tuner card with hardware based encoding. The evga and other nvida tv tuner cards are software based tuners. Now that may not bother everybody but i prefer to keep cpu usage down in the single digits 5-9%.

If you do decide to go the nvidia route then most linux flavors ought to pose no problem.

sjetski71, not sure if you ever looked into the eVGA NVTV tuner cards.....but they are hardware based tuners.

Qoute from product description "NVTV Dual TV Tuner
nVidia NVTV™ PCI DUAL TV-tuner cards deliver superior TV quality to your PC. Available in Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition PCs or for purchase as an upgrade to an existing PC, nVidia NVTV offers hardware MPEG-2 encoding. Unlike software encode-based solutions that rely on the CPU, nVidia NVTV ensures uninterrupted quality of service for an unbeatable TV viewing experience on your PC. Further, nVidia NVTV solutions are backed by the rock-solid nVidia® ForceWare™ drivers to deliver the quality you expect from nVidia."

I had the same question when I was looking at selling them at my store, but after checking with my Nvidia Rep., I was informed that they were hardware based.


Cycloneman

Just checked, CPU usage at 20% with 2 programs being recorded at the same time.

Cycloneman

As of about a month ago, there was no drivers available for it and AFAIK here still are not. It uses a different chipset than most of the other hardware compression cards.

The ivtv developers (driver for the Hauppage PVR cards) are working on the PVR-500 support right now...

Also, the PVR-500 is around $140 as well, and I certainly would trust Hauppage more with a PVR device than Nvidia or even ATI who traditionally work on the opposite (video out).

As it stands though, unless you have a shortage of PCI slots, you can get two PVR-150s for less than one PVR-500. The PVR-150 linux support is coming along (may even be done by now).

Actually, I do have a shortage of PCI slots because one (of the two) is going to be used for a wireless card. I wish I had read your follow up before I ordered the eVGA card. Looks like I'll be using Windows for a while...

cycloneman, please excuse my rush to comment there. I actually thought you were talking about the evga personal cinema card. What you have/linked there is something totally different. Don't know how it stacks up against the competition but it certainly looks interesting...

I've been running it now for a few days, and I cannot see any difference between it and my PVR-250MCE. I've been selling them for a few weeks now and everyone has loved them. I was reading on another HTPC site and they were saying that the picture wasnt as sharp as the Hauppage, but I cannot see any difference.

Cycloneman

I got my card today. When I went to install it I realized that XP Media Center Edition is listed as a requirement. Absolutely no software is included with the card itself. So I'm out another $130 for MCE I'm not terribly upset by this because I was going to get it eventually. I just wish they would have made this a little more clear on the site so I could have ordered both at the same time. I thought there was going to be some Forceware software bundled with it...

i havent really had much good luck with tv tuners/capture cards.

My first one was a winfast 2000. I liked it but the picture was pretty crappy. I kept getting verical lines and alot of static on the output.

I tried out a usb capture card. The picture was nice and clear but max res it could do was something like 320x240.

I then bought my ATI 9600xt and i noticed it had a built in capture card so i gave it a go but i wasnt impressed.

So im not sure what kind of card to buy. I will have a look at the cards mentioned.