TV Tuner

[williams22]

Hey, I'm interested in buying a TV tuner for my computer but I don't know what makes one better than another. I would prefer if it weren't a PCI card since my slots are currently full (although I could remove something). Please give me some links to some good ones, maybe even some good deals. I have cable television channels up to 70 if that effects anything. Do they come with hookups so i could hook up say a Playstation to the tuner as well? I know there are some USB versions i think one of those would be best unless they dont have enough features or something. anyway just give me some feedback

[Siliconjunkie]

I have an ATI TVWonder VE that I am not using. It works pretty well, it has a coax connection as well as composite (RCA). It uses the sound card input for sound. It lets you record to avi, replace your wallpaper with TV. PM me if you are interested in it for cheap. As far as USB I have a friend that has a Hauupage <sp?> WinTV USB and he loves it.

[williams22]

Is the software pretty good for it? how much would you be asking?

[omc1jz]

Recording to AVI sucks up HD space..

I can get these LIFEVIEW Tuners fairly cheap and tey do a good job..

Im in Australia so dont know how supply is where u are!!

[Telexen]

I think the best TV Tuner you can get is from Leadtek...check out Newegg and you'll find it.

You could look at some of the external TV Tuners that use USB to connect to your system...sorry I don't have any links to them.

[williams22]

Well AVI doesnt really bother me, I have 200 gigs. I think I need external because I dont know if I can get away with removing any of my PCI cards.

[williams22]

Has anyone used the ATI cards? someone said they aren't too stable.

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Well, ATI has a USB version, but it's considerably slower then the PCI models, I have an ATI TVwonder (stereo) and it works great, software can record directly to VCD format so you can burn the file directly and watch it on a DVD player that will play VCD's. (in this format I can store about 45.5hrs on 22.5Gig of space)

what are you using all the PCI slots for?

A friend bought the leadtek and it's not bad either, tho there were some issues with horizontal black lines that eventually worked them self out. I find it to have a lower quality picture then the ATI model.

I've had no driver problems with mine, had to re-install 2k 4 times with it in, each time it was working with no "tweaking" Also used it with a VIA and nforce chipset.

[ben-the-slacker]

I also have the ATI TV Wonder VE. Performance is so-so. Picture with ATI software has lots of snow and noise. Tweaking in DScaler only helps minimally. To get nice quality, I had to bend the coax cable a lot right at the connection point. And this has resulted in some broken wires. I found out, if you hook up a vcr in between the cable and tuner, and turn the vcr on while watching tv (tv/vcr option), the quality is a lot clearer. Channels I couldn't even watch before could now be watched with ease. Only downside (at least for me) is that you'll have to surf channels thru the vcr, and my vcr remote sucks.

http://www.dazzle.com/main.html

These guys make stuff that works with USB and Firewire.