hey guys i was looking to get a tv tuner card and i was just wondering what experiences you guys have had on certain cards and what ones i should consider any help would be appreciated thanks

Quote: Originally Posted by zerocool135 hey guys i was looking to get a tv tuner card and i was just wondering what experiences you guys have had on certain cards and what ones i should consider any help would be appreciated thanks

Kinda depends on what you're going to use it for. Are you just using it to watch TV or are you planning on capturing video for playback or time shifting? HDTV or standard definition?

Hauppage is probably one of the most recommended cards. Lot's of reasonably priced choices though.

Hauppauge PVR-150
Pros:
-Great image quality
-Doesn't need any connections with sound card via audio cable
-Hardware encoding takes load off of CPU
Cons:
-Scheduling software can be buggy when combined with security suites like McAfee
-Not low profile
-No Closed Caption options

Leadtek XP2000 Expert
Pros:
-Great quality, maybe as good as Hauppauge
-Scheduling software can avoid security issues
-Low profile card
-Closed Caption available
Cons:
-Requires a connection to sound card via internal audio cable
-PVR v1 software is ugly but fully functional; PVR v2 is nice but shrinks recorded resolution
-Software encoding may impact K7 generation or P4 generation processors

The cards I've used recently were:

-Leadtek TV2000XP Deluxe. This is basically the same card you've seen since 1998, same chipset, same weird-ass clunky applications, same "grinds the CPU to record". It's okay, but the drivers are a pain to install, and the card is clearly on its way out as a product; it will be useless come 2009.

-FusionHDTV 5 RT Lite -- The software's a lot more "elegant" than the Leadtek, but I have irregular hang problems, most likely due to either my odd OS choice (Win2000) or odd mainboard choice (Yes, I was the sucker who bought an ASRock 939SLI32). The picture's gorgeous when it works, and recording is completely idiot-proof, although it eats gobs of disc space. The big problem with the Lite card is that it provides NOTHING but antenna I/O-- no inputs for game consoles!

I run two Hauppauge PVR-150s on my mythtv box. While image quality isn't fantastic (I don't know what to compare to), they're really affordable, easy to work with and I haven't had many complaints.

Don't bother with the version with the remote if you want a PVR-150

the only thing i was going to do was watch tv and i dont have hd so i dont need that and thanks for the help

Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE


is also a good ver

If you have cable or satellite with a set top box, you just need a video capture card.
If it's anything that comes over coax without a set top box, I recommend the ATI HDTV Wonder. It's pretty cheap now and it supports both regular and HDTV. If you want to spend more, the pcHDTV HD-5500 ( pcHDTV ) is said to be the best card for MythTV.

Hardware encoding is not that important since the money is better put towards a faster CPU and/or video card. (It is also unnecessary in most cases since the signal is already encoded into MPEG.) However, make sure your video card supports XvMC, especially for HDTV. XvMC is basically the ability to use the GPU as a hardware MPEG decoder. Radeons do not support XvMC (last time I checked), while all recent nVidia cards support XvMC. The FX 5200 is actually considered one of the best cards for a dedicated PVR machine since it's cheap, able to decode even HDTV, and quiet.

BTW, make sure the card you buy will work with MythTV and whatever TV source you have. (The HDTV Wonder is MythTV compatible and supports ATSC and QAM cable sources. Same with the Kworld ATSC-110 and ATSC-115, but ignore the rebates since they don't work.)

thanks for the help tetra but i am running vista and i need a card compatible with that and im pretty sure my rig can handle all the encoding and decoding

Pentium 4 Prescott 3.2Ghz
Geforce 6600 GT
1GB Geil pc3200 ram
MSI 865-PE Neo2-V
NEC 16x DVD burner
Raidmax 450w PSU
250GB Seagate main
80GB WD slave

there are a lot of complaints with ATI TV Wonder series
from junky/buggy software, from the card failing to record or stopping mid stream

According to a very brief glance at Newegg reviews the Hauppauge cards are generally buggy in Vista, while the Leadtek XP2000 Expert will work in Vista (32-bit versions) when used with the latest drivers from Leadtek's website.

Quote: Geforce 6600 GT

That card has support for XvMC. You won't need another MPEG decoder.
Is that Prescott 64 bit? If so, I can tell you that the HDTV Wonder has excellent support for 64 bit systems. I have not tried it in a 32 bit system but I don't think it would be a problem.

For a 64 bit system, I can tell you about what cards to NOT buy. The Kworld VS-PVR 300U and Adaptec Gamebridge do not work on a 64 bit system last time I tried. (The VS-PVR should be supported by the em28xx module but I have not gotten it to work.)

Quote: there are a lot of complaints with ATI TV Wonder series from junky/buggy software, from the card failing to record or stopping mid stream

For the software, I never actually got to use it since it doesn't work on my 64 bit system. But that's OK since MythTV works great with it. As for hardware issues, the card does run pretty hot but I have not had any actual problems with it. Then again, with a large ECM fan in the system, I would not expect any overheating problems. I suppose you could glue a small heatsink to the PCI interface chip... (The DSP chip already has a heatsink.)

no it is a 32 bit proc

The compatibility issue should be much, much less then. However, you should still get a card that works with 64 bit in case you still want to use it when you upgrade the system. (Virtually all 64 bit cards will also work on 32 bit, but not the other way around.) I think just about all cards supported by MythTV are 64 bit compatible, however.
Do you have any other systems? You might want to "split" the MythTV configuration over two systems to split up the load. It would also prevent buffer overflows. The server machine should have a CPU of at least 1GHz, possibly higher for HDTV. In my experience, putting the server and client on the same system causes a significant system load, even with XvMC. It will also put a small load as it searches the signals for schedule data.