TV Tuner suggestions

jaredjared College Station, TX Icrontian
edited November 2008 in Hardware
On my second round of NE purchases (120 HS, fans, etc) I am thinking about getting a PCI (or PC express?) TV tuner to slap in my new rig.

I don't have a TV in my room or do I really need one. But now that I have two LCDs I'd I was thinking it would be nice if I could watch the news or SportCenter on my XP box while work on my mac.

I really know nothing about TV tuners. Never owned one. If I wasn't posting this I would just be on newegg sorting by reviews/ratings and see what I can dig up.

I figured I would see if any of yall have some 2cents first. :D

Oh and just have standard cable so I don't have anything crazy or HD to worry about.

cheers :jared:

Comments

  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited October 2008
    Always heard good things about Hauppage.
  • ArtemisArtemis New
    edited October 2008
    The TV Tuner I use is Hauppauge WinTV - HVR 950...
    it is both analog and digital, and of course, you can plug your cable cord into it.
    It does support HDTV if you wanted it too...

    The software that is bundled with it isn't too bad, and you can record stuff if you'd like. I'll be honest, I'm not really fond of the included detachable antennae, but that's not what you're really using it for, right? :)

    Oh, by the way, it is a USB TV Tuner, so it will plug into a high-speed port. I personally like USB TV Tuners because most TV Tuners have a rep for getting pretty hot while in use, and if you had one that fit into the express card slot of a laptop, it can really hot and uncomfortable for your hand. USB TV Tuners are more portable and can disapate heat better.

    My OS is XP Professional and this worked for me, but also supports Vista. I'd suggest it, but look around and see what rates best with customers :) (some people rated this TV tuner badly because they couldn't set it up, but I had no problems)
  • jaredjared College Station, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2008
    Danke!

    I'm going to look into that ^^.

    cheers :jared:
  • jaredjared College Station, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2008
    Ok, after looking into the brand you guys suggested I ordered this off of the egg.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116015
    Hauppauge turns your PC into an HDTV with their WinTV-HVR-1800. This PCIe X1 card has three tuners: FM radio, NTSC, and ATSC/clear QAM. The NTSC tuner is a 125 channel cable ready tuner for all of your standard over the air broadcasts or regular cable TV. The ATSC/clear QAM tuner supports all 18 ATSC formats including 1080i. You can watch the programming live or record it to disk as an MPEG-2 program stream.

    It looked solid, has FM radio, and includes a remote ;)

    I'll let yall know how it goes when I get it in next week.

    Cheers :jared:
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited November 2008
    Sweet, I'll be very interested in how it turns out - been debating adding this feature to the desktop for a loooooong time.
  • jaredjared College Station, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2008
    OK, just a follow up now that I have been using this card for about a week.

    The card is great. The radio signal is really strong and I am able to pickup stations I can't get in my house with any other player. I use the regular cable tuner and so far it also works well.

    The card I got came with a bunch of extra bells and whistles like digital tuner support, FM radio, a couple other inputs, and a MCE compatible remote. If you don't need/want any of this stuff you can save yourself $30-40 and get one of the lower models.

    However I am glad I got this model because I have been using the FM radio and I can't imagine not having the remote.

    The downside is the software. It sucks. Wait, that doesn't do it justice. ITS ****ING TERRIBLE. It looks like it was design for their tuners 12 years ago running under Win98 - it's a complete joke.

    If you are going to get this card you need to either
    - Use Microsft Media Center which is what I am doing right now and I love it.
    - Use third party software. I recommend MythTV on *nix or MediaPortal.

    Media Portal, http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ , is fantastic. It is made by one of the original developers from XBMC. Setting it up is kinda a long and not-so-well documented process however, which is why I ended up just switching to MCE - pure simplicity.

    cheers :jared:
  • yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
    edited November 2008
    jared wrote:
    The downside is the software. It sucks. Wait, that doesn't do it justice. ITS ****ING TERRIBLE. It looks like it was design for their tuners 12 years ago running under Win98 - it's a complete joke.

    I don't have current experience with the tuners on the market now, but about 3-4 years ago I tried a couple and absolutely HATED the software for them, too. They were only analog, had bad picture quality I thought, and I ended up selling them off. The software I used on one of them was actually supposed to be for some other product, but it worked better than what was supplied or what I could officially download for it. They both had fm, and I never could get decent reception on that either, even though I get perfect reception with all the other radios in the house. I tried different antennas, too.

    But, now I'm interested in a digital dvr solution again...

    Moral of my post - I think software almost always sucks with tv tuners.
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited November 2008
    Glad to hear you like the card. I have the 1600 (PCI version of your card), and love it. I agree with your assessment of the software... It sucks a fat one. I have used Snapstream BeyondTV for several years now and found it to be a very capable setup. The latest beta (4.9) supports ClearQAM for Hauppauge cards. If you have digital cable or FiOS you might be able to receive unencrypted digital cable signals. Not sure what Media Center's capabilities are for ClearQAM, but Snapstream has a 21 day trial if you're interested.
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