TV Tuner Questions

Ok, I’m going to get a TV Tuner PCI card for my computer soon, and I’ve been trying to research up on this so that I make the right decision in buying one. Problem is, there are few places to read up on this. My needs:
PCI
Works with my nVIDIA chipset & AMD Processor
Has HDTV
NTSC (American format)
Works with Windows XP
My PC:
AMD Athlon 2400+ ~2GHz
1216 MB RAM
64 MB Onboard graphics (will upgrade soon – Don’t worry about this)
My questions:
Should I go name brand or go fairly inexpensive on ebay?
Should I worry about the software that it comes with, or is there alternative software for watching TV with it that can work with any card? (NOTE: Needs to work on Windows XP)
Thanks, if you have any more to add or have any questions for me, please be sure to post!
Answer #1
First how much are you willing to pay? I have a hauppage TV-tuner card and its works pretty well and it came with a remote too!!!. As far as the software if you have window media center on your computer it will work no problem if you don’t you can probably download it
from the Microsoft website or it will be on a CD once you buy the card! so don’t worry about the software its not an issue. As far as brand name or inexpensive, as i mentioned above it depends how much your willing to pay, my card was worth about 120$ Canadian but that was 2 years ago so they must of have depreciated. Tell me what you hope to achieve with this card and i can give you some more info!
Answer #2
try googling “home theater forum” or just “home theater”
Answer #3
Thanks & Thanks
I’m willing to spend as much as needed, but I would REALLY not prefer to spend over $30-40 (yes, I’m cheap) so I can still have some money left over to go towards a video card.
I really don’t want to go to the work of changing my OS. I want to have my TV watching be through a program inside of Windows XP Pro.
Answer #4
Make sure you pay attention to the tuner, having the best/most stable tuner should be the highest priority IMO.
Most cards are inferior to separate TV tuner boxes (for use specifically with TV’s) or Personal Video Recorders in my experience. I rely exclusively with my PVR to record TV programmes and then download them to my PC. It is a very very slow USB connection but the resulting video is much better quality (free from errors and stuttering) than either of the two TV tuner cards I have or the third Hauppauge TV card that I tried for a short time.
The Nova T 500 has some incompatibility with almost all versions of Microshafts USB driver except one causing regular Blue Screen of Death which Hauppauge still have not fixed after 12 months.
But for the very limited amount of money you intend spending, getting the best most stable tuner might be a bit of a problem.
There is many separate TV viewing/recording applications and many are freeware so do not worry about having great software with the card. The best included software I have come across was the Winfast PVR TV tuner software which was pretty good but apart from that most included software is pretty crap, Hauppauge and Pinnacle software is particularly bad.
Answer #5
Thanks for the tip. Also, how would USB give better picture quality, I would think that PCI would be much better.
What is around the lowest amount I can spend (on ebay) while still getting a good, stable PCI TV Tuner?
Answer #6
USB or PCI does not make much difference to the reception quality, only the rate at which it is transferred to the PC, which should not make all that much difference. Except for maybe Hi Def stuff which might stretch the bandwidth a bit more.
Also, how would USB give better picture quality, I would think that PCI would be much better.
What I meant is a Personal Video Recorder which connects to my TV to give DVB-T (Digital TV in Europe) reception which has a USB connector on it. It has nothing to do with PC’s, it is for my TV but it does have a very slow USB connector on it which can transfer recordings. It gives better reception than any TV Tuner card available, whether it be PCI or USB. DVB-T receivers at least the better ones can lock the signal far better than TV Tuner cards and give much lower error rates which can lead to audio/video sync problems.
I have 2 PCI TV Tuners and neither is anywhere near as good as my PVR.
I don’t really have any card that I would recommend as none have been all that good from my experience but I have been looking for a Dual Tuner card which does tend to limit the amount of choices. There are a pile of single Tuner cards available, far too many for me to try. My Leadtek DTV 1000 T card is a single Tuner card, the reception is okay but not perfect (if perfection were compared with a good TV Tuner/PVR. The software is very good however, far better than just about all included software with TV cards.
Unfortunately it is all very hit and miss but my standards are very high. Some people would be satisfied with many cards but not me.
The Nova T 500 has a good Tuner on it from my experience of using it when I had a very poor Aerial inside my roof. It picked up channels that the Leadtek could not receive but even those were quite poor due to the poor Aerial. The thing I do not like about the Nova T 500 is that it seems to be two USB Tuners made into a PCI card with a VIA USB chip to convert the signals. It means having piles of IRQ’s allocated which I did not like and the problems with Win XP SP2 compatibility problems which have not yet been fixed. It is meant to work okay with Vista if your crazy enough to use that. If you do not install the microshaft USB updates it is meant to be okay as the current drivers only work with the older SP2 files.
Try asking in the videohelp, doom9 and any other video forums you can find and ask for recommendations and then research them as deeply as possible. What’s acceptable to some is not acceptable to others and people’s reception differs as well.
It’s a bit of a gamble.
Answer #7

My needs:
PCI
Works with my nVIDIA chipset & AMD Processor
Has HDTV
NTSC (American format)
Works with Windows XP
My PC:
AMD Athlon 2400+ ~2GHz
1216 MB RAM
64 MB Onboard graphics (will upgrade soon - Don't worry about this)
My questions:
Should I go name brand or go fairly inexpensive on ebay?
Should I worry about the software that it comes with, or is there alternative software for watching TV with it that can work with any card? (NOTE: Needs to work on Windows XP)
Thanks, if you have any more to add or have any questions for me, please be sure to post!
I have a hauppage Dual-Tuner card. And if you don’t have XP Media Centre, It’s not a problem, you just a 3rd party program called ‘Beyond TV’, Search it. It’s better than any other software or XP MCE to receive and record TV channel.
TV-Card doesn’t need any gfx card.
And what do you mean by HDTV? High-Definition TV?
My comment: TV-card is good if you don’t have DVD/Hard-Disk Recorder. If you want to watch record channel in TV with better quality, you’ve better buy DVD/Hard-Disk Recorder connected with TV.
Answer #8
only record analog TV here
I use the leadtek winfast TV 2000 XP expert (30-40 bucks last I looked) PCI card
the tuners ok but get better results with composite from my cable box (no S-video on cable box or I would use that)
might be a good starter card
yourHas HDTV has kept me from replying till now because the card duz not
assume you mean HDTV in
The software is very good however, far better than just about all included software with TV cards.+1
this is the main reason for the reply, for analog recording I think it’s better than most recording software, not just come with card apps
I search for TV cards ’bout every 6 months or so looking for the type of card you are looking for at a reasonable price
so far they are all to expensive or missing function I want as for software it seems less is available now that 2 years ago, maybe the crap M$ media center PC app has killed development