Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : TV Tuner

[Joshua]

I'm currently looking for an inexpensive TV tuner for my desktop (XP SP2, 1GB RAM, 3.2Ghz) - Either PCI or USB. Anyone know of any decent yet inexpensive tuners?

[akashik]

Actually I have this one bookmarked - looking at getting it myself.

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...799&pfp=SEARCH

Online only, but a very good brand at a great price.

[cywkevin]

Here's the deal with tuners. You can go cheap and get reasonable live quality. But if you want to record I reccommend you go get a nice card for 100+ I've used Kworld. Quality was a C . (Could have been a crappy cable signal will check in apartment in a couple weeks). My next card will be the 138 dollar hauppage card from newegg.

[akashik]

The one listed above is a hauppage (link currently down as they 'restock' so it might be gone when the come back).

In store that deal at $40 (online) or so was over $80.

It's their lower end product but those guys make some good stuff.

[MGCJerry]

Also, just a note for people since I see many complaints about TV tuners.

TV broadcasts here in the states uses NTSC, which is a significantly lower resolution than a monitor. So, when a small video is enlarged to full screen, there will be pixellation, and it will look fairly bad but some tuners have filters where the fullsize window will look half decent. So, just something to keep in mind.

Anyway, I have the Ledtek PVR2000 and its great. It was one of the few tuners that I could find that supports full Stereo audio output on the TV & FM tuner.

[akashik]

Originally posted by MGCJerry
when a small video is enlarged to full screen, there will be pixellation, and it will look fairly bad but some tuners have filters where the fullsize window will look half decent. So, just something to keep in mind.

Hauppage cards then to have a filter in their software to combat this - I forget what they named it as it's been a few years since I had one installed. I never had any issues with pixelation, though I was running it in Australia under PAL broadcasts (which have a higher definition than US NTSC).