tv card recommendations?

P

patrick

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Ok so it's christmas and I get to buy myself some new toys. What I want at the moment is a tv card, has anyone used one they can recommend. Just for the free stations for now, won't be linking to dstv till next christmas hehe.

A usb card would be nice so that I could use it on my laptop, but i've heard the quality suffers compared to an internal card, any experience with the usb's?

thanks,

Patrick
 
Pretty much the only good ones are the hauppage ones. You should be able to get them at take2.co.za
 
gets my vote
as long as thats the one with the remote
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Thats the 1.

Leadtek® TV2000XP PCI TV Tuner + REMOTE ( NO FM), support video capturing - Certified by Microsoft XP WHQL Test
 
JStrike said:
That card doesn't have a hardware mpeg encoder
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Why would you want that when the software does it for you in half the time using your CPU and RAM rather than that of the card.
 
Person : Because if you are building a HTPC, you will probably want to watch recorded shows whilest recording another. To do this smoothly, you *need* a hardware mpeg encoder on the card. If you do not believe me, look it up in any forum. Hauppage is almost always the recommened path
 
JStrike said:
Person : Because if you are building a HTPC, you will probably want to watch recorded shows whilest recording another. To do this smoothly, you *need* a hardware mpeg encoder on the card. If you do not believe me, look it up in any forum. Hauppage is almost always the recommened path
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Im sure hes not going to be building a HTPC, as our TV is not HDTV so it would be pointless. The MDTV we have here in south africa you can stream and watch at the same time using any TV card.

For the DSTV all you need is a SCART to svideo adapter, and its all up and running.
 
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Person said:
Thats the 1.

Leadtek® TV2000XP PCI TV Tuner + REMOTE ( NO FM), support video capturing - Certified by Microsoft XP WHQL Test
Click to expand...

I had one, worked pretty well. Can't argue with the price either. I now have the TV2000 Expert, same thing except that it has FM too. Nice. I record my TV shows on it.
 
Person said:
Why would you want that when the software does it for you in half the time using your CPU and RAM rather than that of the card.
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If your recording live TV it will take exactly the same amount of time to encode with software as it would if you encode with the card. Secondly, because the card is doing the encoding, you can do other stuff on ur computer without any performace loss, for example, you can still play games while ur recording TV.
 
This time i have to go against person, the hauppauge cards is your only option, pricey, but well worth it.
 
I bought a cheapass chronos video shuttle II, with the remote and all... it's been brilliant. I think it cost me two or three hundred bucks
 
Person : What on earth does HDTV have to do with anything. He was talking about creating a HTPC which stands for Home Theatre Personal Computer. Software commonly used for this is Windows MCE, MythTV and Meedio. And the card recommeded is a Hauppage card
 
JStrike said:
Person : What on earth does HDTV have to do with anything. He was talking about creating a HTPC which stands for Home Theatre Personal Computer. Software commonly used for this is Windows MCE, MythTV and Meedio. And the card recommeded is a Hauppage card
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You only need that Technology and software for HDTV, a normal TV card just using Software will do the job just fine here in south africa. We do not have HDTV so there is no need tp purchase a costly card - as you dont need it.
 
Phew so much info... Ok I must admit R250 sounds good, what do the hauppage's cost? Don't think I'll be doing much rcording and watching at the same time... Still would prefer a USB rather than pci, anyone used one?
 
Person said:
You only need that Technology and software for HDTV, a normal TV card just using Software will do the job just fine here in south africa. We do not have HDTV so there is no need tp purchase a costly card - as you dont need it.
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Actually there are some nice benefits to using HTPC software like MCE2005/Meedio/Media Portal - like live tv pausing/rewinding - and scheduling according to a program guide (like telling it you want it to record CSI every week instead of having to enter the spesific time).

It's also going to work nicely with DSTV if you get something like the MCE Remote control which comes with an IR transmitter. Allowing your HTPC to change the channels on your satellite decoder automatically as needed for recordings.

But you do need a hardware encoder card - like the hauppauge - because software cards are not supported AT ALL by most of the HTPC software with limited support by others (like media portal).
 
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