First TV Tuner

So, I'm looking to get a TV tuner for my PC, it would be cheaper than buying a TV for my room, and my monitor is big enough IMO for my tiny room. I've done some looking around and i've seen these cards from $15 to a few hundred. Whats the deal? I want to be able to watch cable channels, pick up the free HD broadcasted channels, and connect other devices (console, VCR, etc) to it. Any recommendations or warnings?

Simple, The cheap ones rely on Windows Media Drivers (WMD) which is software based encoder.

The expensive ones are hardware based encoders which is the ones you want. But be sure to check the specs sometimes it could be software encoders but stuff full of bloat-ware or other useless stuff.

Anything from Hauppauge will work fine I think the cheapest one is Win-TV-PVR 150 or 1045 and They are based on mpeg 2 hardware encoders.

You might as well buy hauppauge cards because Most PVR application *like GB-PVR, mediaportal, mythTV, etc.. etc...* support these cards just because of there hardware encoders.

so... something like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16815116625

The talk about the 1 second lag kind of turns me off though...

Well if you don't like it thats fine, just find something thats has a hardware based encoder. It doesn't exactly have to be hauppauge card. But I'm just saying alot of opensource software support the majority of hauppauge cards.

I've built my PVR *Personal Video Recorder* on an ASUS TV7133 but when I found out that it was a software based encoder, I was disappointed. I had to do alot of modification to the pvr software just to get my card to run. It works great tho, but I can't upgrade to any of the latest versions of my PVR software because I would break all the modification I did for it.

I'm just posting my experience on my great journey to my DIY DVR system.

first, what is the difference between these 2 cards?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16815116625
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16815116631

Now, this Leadtek card seems pretty good. Reviews make it sound like it has better software than the Hauppage cards. However I dont see any composite cable jacks. This means I wouldnt be able to connect consoles, or other devices right?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16814122200

Thanks

The Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150 PCI is pretty much a standard tuner. Only does Cable and Video In stuff.

The Hauppauge 1062 PCI Interface WinTV-PVR-150 MCE Kit Tuner is for Windows Xp Media Center Edition machines. It does not only Cable in but does A/V Inputs.

There pretty much both the same chipset just different model numbers built specifically for different usages.

And you're right about Leadtek, they do release quality products.

The model you have linked now there is no other inputs except for analog Cable and OTA FM radio.


You also said you wanted to watch the new HD content being provided, that would be hard since most tuners are for analog usage but there are some out there. Just look for ATSC or digital QAM support since analog is NTSC in the U.S of A.

HTH
~Mp

Will these products only work with MCE? I have XP pro...

Well for the MCE kit, I went to Hauppauge site and.. let me put it in a quote.



I wouldn't honestly know if all cards *Hauppauge, leadtek, Avermedia, etc...* certified for MCE will work on other versions of Xp or not. They should via hardware wise but Windows driver or Linux support might vary.