Help me purchase a tuner card.

[|darc|]

I just moved into an apartment in Baton Rouge for college (I am now attending LSU). Most of my stuff is still at my home in New Orleans, to which I drive on weekends. My television is a 27" CRT and I don't really want to move it because it's a pain in the ass and is big.

But the apartment has cable+HBO provided, so I want to be able to take advantage of that. I have a 19" fullscreen LCD computer monitor, and I want to have a TV tuner card to watch TV on.

I don't know a whole lot about TV tuning, but it must be able to do 720p HD, work with analog and digital signals (so I can use both the land cable signal and get HD over the air; of course I will just use an A/B switch instead of having two coax-ins), and it has to have at least composite (preferably s-video support) in and have no lag for Wii video gaming on it.

I don't want to go over $200.

I hope you guys have some recommendations on this; it looks as if it's impossible to tell whether the card will have lag or not until one buys it and tests it...

[MulletMan13]

ElGato EyeTV Hybrid has no lag, can do all of that and has onboard processing... and you can use it with any of your computers ( I believe it is also WIndows compatible?)

But if it is only going to stay in your tower, then just got something by ATI

[|darc|]

( I believe it is also WIndows compatible?)

It isn't.

But if it is only going to stay in your tower, then just got something by ATI

I can't "just get something by ATI" because ATI doesn't list "laggy video making this impossible to play games on" on the features list.

[Calavera]

Got this from another forum, thought it might be helpful.

All PCI tuner cards I've used had lag making console play impossible; the difference was in the degree of lag. The only luck I've had with PC based tuners was with ATI's All-in-Wonder line (specifically: the AIW 128, the AIW 7500, and the AIW 8500DV; all AGP cards and absolutely no lag).

[curt_grymala]

I am somewhat in the market for a tuner card as well and I'm a little confused.

If you buy a tuner card, does that mean you use that as your display adapter in your computer?

If so, are there tuner cards out there that you can use in conjunction with your existing display adapter? I don't really want to replace my display adapter, I just want to be able to somehow run television into my computer.

[nymus]

I stopped using Media Center because of this (buffering) and the third-party programs I've used don't have lag on the same card(s).

Is the lag issue hardware or software-related?

[|darc|]

I am somewhat in the market for a tuner card as well and I'm a little confused.

If you buy a tuner card, does that mean you use that as your display adapter in your computer?

If so, are there tuner cards out there that you can use in conjunction with your existing display adapter? I don't really want to replace my display adapter, I just want to be able to somehow run television into my computer.

You can get one that's integrated, or one that's separate.

[Calavera]

I stopped using Media Center because of this (buffering) and the third-party programs I've used don't have lag on the same card(s).

Is the lag issue hardware or software-related?

Using Dscaler seems to help a lot of cards.

[Chaniyth]

@|darc|

What you are looking for is a combo tuner card. Combo tuners have both analog and digital tuners on one card. This is similar to a hybrid tuner, except there are 2 separate tuners on the card. One can watch analog while recording digital, or visa versa. The card operates as an analog tuner and a digital tuner. The advantages over 2 separate cards are cost and utilization of expansion slots in the computer. As the US converts from analog to digital broadcasts, these tuners are gaining popularity.

I did some research and this one appears to be the best out -- Saber DA-1N1-E (PCI-E) Combo Tuner by Vista View. It uses a 1x PCI-E slot (the uber small PCI-E slot), 2 tuners – HDTV (ATSC) and NTSC with hardware encoding, Hardware encoding with ViXS' XCode II video processor with 3D Comb filtering, HDTV support for entire range of ATSC standard including 1080p, Analog TV Encoding up to Full D1 quality (720x 480 NTSC), and more.

Here is a link to it: http://www.vistaview.tv/saber-da-1n1-e.html



You can buy one for only $99.99 + shipping from here.

Hope this helps.



*** There is also a PCI only model Saber DA-1N1-I (PCI) that is a half-height PCI card; but it omits the RCA (phono) style audio input, as well as omits a dedicated composite video jack.

[MKE]

i'm looking for a similar thing,

so far i'm looking at a Leadtek pvr3000. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... 22&cat=VID

i coulnd't find any reviews for that specific card, but their other ones get good reviews. Plus that one supports component video. Thats huge for me so instead of having the card do the tuning, i can use an IR Blaster to tune w/ the cable box.

[Chaniyth]

i'm looking for a similar thing,

so far i'm looking at a Leadtek pvr3000. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... 22&cat=VID

i coulnd't find any reviews for that specific card, but their other ones get good reviews. Plus that one supports component video. Thats huge for me so instead of having the card do the tuning, i can use an IR Blaster to tune w/ the cable box.

Just as a reminder, this card is NOT "future proof" as it only has an ANALOG tuner, starting Febuary 17, 2009 the national stations will no longer be broadcasted in analog, and will become digital only. Unfortunately, this and many other TV Tuner cards will no longer function, and you MUST hook up a converter box, which may or may not be compatible with it. I mean hell, for only $99.99 ($10 more) you can get a future proof TV Tuner card.

[MKE]

I know, but thats what i mean when i say i'm not using the card as a tuner. I'm going to hook my cable box up to it w/ component cables, and use an IR Blaster and tune it that way (through the cable box). that way i can still use my computer as a PVR, but not loose any features (like the movies on demands, and time warners "start over" feature)

[|darc|]

Invizix, do you have that card? I need to know if it lags or not.

[Chaniyth]

Invizix, do you have that card? I need to know if it lags or not.

Unfortunately I do not, but i'm seriously considering possibly purchasing one, review sites have given it nothing but good ratings, and don't mention any sort of lag. A-lot of TV Tuner cards rely on software encoding, thus causing video lag and hangups, however the Saber DA-1N1-E does all the hardware encoding on the card itself while the card tunes TV, thus should eliminate any video lag.

[|darc|]

Invizix, do you have that card? I need to know if it lags or not.

Unfortunately I do not, but i'm seriously considering possibly purchasing one, review sites have given it nothing but good ratings, and don't mention any sort of lag. A-lot of TV Tuner cards rely on software encoding, thus causing video lag and hangups, however the Saber DA-1N1-E does all the hardware encoding on the card itself while the card tunes TV, thus should eliminate any video lag.

Actually, from what I've read, it's the opposite. If the hardware is encoding the video, you always get laggy video from the hardware, where if the card relies on software encoding, you can either have laggy software encoding or bypass the encoding and directly view the video stream without lag. However, if you have hardware encoding, you can't bypass the encoding step and directly view the video stream.

[SuperMegatron]

I use one from nvidia. Its in my hp home theatre pc and my dreamcast is hooked to it and plays fine with no lag. I dont have the machine in front of my right now so I cant give you the exact card but its in a hp z558. The only issue I have is it displays everything thats not hd in 4x8 instead of expanding it to 16x9.