DescentBB

Which one is the best?

I have the ATI All-in-wonder thingamajig. The TV part looks ok. I'm not impressed at all with the redcording capabilities, although my friend says once you burn it to dvd and watch it on an actual TV, it looks fine. I'd stay clear of it if you want to record and watch on the 'puter.

One thing that's absolutely terrible with this one is the TV guide channel software (Not TVGuide(tm) ). It's shoddy, but it is functional.

I am familiar with ATI's and nVidia's TV Tuner capabilities. However, they do not support FM Tuner capabilities. Do you know which is the best card that supports both capabilities?

Leadtek has a TV tuner, don't know what its features are though. Less than $50 too, I think.

I know they have one and I know MSI has one also. But I am trying to look for the best. Also, I don't plan to buy the card. I just want to expand my knowledge.

I've done alot of research on this when i was looking for one... i ended up buying a compro videomate tv ultra, it has the best picture of any tvcard that isnt hdtv. Compro is constantly updating the video player and it even has the ability to power up the computer, record the show and power off the computer. The gold card is around $60 with a radio, the ultra card is $120 and comes with a special noise filtering chip and 3d y/c seperation. These only work with NTSC, so only buy if your in the US or japan. These special chips set this card apart from all other tv tuners as this card actaully gets better reception than my $500 32" sony tv.... It's amazing to see how much of the line noise it filters out...

If this recomendation aint enough for you, go to www.Tv-cards.com. You should find the answer to your question there, as there are plenty of reviews there...

hauppage (spelling?) makes some very nice tv/fm tuner cards, but they r expensive. I'd go for leadtek as the cheaper solution.

I woulndt recomend hauppauge at all, there are numerous users out there who had the same problems i had.... Thier software suked!!! you have to install the base app, then install patch #1... then patch #2.. and so on!! in the end, the tv app is buggy and crashes alot... My hauppauge card is still sitting on my shelf in a box, and it was a total waste of money.

as far as the leadtek cards go, check out the link i posted above... I've never owned one of these cards myself, but it seems most users have stated that they have stability problems and very poor audio with thier cards...

If you want quality, Then Hauppauge (Pronounced HOP-HOG) is the way to go - but they ARE expensive. ATI AIW cards are probably the best all round solution because it's a single-slot solution, and you get their nice Remote Control and the PVR software to boot.

whatever you do, don't get an ATI TV-Wonder... for that matter, the software for ATI is crap all around. And it complains everytime you start it that I don't have the latest radeon drivers installed.... DUH my video card is a GeForce!!

Its prone to crashing (and sends out 120v out on the ground of the cable lead...) and is just generally crappy. I've been waiting for a thread like this one for a while (hasn't been a high priority...)

forget about software...there is only two applications that are usable (sagetv is one)...anything else is crap.

it's about hardware, and hauppage makes some of the best for the price.

hauppauge is only good if your dead set on having hardware encoding! Thier pvr software is buggy and vot very user frinedly. Not to mention that thier hardware has very standard picture quality... Compro's $60 videomate gold cards are FAR superior(and no one has anything that compairs to thier ultra card) altho they they have no hardware mpeg 2 chips on board...never mattered much to me as i choose to use divx anyway!! hauppauge cards for me have also had problems with interlacing and color quality(recordings blead the color out so much they almost seemed black and white)Stability problems still pop up with almost every release and it seems every patch breakes more then it fixes.... I would say these guys are the ATI of tv cards... they make descent hardware but have a bunch of monkeys makeing the drivers and software to support the hardware!!!

I found Avermedia's 203 card which you could most likey pick up for around $20 dollars to have much stronger reception in both the radio and the tv than both hauppauge cards i owned. but if you do get an avermedia card email me for thier latest tv app... it makes the card much more enjoyable!!!

And under no cercumstances should you even consider the TV wonder by ati... If you get an AIW card your fine.... but ati's tv wonder is thier bastard child out of all the multimedia cards they put out. for example... it took them over 1 year and 9 months to put out BETA drivers for winxp for thier tvwonder a while back(even though the retail box clearly stated it was winxp ready!!!). they still crashed alot, had audio problems and no REAL MMC was released for this card altho many tryed to hack aiw MMC releases to work on it...Bottom line for this card is, ATI dont give thier tv wonder line good support, dont buy it!!! If you dont believe me, a short stroll over to rage3d.com and check out the tv wonder thread... i still pop over there occasionally just to see if they ever support the dang card... seems thier tvwonder pro is just as poorly supported.

While your looking for a tv card, something to consider is the chip the card is built around..

bt878 - older 8 bit chip, very compatable with 3rd party software, has NO macrovision built in like the 2 newer chips(so you can record those old vhs movies if you want to..) and can look as good as the newer cards as far as image quality with a program like discaler.

philips 713x - latest chip from philips, is 9 bit and has the cleanest pictuer of the 3 chips used. Does have built in macrovision and you will see this used in most of the latest tv cards.

Conexant CX2388x - 10 bit chip, has the best picture quality IF you have a very clean signal... but these chips are the most prone to pick up EMI and as a restult, usually end up looking like crap, they also have the poorest 3rd party support, so if you dont like the software that comes with it, your sh!t out of luck.

-edit-
Just checked out sagetv... wtf??? who the he11 would consider paying for a tv card, and then pay another $79 for thier clunky tv app!!! It looks as bad as showshifter!! and probably takes over as much of the system!!! There really are tv cards out there with good software, Compro is one of them, and avermedia is another(only thier latest tv app tho)

I have an ATI TV-Wonder VE, and it works well enough for me. I don't use their software though, I found a handy TV tuner program that produces a better quality image and a full 60FPS capture (ATI's software only does 30FPS). Check out DScaler if you have one of these cards, or another card with a BT series chip.

Most video capture cards support DirectShow or Video for Windows in some way; these APIs allow the use of non-proprietary software with your card (which manufacturers invariably prefer using over creating their own system). DScaler is a very good example. I have an AVerMedia TV Studio FM something rather, it has FM and a remote and has never caused me any problems. With DScaler and some noise filters, its picture quality beats the hell out of any analog cable-connected TV I've ever seen (which probably isn't saying much, but I dunno). Very nice card, stable, works with most anything, and I'm pretty sure it removes macrovision; I've only once had any trouble with visual quality, and that comprised of three lines of crap color from an S-Video signal coming out of a very cheesy DVD player (which I don't think is what macrovision causes).

The directshow and video for windows api's do in fact work,but discaler tries to not use those as it comes with it's own drivers to access the hardware directly(some people dont even load the manufactures drivers if they use only discaler). If discaler has to use the directshow filter, it looses some of it's funcionality(like it does with some of the less supported card's chips!!!!

Patches, i have the same card, and i agree, it's a very nice one.. expecailly for the money!!! the aver tv studio can usually be picked up for around $30 or less... and out of the bt878 cards, it has some of the best reception. It is however not as good as the compro card i recently got... it's just a matter of what your looking for. As far as macrovision goes, it gets in the way of recording stuff off of protected content, i know a few guys that tried to backup old movies on tapes by connecting thier vcr to the video/audio in on the tv card and converting to dvd... with any tv card that has the 9 or 10 bit decoders, the picture quality is horriable, the contrast/ brightness gets darker and darker, then suddenly gets bright.. and this repeat through out the movie.

-I also have avermedia's latest pvr software and drivers, avermedia is charging $10 as they liscenced intervideo to create a large part of this new package, which rivals discaler in image quality and is nicely laid out(it's much nicer than what came with that card.) If you'd like to give it a spin, contact me, the download weighs in at ~25 megs.

Teddy wrote:as far as the leadtek cards go, check out the link i posted above... I've never owned one of these cards myself, but it seems most users have stated that they have stability problems and very poor audio with thier cards...

Sorry to bump this up, but I have got to get my two cents in on this.

I actually own a Leadtek TV tuner/capture card and I've never had the first problem with it. Hell, I even have a good friend of mine that lives near Mobius' pad that has the exact same card I do (TV2000XP) and doesn't have a problem with it. The card is VERY solid, as is the software. The PVR application worked flawlessly out of the box (which is a rare thing indeed). I only wish that it came with a copy of Adobe Premiere instead of Ulead's garbage software. I'd use VirtualDub, but I capture in mpeg2 streams and VD doesn't support mpeg at all, which is a real shame.

Allot depends on the hardware that you use. Google for Dscaler and try it out. Very sharp picture quality and thats only on the happague. Happegue's default software stinks.

Top Wop wrote:Allot depends on the hardware that you use. Google for Dscaler and try it out. Very sharp picture quality and thats only on the happague. Happegue's default software stinks.

Oh, the video editing software works, but it lacks alot of the features that I would like to have. My main beef is with "MovieFactory" which has YET to burn a working VCD or SVCD disk on either of my burners. It burns DVDs just fine, but nothing else in a workable fashion on standalone players (and yes, they all do support SVCD and VCD, and yes I have tried different media brands).