What to look for when choosing a TV tuner?

I'm looking to buy a TV tuner card for my Athlon 64. Although I'm not
looking to spend a fortune on the best TV tuners out there, I would
like to get a decent one. I'll be using it mostly to casually watch
TV on a window in the desktop while I'm working on the computer, and
also maybe to record stuff on my hard drive while I'm out.

Any ideas on what features I should look for when I start browsing the
web for product information?

Opticreep wrote:

> I'm looking to buy a TV tuner card for my Athlon 64. Although I'm not
> looking to spend a fortune on the best TV tuners out there, I would
> like to get a decent one. I'll be using it mostly to casually watch
> TV on a window in the desktop while I'm working on the computer, and
> also maybe to record stuff on my hard drive while I'm out.
>
> Any ideas on what features I should look for when I start browsing the
> web for product information?

If you're looking for an inexpensive board, look for a Phillips 7130 series
chip (7130, 7133, etc). Compro <http://www.comprousa.com/> is well
regarded--their entry level board is 35 bucks if you can find one and they
have a very nice board for about 80 with the same image-processing chip
used on some high-end television recievers.

If you're recording off the air or if your cable company has unencrypted HD
you might want to consider an HD-capable board--Dvico's boards work and an
Athlon-64 certainly has enough processing power to handle them--they go for
about $150 <http://www.copperbox.com/lite/htpc.php>.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Opticreep wrote:

> I'll be using it mostly to casually watch
> TV on a window in the desktop while I'm working on the computer, and
> also maybe to record stuff on my hard drive while I'm out.

Sounds like what I use my TV card for: WinFast TV2000 XP Expert from
Leadtek. Runs smoothy, supports various compression and encoding formats
(MPEG1/2/4, VCD, SVCD, DVD, WMV), the software works well, and the
package includes a radio tuner as well as a remote control. VCR
functionality, Picture-in-Picture and time-shifting are also there. I
paid fifty Euro for it, and didn't regret the purchase.

M.