Looking for a Video Card that would work for a PVR

[Orion]

I read Brian Underdahl's Build Your Own PC Home Enterainment System.
In it he suggests the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV.

I can't find that card new anywhere, as it's quite old. Are there any
newer cards that can do the same things? I know that the ATI
All-In-Wonder 9800 PRO will do what I want but it's pretty pricey.

I would like it to have a TV Tuner, video capture ability, DVI out,
and a remote. I want to be able to do "Tv-On-Demand" in other words, a
personal video recorder.

I don't care much about the brand or chipset, as long as it's a good
card.

Thanks.

 

[Bas Ruiter]

I got a seperate TV card for that purpose, the LeadTek WinFast TV200 XP
Deluxe. See: http://www.leadtek.com/multimedia.html It had good reviews,
and is cheap.

There's also the new Compro VideoMate TV Gold Plus, recently out.
There's a review here:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/compro-gold-plus/index.html?99528

 

[drumguy1384]

I read Brian Underdahl's Build Your Own PC Home Enterainment System.
In it he suggests the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV.

I can't find that card new anywhere, as it's quite old. Are there any
newer cards that can do the same things? I know that the ATI
All-In-Wonder 9800 PRO will do what I want but it's pretty pricey.

I would like it to have a TV Tuner, video capture ability, DVI out,
and a remote. I want to be able to do "Tv-On-Demand" in other words, a
personal video recorder.

I don't care much about the brand or chipset, as long as it's a good
card.

Thanks.

I've been using a WinTV PVR250 for a few months now, and I couldn't be
happier with it. It does hardware MPEG2 encoding (an essential for PVR ...
otherwise the rendering can't keep up with the stream and you get bad skips)

It's not an All-in-One solution, but it has worked wonderfully for me.

It also comes with an infrared remote for controlling all of the functions.
Just hit the pause button to pause live TV, or the record button to record a
show. Of course you can also pre-set programs to record if you like. Just
like a real PVR box. The remote also can control other windows multi-media
software WPM, WinDVD, etc ... at least as far as
play/pause/stop/previous/next/.

Best part about using a separate PVR card is that you can keep it even when
you change video cards ... which is almost certain to happen before you
would need to replace this card.

The DVI out you're looking for would be part of the video card, and not the
PVR, in this case ... so you could be free to choose a video card with the
options you want without worrying about the TV chip.

One of the greatest things about PC's as multi-media and/or gaming systems
is their modular nature. And using separate modules, while adding a little
more possible configuration trouble, will almost always result in better
performance ... as all-in-one solutions rarely have all of the features of
independent components.


Drumguy