Seek Advice: Need TV Tuner Card w/ Second Monitor Output

[Cy Johnson]

Hello,
I have a Radeon 9500 Pro that has a second monitor output (DVI). Is
there a video card that I can/should use (or is this even the best
solution?) that integrates directly with the video card? I would like
to watch/record TV on it, but don't want to use that much CPU time.

Case 1 (cost effective):
Just hook second monitor to dvi/svga connector on video card and watch
TV on second monitor without using CPU time. That would be great if
the data could be transfered directly to Radeon card, and not use the
motherboard bus at all.

Case 2 (Ideal Case):
Would like to use second output of radeon to hook to TV (possibly with
HDTV connector) or to Monitor (with dvi to vga connector). Ideal case
would then be to use some sort of RF device (could be 802.11x) to
transmit signal to TV in the other room and use the RF remote control.
Even better, satisfy Case 1 (cositive effective case) at the same
time.

Thanks in advance,
--Cy

 

[Mangyrat]

your best bet is use the dvi to vga conector and get a 2nd monitor.
the tv"as a monitor" is realy crapy res if you very want it for things like
runing email on it and surfing the net on the other.
after you go dual monitors youl never go back.

to watch tv you need a tv card. i use a ati tv wonder and it works fine, but
is lacking a few things i wanted extra like pic in pic pause live tv things
like that so i ordred a WinFast TV2000 XP Expert..
the ati worked great i just wanted more out of it. the ati one was easy to
just drag and drop it on the 2nd monitor but every now and then it would
blank and you had to close and reopen it for the pic to show. as for the
winfast i have no idea if it will like a dual monitors or not ill find out
next week.

i might as well give you this link now your going to want it after you go
duals.
http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/
a few things your going to want to try is ultramon "a must have tool for
more than one monitor if you ask me" and maybe video saver for playing a
movie on both monitor's as a screensaver.
ask any ? you have in the forum and check out the gallery when you get the
time

 

[Cy Johnson]

Thanks for the good info. I was thinking about the ATI tv wonder, and
didn't realize that it was lacking the pause live tv feature. The ATI
web doesn't really give good specs on that thing. I did find some
faqs on the computer "stop responding or lock up on a system which
features a Hyper-Threaded CPU"...you might want to check it:
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4261.html

I am going to try out that ultramon...that's a nice interface.
Good luck with the WinFast TV2000 XP Expert, I am going to look for
some reviews.
--Cy

 

[Mangyrat]

the problem i have is not realy a problem all i have to do is close and
reopen the tv window. it rarly happens and only when im moveing it from on
monitor to the other, mor than likly its the video overlay junk. im running
a ati 9700pro, barton 2500+, 1 gig ddr 3200, biostart M7NCD pro.
i might keep the ati tv card in and use both to see what happens with both
runing.

one thing on the WinFast TV2000 XP Expert has me confused the sound in out.
i dont see a jack like the ati has but it has a conector like the cd rom
sound conector so that may work out better in the long run.

ultramon takes some getting used to but after you play with it you find a
lot of great toys in it.
i keep 2 icons on my task bar one for singel display "game playing" and the
other for dual display.
one click and you can change back and forth it also can save the ions
position for you.
how many times have you changed the res and icons moved around where you
dont want them then change back and have to drag them around? but my faverit
tool in it is the task bar on both monitors.

 

[Mangyrat]

the problem i have is not realy a problem all i have to do is close and
reopen the tv window. it rarly happens and only when im moveing it from on
monitor to the other, mor than likly its the video overlay junk. im running
a ati 9700pro, barton 2500+, 1 gig ddr 3200, biostart M7NCD pro.
i might keep the ati tv card in and use both to see what happens with both
runing.

one thing on the WinFast TV2000 XP Expert has me confused the sound in out.
i dont see a jack like the ati has but it has a conector like the cd rom
sound conector so that may work out better in the long run.

ultramon takes some getting used to but after you play with it you find a
lot of great toys in it.
i keep 2 icons on my task bar one for singel display "game playing" and the
other for dual display.
one click and you can change back and forth it also can save the ions
position for you.
how many times have you changed the res and icons moved around where you
dont want them then change back and have to drag them around? but my faverit
tool in it is the task bar on both monitors.

 

[Mangyrat]

ok im testing the new tv card right now.
it dont want to go to 2nd monitor with out locking up.
ill get it worked out soner or later. other than that and the sound setup
for recording "had to use CD in due to the sound cable is like a CD one" i
like it a lot so far. but its also lacking in things i liked that the ATI
had. like haveing the tv as desk top it works but you have to lock the desk
top icons position and it puts a colored shadow under them, easy fix with
transtxt app.
pause live tv works fine. input from camcorder works good and is good
quality.
had to run out and get a cheap Camcorder to test the input recordings and im
realy happy with it.
i ran in to a few problems "i dont read directions lol" didnt have the
remote thing pluged in all the way so remote didnt work at first. also one
other problem i ran in to when recordeing at mpeg 2. if i used windows media
player to play back it hard locked my sys. but thats probly due to my sys
needing a realy good clean up and all that. over all it has everything the
ati is lacking but ati has some things that work better. Im going with the
best of both worlds ati in back up sys and winfast in main sys.

 

[Mangyrat]

ok i worked out everything but getting it to work on the 2nd monitor. it
hard locks every time. but i can live with it i need to do video editing and
recording on the main monitor anyway. the winfast card is almost every thing
they say it is. ill try it with a nvida card later on after i do some video
editing/recording. kinda funny the FM radio works and all that on 2nd
monitor but not tv. has to be video overlay with my 9700pro ill try it on a
cheap fx 5200 later on.
one new bug i found if i set up dual monitors "with ultramon" while tv is
runing it hard locks the tv, that is leading me to think its my video card
and not the tv card. ill get it worked out one day or ill just move it to
back up sys for video editingin and tv and put the ati back in this one

 

[Cy Johnson]

Thanks much for all you comments.
I installed ultramon on both home pc (xp) and office pc (w2k). It is
pretty awesome. Got a matrox at work, and I was using it's drivers
and utilities to do some of the features that ultamon does. Ultamon
gives you alot more options and some nice buttons on title bar. I
have noticed that my home pc (xp) has become a little unstable.
Mostly when I am browsing the web, and click on some links, it hangs
system.
I read a whole bunch of revies on all sorts of cards. One thing I was
looking for was an hardware encoder (and a hardware decoder too). I
went with the MSI TV @nywhere PCI TV Tuner Card & Remote w/FM Master.
It it is supposed to have a really good hardware encoder/decoder, but
the software is not supposed to be so hot. It was only $52 bucks, so
I decided to get it for a short term solution.
Have you read the on extremetech.com about the new card ATI is
supposed to come out with in 1-2 months? It's an ATI HDTV Wonder.
Here is the link:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1528637,00.asp

I think I am going to wait for that one (maybe after a few months it's
been out, so ati can work out the bugs). I bought one of the first
ati radeon 9500 pro's, and it would plan any 3d cames for about 4
months, until ati came out with new drivers.

Well I will let you know how it goes...It's important to me to get it
working on second monitor.
--Cy

 

[Mangyrat]

thanx for the info.
other then the one bug i found and a driver shuld fix it. the delux card has
a driver fix so they will probly have one for the epert some day.
as for a new video card im going to hold off this 9700 pro is holding up
good. i got it when they first came out and i payed big time for it so im
going to get my $ out of it lol.
but HDTV is looking good i may get it