TV tuners - the competition

[/mel/]

My last two cards have been ATI AIWs (8500DV, 9800Pro). However, I'd quite
like to move away from the constraints of a combined graphics and TV tuner
card. One feature of the AIW that I do like is having the TV as desktop
wallpaper. Does anyone know if any other make of TV tuner card has this
feature?

Being in the UK I need a PAL tuner, not NTSC. I don't need fancy-looking
skinned TV apps either - just something that works reliably and gives an
output of reasonable quality (I do sometimes record and burn to DVD, but not
often).

I've wondered about USB2 tuners but I'm not sure that they have consistent
bandwidth to cope, so probably a PCI card would be best for me.

 

[Newbury]

My last two cards have been ATI AIWs (8500DV, 9800Pro). However, I'd
quite like to move away from the constraints of a combined graphics
and TV tuner card. One feature of the AIW that I do like is having
the TV as desktop wallpaper. Does anyone know if any other make of TV
tuner card has this feature?

Being in the UK I need a PAL tuner, not NTSC. I don't need
fancy-looking skinned TV apps either - just something that works
reliably and gives an output of reasonable quality (I do sometimes
record and burn to DVD, but not often).

I've wondered about USB2 tuners but I'm not sure that they have
consistent bandwidth to cope, so probably a PCI card would be best
for me.

I just installed an XTASY VisionTek ATI Theater 550 Pro PCI in a system
that has an XTASY ATI Radeon X850XT PCI-E and so far they play to gather
well. I am not sure if the drivers have been installed properly as of yet
because I can't seem to get output to TV but maybe others will comment on
this combination. I am trying to decide if their alternative to GuidePlus is
any better. There is also an FM radio that is nice as it outputs stations to
5.1 where my desktop receiver does not do this.

Newbury