which video card, tv tuner?

A

!Allen Lasting

Hi,

Here's the system:
Asus K8V-X mobo
AMD athlon 64 3000 cpu
256 DD400 ram

This is a new build for my sister who constantly changers her mind! Anyway,
the above is bought. Next case:
She wants a tv turner in it.

I have no video card for it yet, and I have no expeience with tv tuners in
computers at all. Can anyone recommend a video card / TV tuner combo for
the system. I'm guessing they make combo cards, and if so, would buying
seperate cards be better? The local screw driver shop said they can get me
a tv tuner card for $60. They charged $450 for the CPU (retail box 3 yr
warrenty w fan, etc.), mobo, and kingston memory.

Thanks for your ideas.

Allen
 
W

Wooducoodu

buy seperate cards. you may never need a new tv tuner but you'll likely want
to upgrade the video card sometime.

check the capture card section of www.videohelp.com for a tv tuner.
 
D

Dave C.

!Allen Lasting said:
Hi,

Here's the system:
Asus K8V-X mobo
AMD athlon 64 3000 cpu
256 DD400 ram

This is a new build for my sister who constantly changers her mind!
Anyway, the above is bought. Next case:
She wants a tv turner in it.

I have no video card for it yet, and I have no expeience with tv tuners in
computers at all. Can anyone recommend a video card / TV tuner combo for
the system. I'm guessing they make combo cards, and if so, would buying
seperate cards be better? The local screw driver shop said they can get
me a tv tuner card for $60. They charged $450 for the CPU (retail box 3
yr warrenty w fan, etc.), mobo, and kingston memory.

Thanks for your ideas.

Allen

It's tough to recommend cards not knowing what your sister wants to do with
it. But she definitely wants separate cards. The following would be a good
match for the hardware she already has. -Dave

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-125-128&depa=0
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-122-180&depa=0
 
D

David Maynard

!Allen Lasting said:
Hi,

Here's the system:
Asus K8V-X mobo
AMD athlon 64 3000 cpu
256 DD400 ram

This is a new build for my sister who constantly changers her mind! Anyway,
the above is bought. Next case:
She wants a tv turner in it.

I have no video card for it yet, and I have no expeience with tv tuners in
computers at all. Can anyone recommend a video card / TV tuner combo for
the system. I'm guessing they make combo cards, and if so, would buying
seperate cards be better? The local screw driver shop said they can get me
a tv tuner card for $60. They charged $450 for the CPU (retail box 3 yr
warrenty w fan, etc.), mobo, and kingston memory.

Thanks for your ideas.

Allen

Get a separate tuner card. For one, you can upgrade one or the other
without having to do both. Second, for an 'all-in-one' you're restricted to
getting only those that are 'all-in-one', which limits the features you can
get, especially in GPU performance. Lastly, the all-in-one combo cards
usually use special chipsets that restrict you to using their software
packages.

If you get a PCI card using the BT8xx chipset there are many excellent
freeware programs, as well as drivers. See here for drivers and supported
cards:

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/index.html

If all you want to do is slap a TV picture on the CRT then just about any
old card will do, as long as there are drivers for it (being BT8xx
compatible sure helps in that department).

From there you start thinking of additional features. If you want to
record TV (freeware Personal Video Recorder software, etc) then you want to
look into MPEG capability. Do you want an FM tuner as well? What about a
remote control? S-Video input for external device video capture, or does
RCA input satisfy your needs?

http://www.videohelp.com/ has a capture card (includes tuners) section with
user reviews. Note: those complaining about drivers and software could
likely solve a lot of those problems with freeware drivers (the advantage
of using 'standard', or 'popular', components).

Check http://www.pricewatch.com for prices. You can get a basic PCI TV
tuner card for as little as 20 bucks (free shipping), if that's all you
need. See here http://www.softwareandstuff.com/CRD10186.html
 
S

sdeyoreo

WinTV GO is probably your best choice. $50 at CompUSA. Plenty of extra
software around for it. Can record like a VCR and program it to record
at a certain time and channel. Most TV cards have trouble with XP
and/or hyperthreading. I've read ATI TV tuners don't work with
hyperthrading enabled in the CPU. PCTV getts lousy reviews for crappy
software. Some cards have their video freeze on you, the system needs
to run in mode called video overlay. WinTV installs an extra program
called Primary.exe. Be sure to run it and click the button for "Allow
Overlay (XP only)". Qiute happy with mine.
 
J

jimbo

!Allen Lasting said:
Hi,

Here's the system:
Asus K8V-X mobo
AMD athlon 64 3000 cpu
256 DD400 ram

This is a new build for my sister who constantly changers her mind! Anyway,
the above is bought. Next case:
She wants a tv turner in it.

I have no video card for it yet, and I have no expeience with tv tuners in
computers at all. Can anyone recommend a video card / TV tuner combo for
the system. I'm guessing they make combo cards, and if so, would buying
seperate cards be better? The local screw driver shop said they can get me
a tv tuner card for $60. They charged $450 for the CPU (retail box 3 yr
warrenty w fan, etc.), mobo, and kingston memory.

Thanks for your ideas.

Allen

I highly recommend the WinTV-PVR 250 or the 350 which adds an FM
tuner. It comes with all of the software you need to capture, edit and
author. It will even capture copy protected VHS tapes.

Good luck, jimbo
 
D

David Maynard

jimbo said:
I highly recommend the WinTV-PVR 250 or the 350 which adds an FM tuner.
It comes with all of the software you need to capture, edit and author.
It will even capture copy protected VHS tapes.

Good luck, jimbo

That's a good choice, especially if one wants to also do video capture
(PVR) because it includes a hardware MPEG1/2 encoder, which greatly reduces
CPU loading. It's also the most widely supported.

http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=pvr_card_id_guide
 
Z

Zotin Khuma

WinTV GO is probably your best choice. $50 at CompUSA. Plenty of extra
software around for it. Can record like a VCR and program it to record
at a certain time and channel. Most TV cards have trouble with XP
and/or hyperthreading. I've read ATI TV tuners don't work with
hyperthrading enabled in the CPU. PCTV getts lousy reviews for crappy
software. Some cards have their video freeze on you, the system needs
to run in mode called video overlay. WinTV installs an extra program
called Primary.exe. Be sure to run it and click the button for "Allow
Overlay (XP only)". Qiute happy with mine.

I've installed a Pinnacle pro tuner in several computers and I have no
complaint. Newer versions of their driver (v5.7, maybe 5.5 also) no
longer support Win9x, but they work with older versions (v5.3). I
don't use it extensively myself but some of my customers claim that
they can capture several minutes of movies without significant frame
drop using the bundled software. They're about $50 in India.
 

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