HDTV Tuner Card

[waterhead]

It depends on what you are going to do with the recorded program.

See my earlier posting (#4).

 I don't think that I am recording the entire HDTV stream, just the show that I want to watch or save to DVD. On shows that I want to keep, I edit out the commercials with Pinnacle Studio Plus. It only recognizes .mpg and .avi files .

I'm outputting to my PC monitor and an old analog TV, so I'm not sure how it looks on a real digital television.

[murdoc]

I just want to be able to archive the recorded programs to DVD.  I see that XP will do this, but I also saw that in MCE you have to have an analog tuner as well.  I think for ease and cost the PC with XP is going to be the better alternative.

[waterhead]

I'm only familiar with the  HDTV Wonder card. There may be a card with better software. Like I said, you have to manually schedule all HDTV recordings with this card. The Guide+ software that comes with this card only works for the analog stations. Titan TV has a good guide, you can use it to schedule recordings in Windows MCE, but not with XP.  It's still a good reference to what's on.

Go to:

http://www.titantv.com/

Set up an account, for free.

I hope someone with another card can tell us if there is a better alternative to the HDTV Wonder.

P.S.
I was just poking around at the TitanTV web site, and it claims to be compatable with the ATI ATSC card. Hmmm..., this bears looking into.
It wants to save a file, to schedule a recording. Don't know where to save it to, yet.

P.P.S. Titan TV does work with Media Center, and you can turn it's recordings into DVD's with the latest updates on Nero

[bimmer_immer]

Not necessarily the cheapest (which was the original request), but two very good HD tuner cards are the MyHD MDP130 and DVICO Fusion HD.

Both receive over-the-air (8VSB) and unencrypted cable (QAM) signals.
Both have time-shifting (pause live TV) and scheduled "PVR" recording  (integrated with TitanTV --very cool).  
Both have overlay (window on your desktop) and full-screen modes.
Neither is really useful for recording analog signals.

The MyHD has a hardware MPEG decoder. You route your normal video card output through it. So less system dependency.  ~$250

The Fusion HDTV Gold is DVICO's card. It relies on the video card and/or CPU to assist with the MPEG decoding. So for best performance, you need a DXVA compatible VGA card -- which is most recent nvidia or ati radeon cards -- or a fast CPU (>2GHz) The Fusion HDTV5  is the latest model ~$150. The Fusion HDTV3 is available for about $120.

I own the MyHD card and use a Fusion HDTV3 at work. Both perform very well.


http://www.digitalconnection.com/ or
http://www.copperbox.com/

[tbuiler]

Does anyone know if Time Warner broadcasts "QAM" signals, and if so, is it compatible with any of the HD Tuner cards?

[Gregg Lengling]

Does anyone know if Time Warner broadcasts "QAM" signals, and if so, is it compatible with any of the HD Tuner cards?

Yes it's QAM but it's all encrypted, so it's not going to help you unless the card has a cable card slot and you pay $1.75 a month for the card.

[Doug Mohr]

Yes it's QAM but it's all encrypted, so it's not going to help you unless the card has a cable card slot and you pay $1.75 a month for the card.

Can you have your own cablecard programmed by TW or do they insist on "leasing" you one?

Doug

[Gregg Lengling]

Can you have your own cablecard programmed by TW or do they insist on "leasing" you one?

Doug

You have to lease one.....

[Doug Mohr]

You have to lease one.....

I hate nickle and dime add ons.

They should raise the base price to match what it would be with the lease.

SBC is even worse, that's why I switched to Vonage.

 :guns:

Sorry, just one of my many pet peeves...

Doug

[RJRobb]

If you're interested mainly in HD, DVICO also has the FusionHDTV5 Lite available for $100.  It will record HD (tp streams) and may record SD (mpg), not sure about SD capability.  It does not come with DVD authoring software (Ulead), file conversion software support, ACC audio playback support, or dongle for a/v input that the Gold card has.

[SugarRay]

Anyone try the MyHD PCI card? I was thinking of getting this because it looked liked it used its own hardware to record vs software and it could record from cable. The ATI Wonder card looked good too, but got some bad reviews.

[basshive]

For those interested in HTPC stuff I cannot recommend http://www.pcalchemy.com/ enough. I have ordered various items from them and had fantastic service. They offer some very sweet bundles, especially for those needing MC2K5 or SageTV etc.

[Doug Mohr]

Anyone try the MyHD PCI card? I was thinking of getting this because it looked liked it used its own hardware to record vs software and it could record from cable. The ATI Wonder card looked good too, but got some bad reviews.

I have three of the MyHD MDP-120 and I love them. One runs into a 34" direct view HD Monitor, One into a 23" Apple Cinema HD Display, and the third goes through a PC-TV converter box into an old S-video TV.

They are all networked together and work perfectly.

I use Meedio for the Front-End and use MyHD for all the DVD and HDTV shows.

Doug

[K9JAC]

I just bought a MDP-130 MyHD PCI card. It has 2 inputs which it great for cable and antenna . The tuner is very good. I could see 13 dig from Mich. I'm very happy with it. I'm now looking for a good screen and I'm going with a cheep projector.  More later  DogJack

[WIwinger]

I'm new to the forum.  I am looking some newer info for an HDTV tuner card with an HDMI input so I can use my PC with my U-verse system.  All the cards that I know of need an external antenna and won't work with cable or U-verse.

Thanks,
Terry