High-End TV Tuner Recommendations

[charliebrown]

Sorry about reviving an old thread, just had some questions about tuner cards, recording capabilities and hardware


1) from reading this thread, it seems like the TV-in has to be coming from cable (i.e. rogers); does it work with bell expressvu?

2) I get the impression the software coming with the cards arent very good; is this also the case with the ATI AIW cards?

3) once card & software installed, i'm guessing the software recognizes the rogers signal and can display a program guide and allow recording?

4) Wiring
Better to use TV-out (i'm guessing there'll also be sound and the ability to use the TV-speakers)

or

VGA/DVI + audio out?

or

component cables


THANX!

[Tennoh]

Answers

1.
You can connect any digital signal so long as its through coax. Doesn't matter if signal is from antenna, cable, satellite. What you will have problems with is no HDTV captures.

2.
Yes, software based on latest MMC and Cyberlink PowerCinema suck ass. And those are primary software you'll find bundled. You're best off with getting BeyondTV, SageTV, or GB-PVR. I use BeyondTV4 myself. Either these are excellent.

3.
You have to go through Video source configuration with the respective software in question 3. Program Guide is not available to all tv applications. Of the 3 software recommended in question 2, SageTV and GB-PVR require additional configuration to get Canadian TV listings.

4.
You are connecting out to something? You can normally view directly from your video card. The TV card does video overlay to your video card and your video card does the display. You have the option to output directly on some TV tuner cards but most tv tuner cards I've seen only have SVideo output at best. Doesn't compare if your video card has DVI output.

Sorry about reviving an old thread, just had some questions about tuner cards, recording capabilities and hardware


1) from reading this thread, it seems like the TV-in has to be coming from cable (i.e. rogers); does it work with bell expressvu?

2) I get the impression the software coming with the cards arent very good; is this also the case with the ATI AIW cards?

3) once card & software installed, i'm guessing the software recognizes the rogers signal and can display a program guide and allow recording?

4) Wiring
Better to use TV-out (i'm guessing there'll also be sound and the ability to use the TV-speakers)

or

VGA/DVI + audio out?

or

component cables


THANX!