which TV Tunner is best?

[iam_noob3]

Hi, i would like to buy a tv tunner, i want very good quality with full screen, which brand and model is good? any suggestion? thx

[Oversized Rooster]

All tuners will leave you some grain and artifacts in the picture, simple because analog cable has its limitations. If this signal isn't high quality, the picture won't be either.

I had a Leadtek 2000XP Expert before, and it was OK. I mean, all the TV Tuners on the market today basically can record video in multiple formats, and some have remotes, too.

I picked a Sapphire Theatrix 550 last month, because it was recommended here on RFD. It is indeed better. The picture quality is free of artifacts, and it's got a nice handy remote. Furthermore, it does all video encoding onboard itself as opposed to the CPU doing it. The Theatrix also has an onboard 16MB of RAM, again not to hog your overall PC experience.

[Cafe_333]

Typically the best TV tuner cards use the Conexant chip to render the video image. Hauppauge, arguably the king of tv tuners made it popular and since then other companies have picked it up. Might also want to consider something that does onboard hardware decoding and doesn't pass it off to the cpu - which is probably the real reason why there are such big price differences in this market.

[djspazz]

Both the ATI 550 chip and the Hauppauge PVR150 - 500 are good choices. I have the Theatrix 550 myself and it's pretty good. I just built an HTPC for my friend using the PVR150 and it's equally good.

[Boyboy]

I did try ati 550 and leadtek winfast tv xpert(old)/pvr2000(now).
The first one I have is Winfast TV xpert. good quality... but no hdware encode.
Second one.... theatrix 550... better quality, but I really really hate their software.... IMO, their PVR software is suck.
Now, Winfast TV PVR 2000.... quality as good as Winfast Xpert... but it come with hardware MPEG-II encode...

[ShadowVlican]

Both the ATI 550 chip and the Hauppauge PVR150 - 500 are good choices. I have the Theatrix 550 myself and it's pretty good. I just built an HTPC for my friend using the PVR150 and it's equally good.

u can't really go wrong with the above