Anyone have any favorite TV Card recommendations? I have a Hauppauge Win TV
Go PLus, and the remote control is very unreliable. I'd like to get
something a little more reliable.
Thanks for any opinions.
Probably the most popular card is the 150 Hauppauge. Its relatively
inexpensive if you get the white box version (no remote and software
just drivers) which I got. Then its around $65 or so. Check Amazon and
Buy.com which usually sells it with Free shipping maybe no tax around
65.
I dont use the remote so its not big deal to me and you can get free
software or buy the excellent Beyond TV software which eveyone loves.
There are several free software progs a popular one is GBPVR which Ive
used with my 150. Works great.
You can buy a separate remote like FIREFLY which is very popular but
of course that adds to the cost. Ive seen the full retail pack for 100
bucks with remote and software. Its been rebated down to 70-80 a a few
times but not recently.
Ive posted ad nauseum about both in the past. The 150 was the first
cheaper hardware encoding card. Up until then the hardware encoding
cards were very expensive. I had several non hardware encoding cards.
So everyone jumped on the 150 and a new chip they came out with which
drastically lowered the cost of hardware encoding cards. Since then
there have been several hardware encoding cards for cheap in the 50-70
range but they arent as popular as the 150.
Then there was hype about the new 550 ATI chip. It was talked about at
some sites and eagerly anticipated. I was all worked up about it and
was planning on getting it instead of the 150. ATI hyped it showing
all kinds of image processing which made it seem like it may be a big
leap ahead of everything else. When it came out several tech maniacs
who had 150s and 500 hauppauges bought the sapphire version which was
going for a very low 75 at the time full package. They reviewed and
uploaded captures of video and screens. Generally the results werent
that impressive. Very hard to tell the difference between a 150 and
the sapphire. Some people said either one was better but it was a toss
up.
Anandtech did review and pointed out if you really looked some text
with the 550 was a bit cleaner but in general the signal from
regularTV was so poor there wasnt a huge difference between that and
say the Hauppauge. Other people didnt like the ATIs initially cause
they dont like ATIs software and it was less compatible. They might
have fixed that by now - some bugs people mentioned.
Anyway the top software used with tuner cards seem much preferred over
anything that comes with cards -- Beyong TV, Sage TV or MS WIN MCE.
Last time I checked the Sapphire 550 wasnt selling for 75 anymore at
Newegg it was much higher but prices at those places really go up and
down now cause they all use some software to react to supply and
demand I think. Prices seem to change daily.
