TV tuner card

  • Thread starter Thread starter jeffc
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jeffc

Is it best to get a combo video card, or TV tuner card separate? Looking
for a decent gaming computer with TV capability (TV out not important).
 
jeffc said:
Is it best to get a combo video card, or TV tuner card separate? Looking
for a decent gaming computer with TV capability (TV out not important).
Click to expand...

For ATI cards, the all-in-wonder ones don't compromise performance for
adding a TV tuner. It just costs more money than a standard card. But if you
have a free PCI slot, you might want to consider a separate PCI TV tuner
just so that if it goes bad, or you want to upgrade (i.e. HDTV) in the
future, you can.
 
jeffc said:
Is it best to get a combo video card, or TV tuner card separate? Looking
for a decent gaming computer with TV capability (TV out not important).
Click to expand...

Each has its advantages. The ATI Rage Theater 200 chip which is found on
their current AIWs is a very, very good video chip, however it is also
proprietary to ATI and doesn't have much in the way of third-party support.

The Brooktree chips have tremendous third-party support but their best
picture quality falls far short of what the Rage Theater can deliver. The
newer Phillips and Conexant chips give very good results and also have a
good deal of third-party support.

Then there is the _new_ ATI Rage Theater chip that is not available on the
AIWs yet, only on the TV Wonder Elite--but it's not even supported by
_ATI_'s own software.

Beyond all this there is high definition television, which is not directly
supported by any available all-in-one solution--nvidia has a reference
design but nobody seems to be selling it, and ATI is providing their HD
support with a separate board.

Personally after using AIWs for many years, I'm now using a Hauppauge
PVR-USB2 tuner and a Dvico Fusion HDTV II and I'm quite happy with the
results and don't think I'll go back.
 
I had an AIW 9700Pro that had some wavy lines in the picture. The
lines were traced to the cooling fan on the video card. Nothing I
tried worked except if you turn the fan off - which you can't do uness
you want to burn the card!

Buy a separate Tv Tuner card that isnot part of the video card.
 
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