TV Tuner?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Eric
  • Start date Start date
E

Eric

Anyone have luck with or know of a good TV tuner? I just want something
that will reliably act like a tivo on my computer and allow me to edit out
commercials and such. I've seen some with USB options, and that sounds
nice, but will such external units be able to relay information fast enough
that the stream won't be interupted? Thanks a lot!
 
Hauppauge WinTV are among the best and most reliable. ATI also has them. Steer
clear of USB 1.1 tuners.They are too slow.Not sure if USB 2.0 are any better.
 
YanquiDawg said:
Hauppauge WinTV are among the best and most reliable. ATI also has them. Steer
clear of USB 1.1 tuners.They are too slow.Not sure if USB 2.0 are any better.
Click to expand...

I'm not happy with my ATI. The GUIs are obscure and unintuitive, the
software sometimes does strange things and the hardware sometimes hangs
up the machine.
 
William said:
I'm not happy with my ATI. The GUIs are obscure and unintuitive, the
software sometimes does strange things and the hardware sometimes hangs
up the machine.
Click to expand...

I'll say the same thing for my MSI TV@nywhere. Cheap, but flakey.
 
Anyone have luck with or know of a good TV tuner? I just want something
that will reliably act like a tivo on my computer and allow me to edit out
commercials and such. I've seen some with USB options, and that sounds
nice, but will such external units be able to relay information fast enough
that the stream won't be interupted? Thanks a lot!
Click to expand...

I havent tried it yet but Im stuck on the Hauppauge series of tuners
with hardware decoding. Its gotten rave reviews from users at several
of several sites and a guy who was testing some out also claims they
are among the best.

The good thing here is - they used to be grossly priced but came out
with the 150 series which everyone says is functionally the same as
the much re expensive 250 line I think it was called for $200-250. The
150 goes for as low as 65 bucks for MCE version. They have two
packages - one if I recall correctly has a remote and the other doesnt
and one has a radio and the other doesnt I think.

The avg price is around $99 for the 150 but there are places selling
them for cheaper and COMPUSA started having rebate deals on them,
Several weeks ago it was 79 or so with rebate and last week it was 69
with rebate. Unfortunately its over now but hopefully COMPUSA will
have another sale on them.
 
I use the following items for recording TV:
- Hauppauge PVR-250 that costed me something like $100 or so
more than 5 to 6 months ago.
- Beyond-TV as the frontend software to schedule recording and
watch recorded shows.
- FireFly remote control.

This combo works really good. Both my wife and I like it very much.
Now,
we rarely use the VCR any more.

Now that Microsoft Media Center Edition 2005 is out. You may get an
OEM copy instead of Beyond-TV. Then you will have an option of
using one of those "media center extenders" to watch recorded shows
in a different room. The media center extender from LinkSys looks
really
nice near a TV and has a good review in PC Magazine; it costs
something like $250.

I am sure that you will like it whichever PVR product that you may
choose.

Jay Chan
 
Back
Top