TV Tuner

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Guest

Can anyone give me some good, affordable TV Tuners that work well w/ Vista
Media Center? I would like to get one w/ a PCI interface, but I also do have
a PCI Express x1 slot available. I guess USB wouldn't be out of the question
either as long as the picture quality is decent. Thanks in advance,

Todd
 
Todd said:
Can anyone give me some good, affordable TV Tuners that work well w/
Vista Media Center? I would like to get one w/ a PCI interface, but
I also do have a PCI Express x1 slot available. I guess USB wouldn't
be out of the question either as long as the picture quality is
decent. Thanks in advance,

Todd
Click to expand...

I'm using a PCI Hauppage WinTV-NOVA-T-500 which has dual tuners and is
working perfectly under Vista.
 
I'm intrigued by this one, but it seems that this product is only available
over in the UK.
 
Todd said:
I'm intrigued by this one, but it seems that this product is only
available over in the UK.
Click to expand...


Hauppage make many cards and will have one for your setup. If you can't find
a dual tuner card and have the PCI slots available try a couple from the PVR
range. There will be many on-line reviews for you to read so you can buy the
right card for your setup.
 
If you have analogue reception, the card must have hardware mpg encoding if
it is to work with Windows Media Center. This usually means one of the PVR
cards.

Provided there are drivers for a card, it does not have to use Windows Media
Center and can use any software which will accept the driver output.

Digital programme streams are already encoded mpg2, so hardware encoding is
not required.

Not all cards have 64-bit Vista drivers.
 
If you are interested in the Hauppauge
WinTV PVR USB2, make sure you get
the one with the 24XXX model number
because it also has support for Vista
x64.
 
The Hauppauge 1600 works fine with Vista MCE too. It has a dual
digital/analog tuner, but I don't believe you can record on one and watch on
another. Need to check at Hauppauge. If you load the Remote driver on the
CD, not the one online, the remote works with MCE too!

Wendell
 
Yes, you can watch one and record another since the two tuners appear as two
separate tuner cards to MC.
I read a post from a user awhile back that had 2 1600 and he concurrently
recorded 2 NTSC programs 2 ATSC programs while watching a 5th program
previously recorded.
 
Lots of mention of the Hauppauge products. My experience with these is that
they make great hardware and dreadful software.

Are the apps and drivers any good these days?

Steve
 
Steve Thackery said:
Lots of mention of the Hauppauge products. My experience with these is that
they make great hardware and dreadful software.

Are the apps and drivers any good these days?
Click to expand...
The drivers have never really been an issue..WinTV2000 is. If you use
WMC, you don't need WinTV.
 
Yes, you can watch one and record another since the two tuners appear as
two separate tuner cards to MC.
Click to expand...

I have a PVR-500 and I'd like to have PIP (Picture-In-Picture) capability.
Any idea if that might be possible in a future version of Media Center? I'd
also
like to be able to switch between TV, composite and S-Video inputs easily.

Tom Lake
 
I don't think that any of the features you would like have as of yet been
commiteed for a future release of MC
 
I actually use WinTV2K instead of MC on my Vista desktop even though both
work since with WinTV I don't suffer from a degradation in the quality of
the Live TV by having it encoded and decoded.
 
Guys i bought a gadmei 330 usb tuner. Will this work on vista. Do i
need a seperate audio card to stream audio through the laptop speakers?
Click to expand...

USB TV BOX+VISTA
Advantage:
? USB TV Tuner Watch TV on laptop or desktop
? Standing fashion design, Ultra-Slim and portable
? Dynamic picture capture &programs recording function while support
VISTA
http://www.gadmei.com/en/product_show.aspx?id=38
It should use the laptop's sound chip.
 
The sound comes into the laptop as part of then TV program and will play on
the laptop speakers along with the video.
 
You have to use the sound input on the tuner card when using the S-Video
input input so that it can be encoded with video prior to being send to the
system. with the RF input the sound is part of the RF signal itself'.
Tuners do not use sound inputs from the line in connection on sound cards.
If they did then the sound and video would be out of sync dues to the delay
due to encoding the video.
 
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