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TV Tuners For The PC: Internal Or External
~*77*~ writes "TV tuners are gaining popularity for simple TV watching on your home PC, as well providing capturing capabilities intended to rival Tivo style devices. BigBruin.Com has new reviews taking a look at two TV tuners in the $50 range... An internal, PCI device from Leadtek... And an external, USB 2.0 device from Transcend... Head to head testing decide whether either is worth your time or money."
I have a Hauppauge BT878 card I had in my desktop (got it before PVR-250/PVR-350). I got a laptop and a Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe, some people have bad experiences but I have had a pretty good time with it. I like the Pinnacle box because it records to MPEG-1 or 2 easily. Edit out commercials with Virtual Dub with MPEG-2 and you're all set to do what you need with it, encode to DivX, MPEG-x, whatever.
It just depends on what your needs are...
For anyone with a TV card, I recommend trying DScaler - it's open-source software which can filter and display video inputs, particularly from TV cards. I've been using it for the past four years, and it's far better than the TV viewing applications that came with my Hauppage WinTV card, or my friends Pinnacle PCTV card.
I have an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800SE, and I'm not really all that happy with it on the tv tuner front.
In my experience, the ATI drivers are somewhat buggy and temperamental on Windows, and worse on linux. Also, I'd love to use Videolan, but it's never worked fully with the AIW. The most recent release is actually able to use my AIW, but only the antenna signal, not the composite, so it can't capture anything from satellite or cable boxes plugged into it. Obviously, that's more of an issue with Videolan, and hopefully it'll work some day soon, but if you wanted to use Videolan with a tv tuner card, it's something you might want to consider.
That's not to say the AIW is bad, and for the price I paid I'm generally happy with it. It does do the job. Usually. But if I had more money, I would definitely have gone for a seperate tv tuner. If nothing else, it's more flexible - you can upgrade the graphics card without worrying about the tv tuner card at the same time.
The Leadtek TV2000 XP Deluxe uses a Conexant BT878A chipset, so it's quite compatible with anything that can drive a BT878. Yes, your Linux box supports it. Now, if I just had a box powerful enough to drive one of these...
In the last four years spent at university, my TV card has been the single best component I've bought for my computer - for 40 (~$60-70), it's given me TV viewing and recording facilities, with no need to take up extra space in my room and whilst transport with a TV. It's also nice to have a TV window open at the bottom of my screen whilst working :)
I had used many tv-tuner cards (ati, leadtek, hauppage, and etc.) and one I thing I could generalize is that the software (drivers and tv proggie) for these cards suck. Almost all of them have these fancy UI that never conform to any standards or sometimes even common sense (what's up with the blinky lights in leadtek programs?). Also, the limited feature set for basic tivo-like functionality. I found a nice free program called DScaler (dscaler.org) that offers a lot of features for and it's compatible with most cards. It's still in beta the last time I checked though.
Which one od you use?
Drivers for internal PCI tuners are usually crap on Windows. I think I'm on my third card, and I keep throwing them out and trying a different one because of the drivers...
If you just want a turner card to watch TV and not to capture anything how about a LCD with a TV turner that allows you to do PIP, many companies are making them now. http://www.viewsonic.com/products/tventertainment/ lcdtv/n1700w/
arrrrr
Of course if you're caping DVB, make sure you can receive DVB. A lot of areas in the UK dont get a decent DVB-T signal, and you cant use DVB-S or -C (sky wont sell CAM's - which is illegal, NTL/Telewest are just stupid).
An Analog-MPEG2 capture card with external tuner would be better.
For recording shows I like using a ReplayTV(a TIVO would do), then you can connect to it over the network and play your shows on your computer.
No. It appears to have a Conexant (CX23883) chipset. Recent kernels do have Conexant support, but it's less mature than the BTTV support.
BTTV cards are easy to come by. KWorld makes a whole line of them, several of which sell in the $30-$40 range. If you've got $100-$120 to burn, buy an MPEG-2 card like a PVR-250.
For those not familiar with DVB, this is used in Europe for satellite and terrestrial TV transmission. There is no open DVB used in the U.S.
But, we have ATSC, the new digital television standard, which broadcasts MPEG2 streams that are easy to record & play.
ATSC has the big advantage that it supports HDTV transmissions, and there is a ton of HDTV programming available. I don't think HDTV has moved past early testing phase in Europe.
When I tried to find out the source of the problem, ATI suggested that it was my system's fault, probably my graphics card. However, my system was very nice for its time (166 mhz athlon was impressive five years ago), and the graphics card was an ATI Rage 128 (again, good for the time, and more importantly, it was made by the same freaking company).
So I traded emails and phone calls back and forth with ATI, and in the end got the brilliant suggestion to (I shit you not) uninstall and reinstall the software every single time I wanted to use it!
A year or so later ATI finally released new drivers that were supposed to correct all the problems. But amazingly, ATI refused to make these drivers available on the web. At first you had to pay them to send you a CD (unless you had bought the TV Wonder within the last month), then at some point they droped the fee (except maybe a $2 shipping fee). By that time I was mainly using Linux, but I think I tried the drivers for a bit, and they only crashed once. Yay.
The moral of the story is that any company that will ship a product in that poor of condition, blame another product made by them for the difficulty, suggest that the user re-install the software every time they use it, and then when they finally fix the problems refuse to make the fix available for free on the web, is not a company you want to patronize.
I for one have made it a point never to buy another ATI product. So while the all-in-wonder may be awesome if it actually works for you, at the first sign of trouble you'd best pack it up and return it or else you are in for a world of unhappiness.
sigaar
Elgato seems to have a firewire tuner that supports DVB-S, It's got a funky card reader and only works with Macintoshs, but it does exist (and their software kicks ass)
DVB doesn't work in the US, does it? I think we Americans are pretty much stuck with analog reception of everything that's not over-the-air HDTV. For HDTV we have pchdtv, which works with Linux and captures a straight MPEG stream like you said. For cable, satellite, and over-the-air analog, we're stuck with capture cards like the BT8*8 and PVR-250. Analog capture works well enough to be watchable and can be encoded easily in real time on a modern (e.g., 2 GHz+) PC.
I have a hauppauge pci bttv 878 for years...
It does what it must do...
I can recommend TVTime http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/ under Linux for optimum pleasure as you can adapt to footballgames...
Think you should rephrase that as "don't ever by Leadtek TV tuners for using on windows". I got one way back and built it with a linux box and haven't had any major problems using it with mythTV. Saw the bundled software and was tempted to try it out to see how well it worked...but then just figured it was cheap "bundle" softare and dismissed it. Leadtek is in the business to sell hardware. They included the crappy software the entice you and you're discovering that it sucks. That's no shocker since I remember paying $40 bucks for the thing. Can't have it all.
Although, a word of warning when using these cards with linux. The default BTTV driver setting is for PAL, and you have to either pass the option to set it to NTSC when loading the module or re-comple the driver with the correct setting (easy one line code change).
I've had Haupage, AVer and now ATi. They all sucked. The ATi sucks the least, though.
(I think I'm missing one from my list.)
Don't use the given software, use DScaler or Virtual Dub.
A little pricey but well worth it, they generate excellent capture of video and encode in MPEG-2 in hardware. Very nice, and they make an excellent PVR when combined with SageTv or MythTv. They also incorporate an integrated IR remote. They have a good linux support particularly with regard to MythTV. The PVR-350 differs from the PVR-250 in that it has a S-Video output. I've also employed a Leadtek XP 2000 video capture card, nice but no hardware recording. I've had difficulty in recording the output of the LeadTek to DVD.
I've seen arguments about the TV Turner and why bother.... to be honest, they work great. A program GotTVPVR http://www.gottvpvr.com turns your computer into a TiVo for free. The program guide service is free, it downloads, and once some of the bugs are worked out, the system will handle everything from images, to MP3s, to recording every episode of Farscape automaticly.
:)
There are many brands out there, but I like the ATI EHome Wonder. Its _very_ cheap, zero support, onboard MPEG2 encoder, low profile (very small card) and works with every system I've tried (havn't tried MacOSX yet, but it works on Linux with some tweeking)
As for "computer monitors suck compaired to my XX inch TV" argument...
uhhh, S-Video? 99% of video cards come with a TV hookup of some sort, and some even support 16:9 ratio for those of us lucky bastards with a wide HDTV.
Can TiVo burn you DVDs of your recorded shows? Some can... but they won't make SVCDs.
If you got the time, you can make a better PVR out of your computer then you can out of a TiVo, the hardware and software has a little ways to go, but within 12 months....
Besides, dose your TiVo have a 500gb SCSI raid array?
cheers
--
DBA also supports a whole lot of interesting features (single frequency networks being the first that comes to mind) that ATSC doesn't.
I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV, and it has never worked as advertised. The drivers in the box only sort of worked and were very flaky. After upgrading to the latest Catalyst drivers off their web site, it now mostly works under Windows, but the ATI software is difficult to use and quite feature-poor. Linux support is virtually non-existent. When you can actually get the card and software to work, the image quality and tuner quality is quite good, but it's totally not worth the trouble. I'm now in the process of switching to a GeForce FX video card with a separate Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 350 tuner card (with hardware MPEG encoder/decoder). From what I've read in various HTPC forums, this card is hands-down the best PC tuner card on the market. It also is fully supported by SageTV on the PC side and MythTV on the Linux side. I will never buy another ATI product.
i got the first page of the Transcend review caught in my browser cache..
maybe somebody got the other 2 pages??
___
With all of the products available to make your computer seem less like a desktop tool and more like a high end media center, one of the components that lacks the popularity you might expect is the TV tuner card. There are sound cards capable of 7.1 channel stereo, high powered speaker systems, AGP cards displaying on big screen monitors/televisions, and broadband internet for streaming media. But, what about one more entertainment goodie for your computer? The Transcend TV-Box USB 2.0 TV Tuner is an external TV tuner that will allow any couch potato with a computer to ditch the couch while still enjoying TV.
TV tuners aren't anything new, and even external devices such as this have been around for a few years. The feature of the Transcend TV-Box that got my attention right away was support for USB 2.0. I have previously been disappointed by the performance of a USB 1.1 tuner, and I am hoping the high speed interface of USB 2.0 makes a world of difference. A highly capable TV tuner in a compact USB 2.0 enclosure would be a perfect addition to a home theater pc, the typical desktop computer, and unlike a PCI based card, any laptop computer.
Features (as taken from the Transcend website):
Video Input Resolution up to 720*480 at 30 fps for NTSC.
Video Input Resolution up to 720*576 at 25 fps for PAL.
Full TV Channels.
USB 2.0 Supported, Plug and Play Compliant.
S-Video, Composite Video input, stereo audio line in and TV RF input.
IR Remote Control.
Power Consumption from USB with no power adaptor required.
Recording from TV or external video sources directly to hard drive.
Real-time MPEG 1 or 2 compression, and VCD/DVD file format supported.
Time-Shifting.
Multi-Channel Preview.
Pre-scheduled TV Recording.
Desktop or Laptop with USB 2.0 interface.
System memory 128 MB or above.
Windows XP (recommended), Windows 2000.
2-year Warranty.
Specification:
Size: 154mm x 84mm x 39mm (L x W x H)
Operating Temperature: 0C(32F) to 45C(113F)
Weight: 195g
System Requirements:
Desktop or laptop with USB 2.0 interface
CPU PIII 800 MHz for viewing; PIII 1 GHz for VCD recording; P4 1.7 GHz for DVD recording
System memory 128 MB or above
Windows XP (recommended), Windows 2000
The Transcend TV-Box USB 2.0 is sold in the retail packaging pictured in the images below. The front of the box (below left) provides a few features of the device, while the back of the box (below right) goes into much greater detail in several different languages.
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With the box opened up, the main items of interest are the TV tuner itself and the remote control unit. The below left image provides a first look at the TV tuner, which is a sleek black plastic device with a red lensed area housing a few status LEDs as well as allowing for the IR remote's signal to be received. The below right image shows the remote control which features all the buttons necessary to operate the TV and recording functions of the TV-Box. Both items are quite compact, with the tuner measuring roughly 5.5" x 3.25" x 1.5" inches and the remote being slightly longer than a credit card and not all that much thicker.
Click Image for Larger View Click Image for Larger View
The remote control receives power via a slim watch style battery, and the tuner itself receives power via a USB cable. The below left image shows the side of the TV-Box with 3 connectors; 1/8" stereo jack output, USB jack for video/signal, and a DC power jack for use on USB. In addition there is a button for taking still image "snaps" that are saved to your hard drive. The below right image shows the rear of the device where the coaxial cable connection and A/V-in can be found.
Click Image for Larger View Click Image for Larger View
T
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
Black and white image is likely because the TV standard is not set properly (PAL in Europe, NTSC in North America).
But yes, I agree.. video capture blows under Windows. It is even possible under Windows NT/2K/XP to fuck things up badly enough that you have to restart to get it to capture again.
There's two types of TV tuners out for PCs right now: Those with hardware encoders, and those without
The cheap ones (usually under $50) do not come with hardware encoders.
Hardware encoders (usually MPEG2) look superior and are generally smoother, taking the load off your CPU. Do not assume that since you have quad-processor super PC that it's enough to output great/smooth video. A hardware MPEG2 encoder is still superior.
As for internal VS external, there's a few USB 2.0 tuners with built-in hardware encoders, but none of them work in Linux. You're better off getting a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 (or 350 if you need TV-out) and sticking it in a MythTV Linux box... The current king of Tivo-like software.
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
The audio problem happens when you have Norton installed. There's a patch for it.
I picked up one of those cards for my dad so he could digitize old movies. It worked perfectly after he figured out it was a bug and not a hardware problem. He actually returned the card and got a replacement before going on-line to try to sort out the problem.
I've digitized a number of VHS tapes in 640x480 30FPS at I think 1Mbps MPEG compression without a hicup with his 3 Ghz machine.
I highly recommend the card. At $60 you can't beat the price/quality.
My old Hauppauge WinTV card can only do any worthwhile recording quality when using Virtual Dub. The included software is terrible.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Camping" means "Don't have access to cable TV".
Thats pretty closed minded. There are hundreds of camp grounds that are designed for people who disagree, and range from the high end camps with pools, spas and concrete pads to park your diesel pusher on, to middle of the road KOA grounds.
YOU might camp to get close to nature, but some camp for different reasons. They travel all over, visit lots of cool places, and since they spend so much time doing it, they want to be comfortable while they do it.
We camp regularly, but not in a tent. We camp to be close to the lake and fishing, to get away from the house and the headaches, and we do it in a small, pull behind camper. It has a stove, sink, bathroom, bed, table, etc. Its old, but it works. Over a million of us camp this way in the states. We go for 2 to 14 days, and yes, like entertainment while we camp. We like to CHOOSE what we are getting away from, and what we can take with us.
Not everyone wants to camp primitive, and most people don't.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
as far as I know(please correct me if I am wrong), you really can't play consoles on it since the cards have a 1.5 second or so delay from when the video comes in to when you see it.
This is true with Firewire or USB TV devices; PCI ones are fine. For your Mac, take a look at this card. I bought the DVR version in January and its been relatively good (the software annoys me sometimes). Like you, I also have a Gamecube, and used it pretty regularly with the Alchemy card.
you can get DVB / FTA in the us/canada
dvb fta overview | Planet DVB...
granted a lot of the programming is foreign... but theres plenty of free satellite music, pbs, and uh... stuff... great way to get news from diffeent sources all over the world.
*Shrug*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
DScaler is by far the best TV tuner app I have found. All of the ones that come with the TV tuner cards freeze or don't work right.
If you want one that works try DScaler - its open source and easy to use!
you may have given in, too early...
you can control your digital box via serial cable (in some cases, notably certain motorolla boxes) or via IR blaster (the same way my "real" tivo controls my Scientific atlanta digital cable box right now...)
*shrug* ymmv, but it is possible... although htpc aren't for everyone...
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I've been doing a little bit of research with this and I came up with a pretty good alternative to a pc tuner. It's a video processor (essentially an external tv tuner that hooks up to your monitor and adjusts the tv/video signal to fit the refresh rate and resolution of your monitor). The pc doesn't have to be turned on - a big plus to me because it gets pretty hot in the summer with it on. Furthermore, I can avoid the process of turning the computer on, waiting for it to boot, and then clicking the application. The picture is supposedly be better too. The ViewSonic NextVision 6 has an hdtv tuner so it's a bit more future proof than some others. It can also do progressive scan so your xbox and gamecube games can really look good. The only benefit of an TV tuner card is that most of them can capture video as well. But then I have a capture card to do that. The only caveat is the price, a bad review on amazon about how it screws up the computer screen, and how it's supposedly not TRUE hdtv. (I'm not sure how true that last one is - I haven't done enough research.)
I personally own a Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP Expert card, the big brother to the Deluxe. It uses the same software and drivers and yet my experience has been far better than the reviewers. (http://www.leadtek.com/multimedia/winfast_tv2000x p_expert_1.html)
;-)
The remote is brilliant. About the only thing that cannot be done from the remote is scheduling of recordings and setup (such as tuning channels). Everything else can be achieved from the remote. Their talk of not being able to start the TV/FM tuners from the power button on the remote is just wrong. If you have the WinFast Wizard running in your system tray, you can power the TV/FM tuners on and off without a problem using the remote. You don't need to start it from the keyboard/mouse at all.
The size of the files when recording a show can be an issue. However, I use DivX codecs for that and the sizes are exceptionally smaller than standard MPEG1/2 file sizes. That goes without saying. What bothered me however is that I didn't experience anywhere near the sizes they described when using the MPEG1/2 codecs. 5 minutes of TV recording for me using those codecs is around 500KB, not nearly 800KB. Maybe there is an extra setting he had altered that I have not, or maybe I have just tweaked mine a little more. However, the bitrates and such were the same as what I have in my default profiles.
As I live in New Zealand, I cannot use Titan or any other service to book recordings for my shows. I do that manually. I cannot speak for the experience he had with Titan. As far as manually setting up recordings go, its very simple and straight forward. Select the channel, select the start/finish times, select the encoding profile and then give it a filename. Very simple. The date/time is appended to the filename so that if you have multiple recordings with the same name, or just forget to give it a name, the file will always have a unique, timestamped name. This is very useful if you have several episodes of a weekly show recorded so you can easily find the episode you're looking for.
Personally, I love this card myself. I find it brilliant, easy to use and so far, all other software beyond that which comes with the card has not been suitable to my personal likes. The bundled software has been the best. Not even BeyondTV 3 from Snapstream was good enough for me. I liked the way I could watch recorded shows from anywhere, but the software itself just wasn't nice to use (and it doesn't support the remote for this card).
I have used this card with MythTV as well. That is nice and its very straight forward to get running. The remote works, with some external help, and the only thing I found myself doing was changing the volume/channel buttons on the remote to work more like cursor navigation buttons. I then had the fine tune buttons setup for changing the volume and just used the number buttons for changing channels. However, in the end, it did all work nicely and was a very satisfactory setup for a full time PVR. Unfortunately I like to use my computer for more than just watching TV
Do I recommend this card? Most definitely. Of all the TV tuner cards I've owned (6 over the years now) this is the best to date.
Low end Happauge suck, but the higher end TV tuners are best of them all.
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
I use a Creative Digital VCR Blaster Card. I know that it has been discontinued, but I own 3 TV cards (Creative, Haupaugge and ATI), and the Creative offers by far the most TiVo like experence. With the other two cards, you are constantly reminded that you are using a computer to watch TV. The screen skips every once and awhile, and there is a lag when pausing, fast forewarding and rewinding. The software often crashes. The creative software has some problems, but when you press a button, your computer turns into a TV, plus you can instantly pause and navigate through the video like a DVD player, but much more smoothly. It even works great on my 550 MHz PIII. The only thing it lacks is an integrated TV guide. I have tried all sorts of guides, but none of them integrate into the software well, if at all. If you don't want to spend a lot of time trying to get a good solution, just find one of these cards on eBay.
Well I've got an ATI all-in-wonder radeon 9600 and it's tunner doesn't seem to have any major bugs. But I mostly use it with a vcr, which brings me to my major bitch. It 'honors' macromedia. Antime I try and play a vhs tape with that crap it turns into a parody of scrambled cable. This bugs me to no end, I paid for a product that doesn't work by design in it's main function, letting me use my monitor to view content for tv!. I'm hoping someone will get some linux drivers written that fixes this, but in the meantime It's crippled.
My question would be, and this almost certainly bears on the question posted, What tv tuners have what limitation, espcially the drm/copy protection related crap.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Macrovision
Not Macromedia...
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
It's a Zoltrix TV-MAX, bt848 with Phillips tuner. It's the btwincap drivers that broke my win2k... so badly I had to reinstall - couldn't even get it to boot in safe mode.
The drivers that gave me black and white was from iuVCR. They sell a capture program, and also provide drivers. There is a demo and commecial version of the driver, but they don't mention anything about colour being limited to the commercial one: http://www.iulab.com/drv/index.shtml
I did see a couple of new projects on google, so I'll give it a bash.
I don't know how much of the troubles I had was a result of the BS nVidia drivers. A lot of funny bugs went away when I replaced it with a Radeon 7500. For example, in Win98, the image works now. In linux I could never watch TV in full screen in anything higher than 16bit colour. From what I read on google, it was a PCI bandwidth issue. What nonsense. With the Radeon I can do 24bit and watch TV fullscreen at any resolution the Radeon can do.
In general I've learned to avoid Zoltrix products though. I had a Zoltrix Cobra internal modem (hcf). The drivers for win2k was unstable as hell, connection was slow, and windows always started behaving really funny about two weeks after installing those drivers. Weird stuff like OpenGL breaking and sound becoming fragmented. All that went away when I tried the generic drivers from conexant.
sigaar