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."

Comments

External

[Nermal6693]

Personally, I think that external FireWire are the best, because they seem to have better cross-platform compatibility. I use a Mac, and it's hard to find someware for internal PCI tuners.

Re:External

[Trillan]

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...

Re:External

[gabebear]

Firewire tuners are also the most expensive. Elgato makes some really great ones for MacOS. A good way to import video is through a firewire video camera, the video quality is excellent, and you'll probably be buying one anyway.

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.

Re:External

[Moofie]

"Camping" means "Don't have access to cable TV".

Call it a boundary condition.

Re:External

[sigaar]

I think I'm on my third card, and I keep throwing them out and trying a different one because of the drivers...

Stay clear of the Zoltrix cards then. They don't support Windows NT/2k/XP at all, and the various drivers I downloaded from the internet either didn't work properly (black and white image, at the best of times) or broke windows so badly I coudln't even boot into safe mode. In Windows9x the zoltrix drivers clash with nVidia drivers, so the image doesn't update. I've given up on watching TV in Windows

Re:External

[emorphien]

Yeah, I like to go camping to get away from all that crap. As much as I like technolog, and civilization is good, being out in the woods camping and relaxing is a cleansing experience in a sense.

Prepares you for all the shiat when you get back.

Re:External

[Trillan]

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.)

Re:External

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Don't use the given software, use DScaler or Virtual Dub.

Re:External

[iantri]

If it is a bt848/bt878 card (most are), the open source btwincap drivers will work best -- they are based on the reference code from Brooktree.

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.

Re:External

[bedouin]

I use a Mac, and it's hard to find someware for internal PCI tuners.

I'm using an AlchemyTV DVR in my PowerMac. It's a PCI TV card with remote and DVR software. For about $20 less you can get the same card without the remote or DVR capabilities.

Another option is finding an old bt848-based card and experimenting with iTV.

As I see it, the main reason to go with internal rather than external is latency. If you're planning to play video games through your TV card, anything USB or FW is out of the question. Also don't forget that if you own a DV cam with video-in, and a VCR you can use as a tuner, you probably don't need to buy a TV card at all.

If you're not planning to attach a console to your TV card, I think the best option would be investing in a DV bridge of some sort, and attaching a VCR. Though you might not care about it now, being able to edit analog captures, either from television or VHS with iMovie/FCP/FCE is a nice luxury.

Re:External

[Pharmboy]

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.

Re:External

[WesG]

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!

Re:External

[john_is_war]

Low end Happauge suck, but the higher end TV tuners are best of them all.

Re:External

[HybridJeff]

You're certainly entitled to your predilections, but I've never really thought that going and parking a large vehicle on a concrete pad and hooking it up to sewer and electricity, and then staying inside it, has very little to do with "camping".

I mean, knock yourself out, but I think we need to come up with another verb. To my mind, one of the prime virtues of "camping" is "low impact on my environment", which a 30' diesel powered truck with satellite TV is not.

Id agree, call it RV'ing or somthign like that. Sleeping in an oversized van with satellite TV and a gas powered oven is not camping. Its more akin to taking your own hotel room with you as you travel. Sure it could be fun, and a convenient way to travel and get away from work in the city. But its definatly not camping.

Re:External

[Mycroft_VIII]

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

Re:External

[Majik Sznak]

Macrovision

Not Macromedia...

Re:External

[sigaar]

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.

ATI

[RobFrontier]

The only way to go is the ATI All-In-Wonder. FOr the little bit extra you pay, the feature set you get is unmatched.

Re:ATI

[Arathrael]

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.

Re:ATI

[machineghost]

I had a very negative experience with ATI's TV Wonder. Unless I turned off every other program it would crash often when I was watching TV. Sometimes it even crashed the whole system. Then if I dared to try using the record feature (which was supposed to be a sort of Tivo like thing before DVRs were common) it crashed every few minutes. I tried using it for a small video editing project and I couldn't record more than a couple minutes at a time, if that, because inevitably the whole thing would just shut down.

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.

External

[Barryke]

When placed external, you can take the device with you. Very handy for non-computer experts.

Go for DVB

[soccerisgod]

Get yourself a DVB card, the quality is much better and recording is a lot less trouble.

With analog tv tuner cards you need to encode everything while with a DVB card you can just capture an mpeg stream - a lot less can go wrong and you can always cap full resolution without having to worry about the speed of your cpu or harddisk.

Re:Go for DVB

[isorox]

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.

Re:Go for DVB

[tji]

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.

Re:Go for DVB

[gabebear]

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)

Re:Go for DVB

[Patrick]

Get yourself a DVB card

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.

Re:Go for DVB

[catacow]

DVB also supports HDTV. We've had HDTV using DVB here in Australia for years, including 1080i. See the DBA site for more info.

DBA also supports a whole lot of interesting features (single frequency networks being the first that comes to mind) that ATSC doesn't.

Re:Go for DVB

[Kris_J]

I bought a fairly cheap digital TV tuner/capture card not for the TiVo thing, but simply because at ~A$150 it was the cheapest and easiest way to sample digital TV here in Australia. I got two bits of info out of the purchase:

• Digital TV in Australia isn't worth bothering about.
• A VCR is still easier to tape Angel with than some sort of digital system.

My PC, while it has a Zalman NR power supply is still much noisier than a VCR, and the software that came with my cheap digital card isn't the world's most stable -- playback is okay, recording typically causes it to crash.

Re:Go for DVB

[enrico_suave]

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.

Re:Go for DVB

[jquirke]

Digital TV in Australia isn't worth bothering about

You certainly share my thoughts in some respect - although most content is at least 16x9 SD, in the cities at least, the digital signal does show up a lot of poorer editing processes and artifacts during the production process.

On the other hand, in Melbourne and Brisbane we have 1080i HD (@1920x1080) and that looks absolutely stunning on some programs, and movies.

Re:Go for DVB

[catacow]

I disagree. Yes, sometimes the digital signal does show up problems in the production, such as composite video, or that sort of thing. But there's also a lot of shows with extremely good picture quality. I prefer to have the digital signal, and see the quality where it's available, rather than watching everything with the all the problems of composite video.

It's a pity that channel seven are still unable to show most of their sport or live shows in widescreen, while even the ABC manages to show local football matches with fantastic widescreen picture. It was also disappointing that this year's formula 1 race here in Melbourne wasn't widescreen, but that wasn't channel ten's fault, as the f1 guys have taken back control over the tv coverage.

It has been a bit disappointing lately, with the amount of HD programming seeming to drop off a little. It's hard to believe that a few years ago, the three original star wars movies were shown in HD with 5.1 sound on Nine. Now the only show with 5.1 sound is A Current Affair (and maybe Mcloud's daughters). But the picture quality on shows like The Panel make them an absolute treat to watch.

For anyone wanting to see what's available in HD and SD, there's a pretty complete and accurate guide at www.widescreentv.info. Just ignore 7's "HD", which really shouldn't count as HD. They use the 576p format, yet most of their content comes from 1080i sources (both internally (apparently), and externally). So while we will apparently get some of the Olympics in "HD", it's pretty disappointing that they won't just show it in the correct 1080i format it's produced in.

Re:Go for DVB

[Kris_J]

I find myself watching any random crap so long as it's in HD

While HD does look significantly better than SD (I can compare this on my Sony Trinitron 21" VGA monitor) , the cost of a big screen isn't worth it. Also, the sound quality drops.

Is Tivo available in AU

Nope. Just out of interest, how do you record something for someone else with TiVo? Give me my Sony SLV-EZ2000S in long play with a BASF 5 hour tape doubled to 10 hours any day.

Power supplies are rarely the main source of noise in a PC

I guess I'm special. Anyway, I wasn't comparing my PC to other PCs, it's much quieter, I was comparing it to my VCR, running at night, in my bedroom.

For the record I also purchased a Zalman 6000-series heatsink, but the CPU socket is too close to the power supply and the damn thing doesn't fit. If anyone can point me to a hifi component-style black case that has room for 4 5.25" drives and has the power supply a decent distance away from the CPU, please post a URL.

Re:Go for DVB

[Osty]

Oh, something else I should mention. The audio tracks that broadcast with HD channels typically use less compression (in the audio sense, not the data sense), so the tracks may sound softer than the SD channels. Turn up the volume on your receiver, and you'll be okay. Unless your receiver really sucks, you won't have to turn it up much, and you shouldn't be anywhere near the distortion point of your receiver. For example, I typically watch SD feeds at -30 (Denon receivers go from -50 or -100 to some positive value I've never tried to reach. A volume of "0" is very, very loud). When I switch to a HD channel, I'll typically need to bump up the volume to -20 (I'll put it up to -15, or sometimes even -10 when watching movies). My DVD player's DD5.1 output is the same, with the proper volume level being somewhere between -15 and -20 for most movies. Oddly, though, my XBox's DD5.1 (in games) rarely needs to go higher than -30, though some games do seem to be softer than others (PGR2 plays best at -25).

So, try playing with the volume of your receiver. It may be that the tracks seem to lose definition simply because they're playing too quietly.

What are TV Tuners for?

[Eberlin]

Seriously, what do people use them for? The primary reason I can think of goes along the line of video editing. Other than that, I can't really see why people would forego a generally bigger/cheaper TV screen to see video on a smaller window on a computer monitor.

Any arguments of mobility (as in using laptops to view stuff) seems weak since you'd need to PLUG your TV-tuner onto an antenna/cable/vcr/etc. to get anything.

I'd seriously like to know what uses people have had for such things and reasons why such devices would be worth looking into.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[farghen]

Well, when lcd TVs break into the general market and everybody has one, you can forget a normal TV and just use your computer with TV tuner hooked up to an lcd TV/monitor

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[DrEldarion]

They're nice for someone with no space for a TV set who already has a nice computer setup. For instance, someone moving into a dorm.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[challahc]

Think TiVo.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[xannik]

Space... As I have lived in many small singles and doubles over my tenure in college I can say that having a tv tuner card has provided me with a lot of extra space. Plus it is also to be able to do things online and watch tv all at the same time. With a separate TV you would ordinarily have to look away from the computer screen to see what is happening on TV, unless you had your TV sitting right next to your computer.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[RonnyJ]

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 :)

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[DrAegoon]

I'm a college student and I use a TV tuner exclusively. Since I have to fit everything I own into a Nissan Sentra every other semester I can't carry extra hardware arround. My tuner lets me use a high quality LCD as both my Monitor and my TV. It also has the added benefit of letting me use my computer as a PVR (like TiVo) without paying a subscription fee. The quality is equal to a TV of similar size and it doesn't take up anywhere near the room of a standard TV.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[LoocSiMit]

Other than that, I can't really see why people would forego a generally bigger/cheaper TV screen to see video on a smaller window on a computer monitor.

Your TV is bigger than your monitor?

I'm afraid I have to revoke your membership of the Geek club.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[colinemckay]

So I can sound really cool at parties by saying that I don't own a TV, while secretly watching six Friends reruns a day!

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[farghen]

In addition, when moving between apartments in college (every year basically), it is a pain to move things, and not having a big heavy TV to deal with is nice.

Go Illini!

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[topher1kenobe]

I use mine to record shows for my kids, which they then watch on the same TV. Remember the Scooby-Doos with famous people in them? I have all of them. I just set up the scheduler to record them every day for 2 months, and then stripped the dupes. It came with simple but useful video editing software to strip the commercials too. I can put them on my laptop and the kids can watch in the car. I have hundreds of Looney Tune cartoons. I can VNC home to start a show for them if my wife sends me an IM and asks. Then she just sends the kids upstairs and there's a show on.

I have an AverTV Studio and I love it.

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they're generally useless for serious video editing since the quality is too low-- for that, you should transfer directly from (mini)DV to the computer. Though you can easily use it to chop the commercials from something you've recorded, or for transfers of home movies from VHS-- stuff that doesn't have to be broadcast quality.

But with a tuner card, you can digitize movies and TV-- how about having a large HD full of movies instead of a rack of DVD's and tapes? Or setting up your own version of Tivo to record and pause live TV? (Much cheaper than a Tivo, no monthly fees, no hassle of transferring it to your computer if you want to save the program.) Or, the reason I have one, to archive my favorite shows? There are a lot of programs that aren't (and may never be) available on DVD, or the DVD releases are several seasons behind. Coupled with a DVD burner (or even a CD burner making VCDs), it's a cheap way to make your own compilations to watch on your regular TV and DVD player (or just on the TV with a line out.)

Just to show how nerdy I am, I've been recording old David Lettermans on Trio (they show the old NBC shows from the 80's) and clipping the Chris Elliot sketches. It's so much easier to do it with the computer's TV tuner than the other options. If there are other options (two VCRs hooked together?)

Re:What are TV Tuners for?

[swankypimp]

How's this for geeky: I don't own a TV, so in order to watch the Discovery Channel I bought a PCI tuner. Geekier still: the seven fans in my rig made it impossible to hear the audio, so I wound up gettting an external tuner/signal converter (which I can plug into USB 2.0 when I want to capture). This lets me watch tv when the computer is quiet, i.e. turned off (Okay, I guess I lose geek points for turning my machine off).

Depends...

[LighthouseJ]

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...

DScaler

[RonnyJ]

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.

Re:DScaler

[RonnyJ]

I've not really experienced any slowdown since Hauppauge incorporated some of the DScaler algorithms, but for those on lower-spec computers, it might be an idea to use DScaler 3.12, rather than the latest 4.19 as it seems to use significantly less CPU. I still have 3.12 installed for this reason.

Better hurry...

[Insomnia]

...and get one you like quickly, before They implement the broadcast flag on everything and TV tuners become totally illegal. ;)

Re:Does it work with Linux? BTTV?

[bhtooefr]

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...

Software sucks

[vurg]

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.

Re:Software sucks

[jsebrech]

Half a decade ago I bought a pci hauppauge wintv bt878-based card, and I'm still using it to this day. The windows apps that came with it sucked, and the upgrades to them sucked even worse, with UI's that seemed to be designed to be illogical on purpose, and channel switching that took more than a second. But in a linux machine, with tvtime (which uses dscaler in its backend), it's an awesome card. Super-smooth image, near-instantaneous channel switching, teletext (using alevt) and lirc-supported ir remote. Everyone who sees tvtime playing full screen for the first time comments on the great picture quality. My impression is that if you're going to buy a tv-card, better make sure it has a bt848/878 chipset.

My 2 cents about Leadtek

[fatwreckfan]

Don't ever buy Leadtek. I had the 2000 XP tuner card, and had absolutely nothing but trouble with it. But it wasn't just me...two of my friends got the same card as well at the same time, as they were on sale, and had exactly the same problems as me.

First, the software sucks. 50% of the time the OSD doesn't work. I would regularly get the stereo channel out one speaker and the SAP channel out of the other. Sometimes I'd totally lose audio and have to reboot to fix it. While those are pretty minor problems, the absolute worst was recording. Basically, it never worked. I would depend on the software to record courses I was taking that were broadcast on my university's cable channel, and most of the time it down right didn't record anything. I totally gave up on it. And this wasn't just an issue with one version of their PVR software...this was a problem in every version I tried over the two or more years I had that card. The customer support was atrocious...basically they didn't ever answer my, or my friends, questions about the failing recording. And I won't even get into the horrible sound effects during the software installation, or the stupid blinking (!!) lights around the border of the viewing window.

Then I wanted to get Snapstream's software, because it looked really sweet. Guess what...Leadtek refused to help them resolve issues they had with their cards, so Snapstream couldn't support the Leadtek cards at all. Finally I broke down, spent the money on one of the Snapstream bundles that came with a PCI Hauppauge! card, and have had no problems at all with it.

So my advice is avoid Leadtek at all costs.

Re:My 2 cents about Leadtek

[avageek]

Don't ever buy Leadtek

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).

Re:Does it work with Linux? BTTV?

[Patrick]

Is the Leadtek a BTTV chipset card?

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.

What's stopping me from buying one of these

[foidulus]

is that, 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. Obviously this is fine for television, but not so hot for gaming.
I am a college student who will easily move 2-3 times in the next 2 years, so I really would prefer not to have a seperate TV(the G5 weighs enough as it is). I love the gamecube because it is easy to get a bunch of friends together to sit around drinking playing Mario Kart or Super Monkey Ball or Mario Party(yeah I know, they are childish, but still a hell of a lot of fun). Somewhat harder to do that with PC games.
While I am delaying my purchase of a monitor till the WWDC(Apple is supposedly going to release new, cheaper monitors. I'm holding off on buying a G5 till i see what they have, the student developer discount makes them affordable), it seems that I will buy an LCD monitor/tv combo. You can't record with them, but you can plug your gamecube in fine.

Re:What's stopping me from buying one of these

[bedouin]

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.

Are TV tuners becoming obsolete?

[bob65]

With the apparent growth of digital cable and satellite, can TV tuners even be used in the future? It's nice to have a custom tivo-type PC that you can do anything with, but would that be possible a few years from now?

Re:Are TV tuners becoming obsolete?

[DeepRedux]

The is a new standard called CableCard. It is a PC card that fits into new "digital cable ready" TVs and replaces the converter box. As I understand it, this card will contain the security handling that is now done by the digital cable set-top box. The launch date is supposed to be in two weeks (July 1). I see no reason these could not fit into a PCI-based tuner card.

See this USA Today story for more details.

TV tuner with Linux app...

[Yaa 101]

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...

Re:TV tuner with Linux app...

[Anonymous Coward]

And with XMLTV support built-in, it's an even better application than just a TV tuner!

Site Text in case it gets Slashdotted

[toupsie]

This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.

Not really a good review if you ask me. Kind of light on content and really doesn't discuss the benefits of internal vs. external TV encoders.

Hauppage PVR-250/350

[monopole]

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.

Wonderful PVR

[novalogic]

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

Avoid ATI at all costs

[gopherd00d]

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.

Somewhat Late for such a question...

[tintruder]

Isn't it?

After all analog is on the way out and HDTV is on the way in.

Virtually all of the Analog tuners work just fine. Not necessarily great, but fine. The only recent issue with analog tuners being whether they are XP-MCE compatible.

HDTV is where the action is. And whole there are various OTA and DBS solutions, the "Holy Grail" of PC HDTV Tuners appears to be QAM tuning so they can work on digital cable.

Several manufacturers are trying and none are succeeding, mainly because they either do not have the correct HDTV Tuner chipsets (mfrs. won't sell to them), or they have the right chipsets but they do not have the right SDKs and have to reverse-engineer them to make the tuners function.

Odd considering that several TV makers have introduced DigitalCableReady HDTVs with CableCARD slots yet the PC Tuner makers can't get basic QAM tuning to work.

HDTV tuners on PCs ought to be the discussion here. Analog has been mature for several years.

Re:Somewhat Late for such a question...

[EtherMonkey]

I'm old school. I'll upgrade to HDTV when the equipment and service costs the same as I'm paying now. I'm not paying an extra $500 for an HDTV monitor plus an extra $10/month to watch a handful of channels. Maybe, if I decide to get a bigger screen (more than the 36-inch I have now) for watching DVD's I'll go for 720p. How much image quality do I need to watch Cialis and Hair Club for Men commercials?

90% of the time, the 320x240 TV window on my laptop is more than sufficient resolution for the quality of programming available. And even the least-expensive USB 1.1 tuners work well at that size.

Re:Which has better Linux support......

[jdowland]

My SAA-based card from Medion works a treat. grab the drivers from bytesex and take your pick from the viewers. Recommended, tvtime.

maybe somebody wants to read this..

[virtualone]

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.

Click Image for Larger View Click Image for Larger View

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

As mentioned in the last story about TV tuners

[bersl2]

pcHDTV

Doesn't work with cable or satellite (not sure if this is a hardware or driver limitation) but can decode both NTSC and HDTV. Completely open platform, so completely open drivers.

Make sure it has hardware encoding

[Riskable]

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.

Known issue

[KalvinB]

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

Why TV Tuners? They are capture cards w/TV Tuners

[Nyder]

Look. These are NOT called TV Tuners. They are Capture Cards that have a TV Tuner in them. There are Capture cards without TV Tuners, so what do you call those? Single-Line in Not Tuners?

I would think that the tech minded people of this site would be a little better then that. This whole article makes me feel like I'm dealing with people that don't know anything about the tech they are talking about.

Not to mention the links in the articles didn't survive a simple slashdotting.

Okay, now that I got the rant out, here's what I've dealt with:

I own a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-PCI card. for the most part, it sucks. it's not there mass produced card (the one with the 250 in the name is), so I have to use the software they provide with the drivers they provide because 3rd party software won't work with there drivers. Well, they programs capture like shit. Video is fine, audio is real, real bad.
Luckly someone provides 3rd party drivers for that card and a whole slew of other cards. The drivers are tricky to set up, but i'm sure most people here (cept the posers and they guy who wrote and submitted this article) should be able to figure it out.

I also used a Ati All in wonder card (9600 varity), it's not too bad at all, actually. Didn't get to test out it's recording capabilities though (it wasn't my card), but I really like it's software.

I would personally probably buy an external one next time, because of the portability.
But what I would actually rather have would be an external Capture device that had build in harddrive and networking capabilities (prefer line, but wireless might be okay). Possibly a
Tivo like device that has network capabilities. Being able to manipulate what I recorded so I can archive it in whatever formats I want is necessary.

that's my little rant, I hope. sorry if it offends, but next time don't be so stupid.

Re:this is why i ditched my HTPC

[enrico_suave]

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.

another option

[chrismtb]

Another option for people who own newer video cards with VIVO or equivalent input, like most geforce fx cards, etc is to dig up or buy a cheap VCR to use as a cable tuner for their computer. The cable plug would go into the VCR, which has a built in tuner and then the RCA (or S-Video) outputs could go into the video card/ VIVO cable.

The advantages to this option are cost and ease of setup, assuming you have all of the drivers set up and working for you video card, all you have to do is connect the cable to the VCR and connect the VCR to the video input of your video card and also connect the VCR's audio output to your sound card line input. Also gives the added advantage of always having a VCR hooked up to your computer to make transferring video tapes to your computer quick and easy. For VCR's you can get a basic model that has stereo input/output new at walmart for about $40, or you can easily dig one up at a yard sale for a few bucks, maybe you even have on sitting in your house. Ebay is also an option, although shipping will often be about $15.

The primary disadvantage is that you do not have any control over the tuning through your computer. For most purposes, this means you would have to press a button on the remote or VCR, but it also means that you cannot do a full DVR setup, since your computer cannot choose what channel to record, it can only get what the VCR is currently set to.

In short, this could be a very economical option for people who just want to view TV on their computer and record single shows and already own a video card with RCA/s-video input. Setting this up could even be free for many people if they already have input on their video card and have a VCR sitting around.

~Chris

Alternative to TV Tuner Card

[snakeOil]

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 Disagree With Some Points Of The Review

[Korgan]

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.

Bad drivers?

[Spit]

Shit drivers for TV tuner card getting you down? Just use a better driver, dumbass.

WinTV PCI

[mcgroarty]

I'm a fan of the Hauppauge WinTV PCI cards. You can find them cheap on ebay, as little as $20. And they work just fine with Linux (bt848). No HDTV, telecine deinterlacing and such like the newer Hauppauge cards, but cheap & fine under Linux is good.

The WinTV PCI Radio (or PCI FM) is the same card with an FM radio tuner as well -- the radio also works just fine under Linux.

There are a few other bt848 and bt878 cards out there as well. While they're a little old, they've got one especially cool feature many other cards don't: card-to-card bus mastering. With most modern video cards, you can have the cards talk to each other directly and the TV card uses zero CPU cycles -- just a smidge of bus contention when you're banging on video.

That said, the card can be a bit of a bitch with Windows XP. Hauppauge's driver engineers haven't kept the drivers very well up to date.

Creative

[Jozer99]

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.

Re:Does it work with Linux? BTTV?

[alhaz]

Now, if I just had a box powerful enough to drive one of these...

Your box is powerful enough to drive one of these.

The Bt8x8 line have an on-die risc processor and are designed to perform pci busmaster transfers directly into your video card's memory with little to no interference from your processor once you've set them up.

You could use it on a Pentium 60. You could use it on a 486 if it didn't require stuff that's in post-486-era pci specs.

The overlay transfer uses essentially zero cpu. In fact, if you crash the OS, the overlay transfer keeps going and the video window remains live because the southbridge is still live even if the cpu is trapped.

The PROBLEM, is that mostly the windows drivers don't use the overlay method for reasons that are lame. they use the grab-and-display method, which is dumber than dumb.

The btwincap drivers get around that issue. it's also a total nonissue in linux.

*recording video is another story entirely.

Hauppauge is very good.

[mrmeval]

I am still using their first PCI card (bt878) in my Linux box. They have been a Linux friendly company.

http://www.hauppauge.com/

With this 'old' card I can do full frame rate video recording.

ATI = Absence of Test Instruments?

[Futurepower(R)]

I've got a good answer to ATI driver problems. Buy a card with a Radeon 7000 chipset. $34.70, DVI out, TV out, and they don't seem to have any driver problems. The card is so bottom end that ATI tech support seems to hate to admit they even exist. Plenty good if you don't run games.

Reading these posts about ATI driver problems is an experience for me like listening to people complain about mosquitos or athlete's foot or getting a cold. People have been doing that for centuries, and in equivalent computer years, it probably has been that long the world has been experiencing ATI driver flakiness.

Suppose ATI is not really a video chipset maker. Suppose the company's real purpose is to make faulty drivers? Maybe the company is run by some rich guy who doesn't need to make any more money, and likes to annoy people.

Maybe ATI stands for Absence of Test Instruments.

Do you ever wonder about the sociology of ATI driver quirks? Matrox released drivers every few months, and rarely had problems. nVidia has been the same, in my experience. What conditions exist that ATI sometimes, in the past, released new drivers every few days? After releasing faulty drivers every few days for weeks, wasn't there anyone at ATI idealistic enough to decide that they needed to do better?

Anyhow, I agree with a comment above that they seem to have gotten better.

ATI and drivers have been one of the mysteries of the universe. Sure, it's not on the level of a short guy with black hair telling tall blond Germans that they are the master race, but it is a mystery nevertheless.

You can probably tell from the tone of this comment that I too am an ATI rakee, as in being raked over the coals several times by ATI drivers.