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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."
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.
When placed external, you can take the device with you. Very handy for non-computer experts.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
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.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
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.
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.
...and get one you like quickly, before They implement the broadcast flag on everything and TV tuners become totally illegal. ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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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.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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
--
My SAA-based card from Medion works a treat. grab the drivers from bytesex and take your pick from the viewers. Recommended, tvtime.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Be seeing you...
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
Break the mindless monotony!
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.
Shit drivers for TV tuner card getting you down? Just use a better driver, dumbass.
POKE 36879,8
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.