External TV Tuners/PVR Devices Tested

Solomon writes "TV Tuners for the PC have existed for a long time but with the ever increasing popularity of TiVo-like services and the possibility of replicating such features on your Windows PC with little effort and a small investment, tuners have been getting a lot of attention this year. Today there's three-way shootout posted at TechSpot with products from Digistor, Transcend and a very appealing offer from RTV called the VEG that lets you play consoles in your monitor. Although neither of these devices can match TiVo completely, they do give you a very cheap alternative."

Comments

Re:I thought it was unwise -

[topham]

USB 2.0 has sufficient bandwidth if the device performs onboard encoding. (MPEG2 for instance).

Notes from A MythTV User

[drewzhrodague]

DO your research FIRST, and just buy a PVR-250 or PVR-350. Friend of mine didn't listen to me, and went and bought himself a cheap $29 tuner card for $180 -- and no MPEG.

I have an old non-mpeg tuner card, and it works great with MythTV. Dedicate a box to the task. Get a nice TV-Out card that you can live with. Get the remote control, or a longer-range wireless keyboard.

MythTV blows my mind everytime I use it: KnoppMyth

Do it cheaper/better with Linux?

[EvilGrin666]

Its a shame they didn't compare these products against MythTV. I've been using it quite happily for some time on my Linux box equipped with a Hauppage TV card. I suspect it works out cheaper than the options offered in the article and has comparable features to a tivo...