Where do I find good TV Tuners?!

[snipingkid]

Hey everyone,

I'm a complete idiot regarding TV Tuner cards, I've been wanting to get one so I can throw my TV out of my room. First of all, I have spent a little over 2 hours on Newegg.com looking for TV tuner cards with relatively high ratings. Truthfully, it isn't promising, half of the cards have 50% 5 star ratings.

Does anyone know of any good cards?

I am using Vista Ultimate 64-bit, therefore, the damn card needs to work with the OS.

Other than it's compability with Vista x64, I would like it to be an actual card, I want the thing INSIDE my case, it can be PCI, or PCI-E.


** I doubt that this is possible, but is there any card that has nearly no response time? I would like to be able to plug a gaming console on it. If we're looking hardware wise, it works, but I suspect the response time for these things to be around 1-2 seconds, thus no great for interacting with the frames.


One more thing, as of right now, I haven't really established a budget for this thing, it really depends on quality.

Thanks for the help.

 

[momentkiller]

another thing you can do is buy a monitor with a built-in tv tuner. I have a 940MW with an built-in tv tuner and it works just fine

 

[1haplo]

I use the ATI TV Wonder 650. It has a clear picture and works with Vista X64 Media Center.


You can get it in PCI or PCIe 1x. VisionTek makes the PCIe version. Just make sure it is the TV Wonder 650 chip on the tuner.

1Haplo

 

[cory1234]

I need a usb tv tuner any recommendations?

 

[TwiZtiD_3]

i'm very happy w/my Hauppauge 1600. tv/cable/HDTV tuner. it works with Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Just built another one this weekend. If you are using the windows media center, the drivers and whatnot will update right with your windows updates.

you didnt really say wether you are using Over-the-air tv, cable, directv, over-the-air HDTV, or what... but this card covers it all.

not sure about plugging a console into it, i'm strictly PC gaming... so not sure how they hook up.

BIG plus to look for is the Hardware Decoding on the card.

am sure you'll get a number of responses, with other great cards too.

 

[snipingkid]

To Cory1234: Check out this link, this is a list of all the USB tv tuners on NewEgg, you can get a decent idea of what's good and what's not.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380047+1148510222+1148410234&name=USB+2.0


I checked the Hauppauge 1600, it was actually saved in my list. The TV Wonder 650 was the first card I looked at, also saw it in a store, seems good, but like a bunch of other cards, not everyone has been completely satisfied.

About the gaming thing, I doubt I'm gonna start playing Xbox again, but it'd be nice to know that I can actually play it on my computer LCD, instead of the other, low quality TV I have. I play PC games now, I finally caught the fact that they cost less, overall... Even with buying a new PC.

If anyone has a console handy, maybe you could check out the response time, I seriously think it's over a second. (To TwiZtiD: Just use the little S-Video to composite adapter that was included with the card, and plug some console in there, if you have one).

To MomentKiller: As much as I would like to have it in the screen, I just bought a 22" LCD with 5ms response time and 3000:1 Contrast, so I'm set up for the next five years, hopefully.

By the way, to anyone who's about to get a new screen... make sure you check the contrast ratio... The quality difference is unbelievable. The standard ratio is 700:1.

One more thing, quality wise(not time), is PCIe way better than PCI? I think that they're nearly the same price, but in theory, the PCIe for these is a little less than twice as fast.

Sorry for not going in order... Just wrote as I remembered your comments... Thanks for your support.