tv card <$100

[athalus]

i've been looking into tv cards. my budget is $100. it seems that the most recommended cards are from ati, hauppauge and pinnacle. the cheapest i saw from pinnacle is $163 so that gets rules out.

i found 2 cards that seem to fit the bill:
1) ati tv wonder pro w/remote - $100 from ati

2) hauppauge wintv-dbx (wintv401) - $80 @ newegg


my plan for the card is initially for just tv viewing but later to convert, once i buy a dvd burner, my vhs tapes to dvd so it must be able to do video capture as well. good remote control is important but not critical.

my question is which do you think is better?


the rest of my system is as follows:
2.4b p4
512mb of 2700 ram
80gb wd hard drive (7200rpm)
ati 128mb 9500 pro video card
sound blaster audigy 2 sound card
gigabyte mobo, 845pe chipset
nec fe700+ 17" monitor
pioneer 106s dvd
tdk 32x burner

 

[dichotomy]

If your going to eventually want to convert you might wanna check out this site first. It's a good primer before jumping into the world vhs to dvd
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/
It will narrow down your choices. I wouldn't recommend the ati though I've heard bad things about the drivers

 

[DarrenFrost]

I got sick of trying to deal with the crappy kworld box so I sent it back and got a leadtek winfast tv 2000xp which is an AWESOME card so far and only cost $60 at fry's electronics. it drops a few frames when I play street fighter alpha 3 and do quick combos but that is my only complaint, otherwise totally flawless. video quality much superior to garbage k-world, the FM radio feature is sweet (signal is good enough to record MP3 from it straight from radio program!) the remote is easy to use (i love the screencap button) and everything has worked perfectly from install. only thing you might need is a headphone jack to stereo adapter if you plan to input composite a/v. for encoding, this card allows up to mpeg4 encoding with the software it comes with, even allows straight recording to DVD. With your system that should not be a problem. it barely is with mine and I have a p4 1.4ghz.

 

[athalus]

thanks for the info on the leadtek. newegg had it for $46. it worked out great because i also needed xp home as well for a computer i'm upgrading. i'm looking forward to it.

thanks!

 

[mark204]

Hey,

great info on the tv card, one question though, do you have any idea if the leadtek card supports hyper threading or dual processors? The ati tv wonder cards dont ( found out the hard way ).

Thanks

Mark

if you're gonna be a bear, be a GRIZZLY!!

 

[falsedragon]

After some initial problems (which turned out to be a bad stick of RAM afterall), I've been having great success with my MSI TV @nywhere Master. Have seen them for under $100 Canadian $ and works great for both watching TV and for capturing video. It has both S-Video and RCA inputs, and links through your soundcard for audio. Captures directly to mpeg2 DVD quality if your computer can keep up with it and has lots of free HD space.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-
AMD Athlon 2500+ running at 3200+
Abit NF7-S mobo
1 Gb DDR-400
WD 80Gb 7200rpm 8mb cache
IBM 80Gb 7200rpm
ATI Radeon 9700PRO
MSI TV @nywhere Master
Pioneer DVR-A05
Samsung 950p 19" Monitor