HTPC Looking for Digital TV Card

I'm thinking of buying a Digital TV card but don't know which to go for. I've had a look around and have decided to either get a Leadtek WinFast DTV1000 T or a Black Gold PCI DVB-T. Which one should I get? anyone help?

The BlackGold card has been out for a few years but seems to be quite popular, mainly because of its compatability with Windows MCE. All the reviews of it i've seen are from around 2004 so I don't know how it compares to newer cards like the Winfast DTV1000. I'm looking for one that has an S-Video input aswell, otherwise I would've gone for a Nebula DigiTV.

 

i have 2 blackgolds and love em.
you can get them fairly cheap from ebay sellers now.

might be worth waiting though as they are bringing out a card in the first quarter this year that will be compatible with pci express 1x slots. so if you have a pci express mobo you wont be using up valuable pci slots.

 

You can get the nova-t for £39.99 if your not interested in the analogue connections i.e s-vid/composite. I have a Nebula Digitv and to be truthful I don't reckon its worth the price premuim, the software is buggy at the moment (I have been saying this for 2 years).
Although they keep adding features they also seem to be adding bugs.

Dom the card that uses pci-e is already out it's the terratec 2400i see http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=104104

 

blackgold for teh win....

loved mine for the week i had it before i went to uni, with a crap signal

 

I forgot to mention I'm running WinXP Pro SP2 not MCE, if that makes any difference, if not then I think i'll go and order a BlackGold card.

 

MCE is WinXP

 

but mce only cards wont work on just xpsp2. important to point that out

 

MCE require DVB/ASTC cards to use BDA drivers, win xp/2k supports BDA drivers so with third party applications such as progdvb, mediaportal, got all media and gbpvr etc can support BDA cards in win xp2.
The Blackgold might be different, I don't know but generally cards with BDA drivers do work in xp with third party apps and a little tweaking.

 

third party apps and tweaking. not exactly out of the box

edit: cheers for the link above. looks very interesting

 

Nope but supplied tv card software is generally a load of crap. Also mce is not prefect on the configuration part. Even if you install mce on your pc you still have to have a mpeg decoder such as nvidia's purevidea and a reasonable graphic card to get it working. I could get progdvb working with an old gf 440mx and 1.5ghz cpu in 5 minutes of installing a bda tv card.

 

I decided to order the Blackgold card, arrived yesterday, after a few problems installing the card i've got it working now and seems to be working fine. I'd like to try out gbpvr and mediaportal and have read that I need to install BDA drivers to be able to use them. The Blackgold website has BDA Drivers but it says its for MCE cards only, is it safe to install them with my card?

 

My understanding is that once you turn the card into a MCE card you cannot go back on the blackgold but I could be wrong you need someone with a card to verify this.