Something I know very little about is digital tv tuners for comps, I had an analogue one years ago. Can you guys recommend a couple of good ones, I see there are now usb ones as well, which are better? I'm not bothered if it is internal or external although I assume internal is better. Also, a remote is not essential but would be so much better if it was included
There're a couple of them about now, I've no idea which is best, but one thing's for sure - don't bother with USB. I've only seen bad things with them tbh. [edit]Have a look on Froogle, plenty on there ("Dual DVB-T tuner"), stick with the big brands and you can't really go wrong imho.
Interresting to hear the other side of the argument I personally dont use a Tv tuner but lots of people say USB gives an improved picture quality, internal cards pic up a lot of noise produced by the PSU.
I fail to see why that would be the case. A decent PSU should not introduce any noise, and internal cards will have more available bandwidth. I'd be inclined to agree with popular opinion, and say USB would be the least desireable choice.
Cool cheers guys, ocuk have a couple of ones that seem to be made by names I have heard, I am going to have to try harder to find reviews, they don't seem that popular.
The real problem, that I find at least, with USB tuners is that they take up a lot of processing power - the PCI versions are a lot more gentle on your PC imho.
TV-Cards is the place to look for reviews and user feedback. Hauppauge do a dual Nova-T tuner, the old single-tuner Nova-T PCI I have has never given any trouble and is supported by most 3rd-party software. They're maybe not the 'best' you specify, but 'good middle-budget'. Moving to AV...
If you have a pci-e slot then the blackgold is suppose to be rather good, but tv cards are funny things; they seem to be some of the hardest products to get working correctly for some people. You asked for digital but do you mean dvb-(t)er,(s)at or (c)able?
dvb-t is the method freeview broadcasts. I would look at the hauppauge nova-t 500 but they have issues as basically their are usb cards on a pci board. Some people have issues from hibernation/suspend modes.
It's not dual, but I have a Leadtek Winfast DTV-1000 in my linux server. The only thing I learnt when looking around was don't go for one of the more expensive cards that have hardware decoders on. DVB comes in as MPEG2. This can be decoded by your CPU without too much trouble (so long as you have a good enough CPU!), and so buying what is known as a "budget" card is perfectly acceptable. I've had no problems with my card, admittedly it's running on a Linux machine. Also note, particularly the DTV-1000, can already do two or more channels at once, provided they are on the same multiplex (i.e. BBC1 2 and 3 are on the same multiplex). I know Leadtek advertise to buy 2 DTV-1000s and you'll be able to watch potentially 4 or more channels at once! Enough for anyone's needs Considering they are only £30-40 it's not too shabby, provided you have the spare PCI ports. I always thought USB tuners were more for people with laptops? HTH
I think a Q6600 should be able to cope with it Cheers for clearing that up, the terratec one has good reviews and so does the haupage, i think i might have to go elsewhere other than ocuk or scan to get it becuase there selection is really limited, im gonna have a look at dabs.
Not true it depends on the country, for example dvb-t in France is both mepg2 and mpeg4 the latter for encoded pay to view stuff. DVB-S2 is generally h.264 format, I'm only guessing here but I can see mpeg2 being dropped a few years down the line in most countries. A dvb tv card only needs a codec that the tv show is being broadcasted in, for example in London, England the BBC are transmitting BBCHD in h.264. Which I can pick up and record with my dvb-t tv cards and power dvd 7 h.264 codec.
Ah good point, thanks I was thinking only about UK (and even then I forgot about BBC HD. ). They're all still standard encodings though so can be decoded by a player rather than a chip on the board. Not that there are many hardware-decoder based cards out there (Isn't Microsoft refusing to support them in it's Broadcast Driver Architecture?)
