TV capture card

Hi,

I'd like to buy one soon, but there's so many! There's Leadtek Winfast, Asus, MSI, etc... from what I've seen, Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP models look nice...

 

... Is there a point of this thread?



If you're looking for advice/recommendations, ask

 

Sorry my friend, I am looking for advice/recommendations

 

I've had reasonable results with ATI all in wonder cards in the past now that CPUs can keep up to do software encoding at decent rates. Some are ok for gaming as well (as long as you 're not after real top-end perf)

 

I have a Hauppage win TV nova PCI... pice of crap if you ask me, I don't use it any more. Its about a year old though, they may make better cards these days.

Hauppage are one of the biggest contenders in the game mind you.

Another thing you may like to note, is it compatible with MS media edition 2005? You may not use it at the moment but it might come in handy later on.

keep reading reviews though.

 

You didn't say what or how you wanted to use the tv card i.e a Tivo like device, capture video camera footage or games playing on your pc monitor etc so here is a quick run down. Also pay www.tv-cards.com a visit for more help.
If your looking for a software based tv card look at the compro mate range or the leadtek expert.
If your looking for a hardware based encoder look at the hauppauge pvr150 with a programme such as www.gbpvr.com. The downside of hardware based cards are they are generally very poor for playing game consoles on your monitor due to the lag of 1 or 2 seconds. Also you generally limited to either mpeg 1 or 2 but some of the newer cards like the tv walker have mpeg4 recording too. The main advantage of hardware cards are you can capture at full resolution with a p3 733 whereas in software card would need about 2ghz cpu do acheive this.
The advantage of software based cards are they are cheap and have no or less delay compared to a hardware card.
On digital tv card front it really depends on what country you are in before we can touch upon that.

 

a great reply herbs Ive been looking at the same thing
my situation is a want to have a shuttle that records tv free to air on and amd 2.5 cpu @ 3.2 so would the software based card as you seem to say would work fine for this what card do you reccomend for this ?
cheers

 

Yes software based encoders will do what you require, I have personally gone the hardware route as it allows me to use 2 tv cards at once with a moderate duron 1.6ghz cpu (this would probably allow me to have 4 or 5 tuners without problems if I could afford it). As your in the UK you could maybe look at digital tv freeview (www.freeview.co.uk) cards if you can recieve a signal in your area. Be careful going down this route as supplied applications are known to be for a better word poor. The benefit of freeview cards (dvb-t) is that the broadcast is already in a mpeg2 format so you don't have to use cpu horsepower to convert the signal into a usable format i.e mpeg2 or divx etc.
If you decide you want to go down the digital route look at the nebula digitv which is the most expensive but has the best out of the box application. Otherwise look at the hauppauge nova-t with showshifter or mytheatre, or wait for www.gbpvr.com to support the nova-t.
If you have windows MCE2005 or can legally get hold of it the nova-t will work well with it.

 

luckily i can get a freeview signal so lookie likey ill go that route had alook at your link for gb-pvr looks great , i have read abit about windows media edition too i think i try that anyway again thanks for your informative reply will feedback with results once I decide what card to go for

 

Ive got a Hauupuage PVR250 and I love it... Recordings look great, TV is clear, remote is awesome! Great buy!

 

If you're thinking of using Showshifter, my advice is to first install version 2.10.2235
from a magazine cover disc (last one was PC Format Dec 2004, i think),
then try their upgrade page in the online shop. If successful, you'll cut the
price of Showshifter 3.10 from €74.99 to €29.99.

 

I have one of these but these are being phased out by the pvr150 which is cheaper and has 1 chip to deal with the audio and vision side whilst the pvr250 has one chip for each audio and vision. Having 1 chip allows manufacturing to be cheaper, by all accounts the picture quality is exactly the same also the pvr150 has an ir blaster which might come in handy. There is even a beta linux driver for the pvr150 now which should allow myth tv users to use a pvr150.