Looking for recommendations for a TV tuner card.
ftran999
new PC with Vista 64 bit as my OS. Unfortunately Hauppauge has not released
any drivers for said OS. Rather than waiting for Hauppauge to release such
drivers, I decided it would be better to just buy a new card. Right now I'm
only using analog cable but plan on uprading to HDTV via digital cable soon.
Therefore I need a card that can accept both NTSC and ATSC input.
Preferably, I would like a PCI or PCI-E card though I am open to USB. A
plus but not a necessity would be a dual tuner which would allow me to watch
one/record another channel or record two channels. Price should be under
$100 but that price point is not set in stone.
Thanks in advance.
Richard Crowley
More evidence for avoiding Vista.
(As if we needed any more evidence.)
"ftran999" didn't say why he/she/it switched to Vista
CLicker
Sorry for the piggyback Richard, no copy of the OP here.
ftran999, I shan't recommend the OnAir Creator - at ~$230 - but
I will mention two of its features to look for in whatever
choice you make:
1) The OnAir will optionally record all the streams in a digital
channel. As many as three HDTV streams are carried by Time
Warner in a single channel. Where I am located those would be
ABC, FOX, & PBS. CBS & NBC are together in a different channel.
Thus, with only two tuners, it's possible to capture up to 5
HDTV shows simultaneously.
2) The OnAir capture program will record in "stealth mode."
This means that no picture will be displayed while the capture
is in progress. In this mode, with two tuners recording and
"all streams" enabled, barely 5% of CPU performance is employed
(using an AMD 3200, which is a single core, 2 GHz chip).
With any capture device, you can view/record as many sources as
you have tuners. You can, of course, always watch something
already recorded while all tuners are capturing. In this case,
you'd definitely want to record HDTV in "stealth mode."
Without a device which supports a "cable card," you will only be
able to capture unencrypted video streams. On the TW cable
here, there are well over 100 unencrypted digital streams (more
than 50 are music channels) among which are 10 or so HDTV
channels, all of which would also be available OTA.
The Hauppauge WinTV app will not load in Vista. AFAIK, Vista
includes the drivers you'd need to utilize the Hauppauge 250 as
a Media Center capture device. Additionally, MC has finally
enabled QAM capture, though I've read that some/many are
presently reporting issues with it. As you know, the Hauppauge
250 is analog only.
Finally, and this is important, TW doesn't - and I assume other
cable carriers do not - require a digital subscription to access
unencrypted digital channels. You should be able to access
those QAM streams right now with a QAM tuner and no more than a
basic cable subscription.