prinsipe said:
Guys I need a little help here. I am planning to buy a TV tuner card which will be primarily used to record TV shows (so it has to be crisp and clear). I am Choosing between lifeview products and pinnacle products, but if you have other suggestions its always welcome.
With your help I want these items be answered (please......):
1. Is there a big difference in performance between an external and internal card?
2. How is the videocard gonna affect the performance of the tuner card (minimum requirements and recommended)
3. What kind of Video card do I need?
4. Proper setup so that I achieve TV-like picture quality (hardware setup which includes the soundcard, video card, and the tuner card).
I hope you can help me decide, thanks in advance.....
1. What Lee Said
2&3. While the video card doesn't really intereact with the tuner card the same can't be said for the turner cards program. Some programs won't run or need to be run certain ways with older video cards, or ones that may not support overlay etc. Although don't know how many of them are floating around now days.
4. As for sound cards, unless you are using an external tuner you don't even need one, I used to record of one computer without a sound card and play back on another.
I've been through a Creative digital vcr, avermedia usb300, ati tv wonder remote, and a happauge pvr250.
The creative was great, software was fantastic, but resolution was low (640x480). Back then I never used anything higher then 800x600 though so it wasn't really a problem.
The avermedia was an extranel, quality was somewhat lesser then I was hoping, and software sucked.
ATI, nice features, good quality, but very finicky software. Eg. would not record if computer was locked (which is a must for me). 70% of the time the program would crash when trying to record even when the computer was unlocked.
Hauppage is the one I'm using now. The recording software was very buggy (I have a record consisting of about 30 messages each way between myself and a happauge support technician regarding this and the fact that they are aware of it). I also found the quality recorded by their program to be lacking. Finally I have tried the happauge in a media center PC, I have found MCE 2005's TV recording portion to be quite possibly the best I have used. It never misses a recording, and the quality is probably as good as I have ever seen from a TV Recording program. It's just too bad they don't offer a TV recording component for XP Pro, etc.
*edit*
Guess he already decided on one, oh well just a bit more info for people.