USB based TV tuner... WinTV, PCTV, others? (1 Viewer)

[Steve Owen]

Hi folks... PC question. My wife wants to get a cheap TV tuner for the sole purpose of opening a small window on her PC so she can have TV on while she works (desk isn't big enough for even a small TV). We're not interested at all with video capture (I have that capability on my PC), and probably not even interested in having super-good quality.
Right now, I've only found two candidates:
Hauppage WinTV-USB
Pinnacle Systems Studio PCTV-USB
Any other options? I'd like to keep it under $100. Cheap and simple is what I'm looking for...
Thanks,
Steve
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Link Removed Home Theater Gear

 

[Matt DeVillier]

Steve,
USB tuners are plagued by dropouts. USB 1.1 just doen't have the necessary bandwidth. My suggestion would be to pick up a WinTV-go for $20 here and use the free DScaler software (free) here . I'm using a higher end WinTV card (WinTV-FM) with DScaler and it looks great, but since they use the same decoder chip your results should be similar
-Matt
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My DVD collection