What is possible with TV tuner cards/All-in-Wonder cards? (1 Viewer)

[Tim Holyoke]

I don't really know anything about TV tuner cards or any of this stuff. I'm sure there are a ton of options out there by now. My brother's heading of to college next fall, and I'm going to get him a computer. I built mine a few years ago, and it went well, so I might just build his. Plus it'll save me a load of money.

So, since he'll be in a small dorm room, I thought it might be nice to have something like a tv tuner card or whatever so he doesn't need a tv taking up that much more room. What is possible with these? What are my options? I obviously know nothing, so I'm open to anything right now (except spending an arm and a leg). Thanks a lot.

 

[Mark Murphy]

I use an ATI TV Tuner PCI card. I have Direct TV,so I have to use a satellite receiver that connects to the tuner card. I'd recommend it.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Another option is using Dscaler with on of the many cheap tuner cards it works with. Dscaler is free, is excellent, and does TV tuning and video input scaling with the proper input card.

I use it on my nightstand pc for TV tuning- coupled with a wireless mouse (Dscaler is setup so the scroll wheel on the mous will change channels up/down- so i just use that as a remote).

I don't use the ATI cards, cause they don't work with dscaler

-V

 

[JohanD]

I have an ATI TV Wonder PCI and it works fine with DScaler... been using it for months..

it is the stand alone TV wonder and not the integrated all in wonder though..

quality is fairly good.. doesn't blow my socks off but it is satisfactory. I tried to use it in conjunction with snapstream, and while it did work.. my PC is way to slow.. (P3-450)

I can watch from dscaler and it is very fast/responsive.. but any recording bogs it down.. but I think that can be easily attributed to my slow processor.

 

[Joe Hsu]

Yeah, I believe the latest betas from DScaler work with the AIWs, but they ARE still betas.

 

[Harold Wazzu]

Still have my aiw 8500dv and probably won't upgrade for awhile. I think my fav thing to do with it is record stuff off of cable and burn it to dvds.

 

[ThomasC]

I have a $50 Hauppauge model, and it's served me well since the beginning of 2002. However, I had troubles with it under Windows 98SE and ME, but after I upgraded to XP, it was pretty much smooth sailing. I was able to capture video with Hauppauge's software under 98SE and ME, but it stopped working when I upgraded to XP. But, VirtualDub can capture video as well, and I'm satisfied with it.

 

[Len Cheong]

Does anybody know if 2 tuner cards can coexist in one computer? For instance for watching sports - 2 games at once on your computer screen.

 

[JohanD]

I believe you can put two tuners in there, typically in DSCALER you can select the input device. If you want to run PVR software such as snapstream's BeyondTV[www.snapstream.com, most PVR software does not have support for dual tuner cards yet. (but it is in the works)