TV tuner / PVR

[Prot]

I'm looking to get one of these for my computer so that I can record shows while I'm away, then burn to VCD or DVD if I want to keep it. It can be either PCI or USB 2.0, just as long as I get quality recordings. I've seen reviews on both Hauppage and ATI, and those look promising, but I want to get feedback on actual owners.
I want to spend about $100-$140US, maybe a bit more, since the high end cards are more than I need.

TIA

[Forum Troll]

I recommend the Hauppauge PVR-250. Works great for me.







You are in breach of the forum rules and are being banned. Do not post false information.
/ Moderator John Q. Publik

[mats.hogberg]

I'll second that. For no other reason than that it's least work. Just take your captured mpg and author. Only simpler way to do it is to use a DVD recorder - then you don't even have to author. To boot, the quality is great, even if I'd imagine there are ways to get even better captures (like capturing to uncompressed/lossless codec AVI, then reencoding using some high end mpeg encoder at high quality setting)

/Mats

[Prot]

A tv tuner is what meets my needs at this point. I was considering the Hauppage PVR150 actually, but if the cost is not that much more, I could go for the 250. The ATI caught my eye because it has the option of MPEG4 capture, but that is not all that necessary since I would just have to re-encode to MPEG2 if I wanted to author it to a DVD.
As for a DVD recorder, I'd want one with a hard drive, and my computer already has a hard drive, so why not use it, and use my computer to record the shows. For the cost in savings, I don't mind doing the authoring myself.

[Prot]

From what I've read in other postings, the PVR250 has hardware encoding, but the 150 does not? I do have a P4 3.2 GHz, 1204mb RAM, and a
120gb SATA drive. Are these specs good enough to handle the software encoding?
thanks

[junkmalle]

The PVR-250 and PVR-150 both have hardware MPEG encoders. The main difference is that the 250 is an older design with one chip for audio and another for video. The 150 has a single chip that handles both. Some people have been complaining about distorted audio on the 150. Search these forums for further information.

[ApolloCreed21]

I picked up the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 about 2 weeks ago and am very happy with the quality. I haven't done much other than capture some shows in MPEG2 and have also been playin' with puttin' that stuff on a DVD. The first few things I have put on a DVD I could not really tell the difference between that and a live broadcast. The GUIDE PLUS and ATI MMC software work pretty nice together. This is my first tuner/pvr so I can't really comment on how it compares to others.

[mats.hogberg]

The main advantage with the Hauppage 1/2/350 cards, is that they are completely independent of computer specs and activities. You can capture to DVD specs mpeg and play Doom3 at the same time if you like - they can't tell the difference. Software/Hardware "assisted" capturing/encoding uses your processor and will start dropping frames when their processor demand can't be met.
The downside is that they are mpeg only, so if you want an AVI, you have to reencode (but so far I've never longed for an AVI version of my mpeg captures - I can well imagine the opposite, had I only been able to capture to AVI...)

/Mats

[reboot]

Another very adamant vote for the PVR-250.