Choosing HDTV card for PC

[thymej]

Hello,

I’m a n00b to TV cards, never had one before. My goal is simple; I want to be able to record HDTV from a DB4 outdoor antenna (no cable, no cable in the future ether, only antenna). I’m in the Los Angelis area and antennaweb.org says I’m about 27mile from all the HD towers.

I don’t have a HD TV, just a 25” CRT that has a button that can do 16x9, else it’s a regular 4x3 CRT. I plan on recording on the PC then burning to DVD to watch on the TV. It’s fine if the image is reduced when doing a HDTV-to-DVD since I don’t have a TV that can do 1080 (I won’t for a long time too).

My plan was to purchase an ATI Theater 650Pro type card, I cant find one; I also heard about a recall on all of the ATI 650pro cards. I don’t want to wait anymore.

So with that information, what card would you experienced users recommend; FusionHDTV-RT-5, ATI HDTV-Wonder, VBox 150, AVerTVHD A180, etc? What do you all think?

ThymeJ

[jman98]

I bought the MyHD MDP-130 card and use it. It works fine for me, but it's not the easiest card for newbies I think. It is also absolutely worthless for analog TV captures. If you think you will want to do analog captures and HD captures with the same card, you won't want the MDP-130. It does work pretty well though and I like it.

I'll warn you from personal experience that you will need a good antenna to get HD reception at your distance. I live less than 15 miles from the majority of towers in my town and I had constant problems getting over the air signals, so I admitted defeat and paid Comcast to give me HD over cable and I love it. Please note that I did NOT have an outdoor antenna, but only an indoor one, which does make a difference.

I am not aware of any HD capture cards that can reduce the image for you. You'll need to capture it in HD and reduce it yourself afterward. The HDTVtoMPEG2 program may be of use to you for this.

[redwudz]

I'm using a MyHD card also. I did have a Fusion gold card before. They both work well, but take a little time to set up. I would agree completely about the antenna. I can practically see the transmitters that are 15 miles away and I needed a fairly big antenna to get decent video. I output from my HTPC with a component connection to my video projector.

I believe our local HDTV stations are still running at reduced power, so the signal should improve when they switch over to HDTV only broadcasting.

The MyHD card is a little more pricey compared to the Fusion card. It also needs a 'daughter board' if you want DVI output. I use the component output from my motherboard as I don't have any DVI displays anyway. The newer versions of both cards may come with software to convert to SDTV. I don't record it as there is nothing really worth recording from the local stations at present. Only a very small part of their video is true HDTV, the rest is converted from SDTV.

[xxiangg]

I have tried four different cards/box. I.e.,
DVICO fusion USB box,
ATI HDTV wonder,
ADS instantHDTV,
and Kworld (maybe ATSC 110?).


If you intend to use it for OTA signal, one of the most
important issues is how good it receives weak signals.
Based on my experience, the best one is DVICO Fusion.
The second one is ATI cards. I am using these two cards
currently. I have also tried both Kworld and instantHDTV,
and was not satisfied with their performance. So I
returned them.

I am using in-room annetnna with an in-line amplifier.
The channels in my area are 2(FOX), 4(KRON), 5(CBS), 7(ABC)
9(BPS), 11(NBC), 14(Spanish), 20(WB), 26(Chinese),
32(Chinease), and 54(PBS). For all 11 stations I's interested,
I can receive all 11 stations with DVICO box with strong
signal strength for recording (>80%). For ATI, I got about
9 stations which are good for recording. For instantHDTV,
I got arround 4~5 stations good for recording and for
Kworld I only got 2 stations good for recording.

There are addition functionalities which DVICO card also
provides, but I do not use. For example, it has analogy
turner. It can received some digital cable signals. On
the other hand, DVICO is also more expensive than other
three I have tried.

MyHD card is a very different cards than the 4 I have
tried. All other 4 cards I tried use software decoder.
MyHD card has a hardward decoder. It will use very litter
CPU power. If you have a 5 years old slow computer, this
is probably the only card for you. The computer I am using
is a Pentium 2.4G, which is fast enough for all these
cards. I have no experience for MyHD card. I do not know
how good it receives weak signals. But I heard it is a very
good card in the past. It is just a little expensive for me.

[edDV]

The DTV transmitter power issue varies by city size in the USA. Large cities like Los Angeles will have moderately high power and longer range with an indoor antenna. Smaller markets are mostly running the minimum DTV power required by the FCC.

This is because small stations have difficulty affording the power bill for two transmitters. Also, because most will be assigned different DTV channels for 2009 and they will need to buy all new transmission equipment. The old lower power "starter transmitters" will be redeployed as DTV repeaters to fill bad reception areas.

Expect major DTV power gains in most markets when analog is shut off in 2009.

[thymej]

Thanks for the replys

Any one have any experience with VBox? (or AverTVHD)

[snipper_cr]

Im using the ATI HDTV Wonder card and its pretty good. The analog capture (composite/Svid with L/R audio) has came in handy and the cable analog tuner is pretty good (although i think the quality is lower than on a regular tv... i compared and the ATI tuner looked grainier).

The Software, MMC is pretty good and covers alot of bases although the "fileplayer" is one of the worst ive used before and never allow it to play any files.

The HD Tuner is great IMO. With the regular Antenna in my room i got almost no reception. A big antenna in our attic got better reception and addind an inline amp made it better although i still get only half of the channels im supposed to and of those half, half are "moderate" quality.

Now the antenna is in the attic it it still points "through" our neighbors house. We are roughly 20 miles from the transmitter, however the transmitter is the tallest in the world (and in the best city mind you!). I find that at night reception can get better and beleive it or not - cool and cloudy days! Though I havent ran an actual experiment to figure out why.

[frogster]

i use the dvico fusion gold card. it's great to capture HDTV programming through my cable company. i get all the networks, discovery, TNT, plus a couple other channels.

[festmaster]

i use the dvico fusion gold card. it's great to capture HDTV programming through my cable company. i get all the networks, discovery, TNT, plus a couple other channels.

I am delighted with the HDTV captures I get with my dvico fusion with rabbit ears attached. It also captures standard cable well. However, I have problems capturing clear QAM signals through cable. Have you done that successfully, and was there a trick to make those channels come through?

[elister]

I used to own a MyHD MDP-100 and now own a Fusion5 RT Gold card. The Fusion card is SO MUCH BETTER! Tunes better, does analog capture better.