need tuner card without macrovsion

[garyk]

I need help finding a simple card or whatever that will produce great looking (comparable to my allinwonder9800pro) s-video input from a DVD player in a resizable window without macrovision. I have been unlucky up to this point.


I am building a new PC, but I unfortunately have to retire my ATI 9800-AIW AGP card. It provided great image quality and allowed me to hook up a DVD player and watch movies in a resizeable window while I worked. I have been trying for 2 months to find a suitable replacement.

I first bought the ATI 650 theatre pro. It had a GIANT live video window (taking up 75% of my desktop) and to top it off, it had hardware macrovision preventing me from watching (not recording) dvd's. This is despite the fact that they have a dvd player hooked up to it in the instruction pamphlet. Returned.

I then purchased the Avermedia TV-BOX9. Pretty good quality. Resizeable, although it had a big picture-in-picture (about 1/9th of screen). However, every time I switched to fullscreen, it turned my monitor off and back on again. Since I switch back and forth a lot during the day (30x maybe), this would probably kill my monitor in a week or so. It also doesn't support widescreen monitor resolutions should I ever retire my 19" crt. Returned.

I next purchased the AverTV Hybrid Ultra USB. Macrovision reared its ugly head again - with a picture of a dvd player hooked up to it on the front of the box. Returned.

Finally I bought a KWORLD Orange-something that gave me an ugly, very pixellated live video image and blurred the living hell out of my desktop. Returned.

I am at the point now where I am actually considering buying a Dell2408wfp or a Samsung245t, or even a 1080p HDTV to solve this problem. Considering I have lost around $150 returning junk, I'd hate to spend $800 for a screen I don't need when I could get a card or something for $150.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thank you.

[RabidDog]

WHy not put the DVD content onto your hard disk and play from there? You can then start stop and resize the window to any size you like. PowerDVD is a very good player. I am surprised that any other video playback software did not have a resizeable window. If watching Tv get an internal Tv card.