Help on choosing TV Card.

[SEBSSSMercurius]

Help Help! <(-.-)>
I am clueless on which TV Card I should get. Anandtech doesnt cover all of them. Will a Radeon 32 DDR enhance the TV Wonder Radeon? oog. I've read reviews of both the ATI and the Hauppage with bad drivers. Any help?

[everestm]

Unless you REALLY REALLY want to be able to easily change channels from the computer (like for 'time shifting' for unattended recording of multiple channels), I would recommend forgetting about the TV tuner. Buy yourself a nice quality capture card with hardware compression and a good quality (4 head) VCR with component output. Put the VCR under your monitor and run the output to your capture card.

When you want to record something, pop in a tape and use the VCR+ codes, and set up to record on the computer at the same time. If something barfs on the computer you have a tape backup. The VCR+ stuff will switch channels and such for you. Only disadvantage is that you have to tell it to record in two places.

If it were a perfect world you would build a simple serial port->IR periperal and your PVR software would include a plugin to run it.

Of course you can still do this if you have a card with TV tuner features, like my G200TV, so I can tune channels and get a tape backup