USB TV/HDTV tuner?

[iThinkYouBrokeIt]

I'm considering the purchase of a laptop in the next couple of months or so.
I will probably be willing to spend as much as necessary to give it excellent specs.
One thing I would like for it is a tv tuner. I've looked up some info on USB tv tuners, specifically HDTV tuners. Although it seems like out of any of them that I can find, they all seem to have mixed reviews. I would really like to watch HD content (Prison Break in 720p sure sounds better than 480i/4:3), and i would also like to view SD content, you know, in case i wanna watch me some tv that's not hi def.

Well....
Anyone here have one? Any suggestions?

PS, I'm not too concerned about price.

[redwudz]

Before you dive into HDTV, you first want to see what is available in your area. The problem you many find is that many broadcasters aren't running at full power with their HDTV broadcasts at present. That means you usually need a fair sized antenna to receive a picture. You won't get a snowy picture, you won't get anything if the signal is weak.

If you haven't been there, Antenna Web has a good site to tell you what is available in your location and the signal strengths: http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

[kevo777]

I'm curious also. I live in a good area for off-the-air HD content (Dallas/Ft. Worth). I'm currently eye-balling any possible solutions for capturing HD content, either internal (PCI slot) or external (USB or FireWire). External would be nice so I can switch off between my desktop and laptop. Hardware encoding would be preferable over software encoding to help alleviate A/V sync issues and dropped frames.

[edDV]

This one looks good on paper but I haven't seen much user feedback
http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/eng/Products/HDTV5usb.aspx

Remember that HD broadcasts gernerate ~8-9GB/hr files.

[thinger62]

I've got the Dvico Fusion 5... One pci in a pc hooked up via hdmi to a 42" lcd and one usb hooked up to my main computer. Both work great, although the tv one took a little fiddling at first. The video card requirements are quite a bit higher going to a tv. I also had an Avermedia a180 for a while. That worked equally well, although it produced some sort of proprietary format file, if I recall. The Avermedia certainly provided the most bang for the buck. The Dvico's are a bit more expensive.

[iThinkYouBrokeIt]

I'm curious also. I live in a good area for off-the-air HD content (Dallas/Ft. Worth). I'm currently eye-balling any possible solutions for capturing HD content, either internal (PCI slot) or external (USB or FireWire). External would be nice so I can switch off between my desktop and laptop. Hardware encoding would be preferable over software encoding to help alleviate A/V sync issues and dropped frames.

Thanks for referring me to that website. I checked, and it looks a bit confusing, but i'm pretty sure it says I'm good, at least for viewing FOX, which is in the top part of the list.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2485646&CatId=1427
this is the one i've been looking at, as it seems to have a pretty good amount of features.

The main reason I went on here was, i was hoping somebody on here would have a USB HDTV tuner, and would be able to recommend one to me.

I saw that one or two of the ones I saw online (i didnt bookmark them, so i dont have links), say that i need a seperate analog tv tuner installed. I don't understand whats up with that. If I want to view HDTV, which is digital (right?), why should i need an analog tuner in addition to the digital tuner? Also, it wouldn't make sense to be unable to view non-hd content (what if i wanna watch the simpsons?). so a digital/analog tuner would seem to be the best option.

[edDV]

I would assume nothing works without feedback that it does especially in a laptop roving configuration.

Understand the problems to be solved first.

First, there needs to be a station close enough that a small antenna will work. Many have difficulty above 20 miles without a fixed well aimed UHF antenna.

Second, the tuner needs to be good to receive the station. ATSC video is compressed HDor SD at ~19 Mb/s total bitrate. Multiple signals are multiplexed together into a single stream. The connection must be solid. Currently, SD is being upscaled to HD on the major stations so there is little difference in bitrate between HD and SD programs.

Assuming a solid signal, recording to hard disk has a fairly low load on a PC so long as a disk is available and has enough space. Since a laptop usually has only one drive, you can't do much else on the computer while capturing from the tuner or you risk dropouts in the recording as the disk gets used for other tasks.

Watching HDTV in realtime (in full resolution) is going to take a hefty computer with a good graphics card. Decoding a realtime MPeg2_TS stream is non-trivial. Displaying it is equally tough especially for 1080i which needs deinterlace. Players are designed to cheat by showing only one field and/or displaying alternate pixels for 960x540 but that isn't much higher resolution than normal SD but is jerkier and has stepy video due to the display shortcuts.

If all you want to do is watch TV on your laptop, you will have more stations and in most cases stronger signals with an analog tuner. Use antennaweb.org to see the situation at your viewing location.

First thing to do is test your computer for playback of 1080i or 720p MPeg2_TS files. If you can't play from a file, you won't be able to display from a realtime stream either.

[thinger62]

[quote="iThinkYouBrokeIt"]

I saw that one or two of the ones I saw online (i didnt bookmark them, so i dont have links), say that i need a seperate analog tv tuner installed. I don't understand whats up with that. If I want to view HDTV, which is digital (right?), why should i need an analog tuner in addition to the digital tuner? Also, it wouldn't make sense to be unable to view non-hd content (what if i wanna watch the simpsons?). so a digital/analog tuner would seem to be the best option.

The reference to having a separate analog tuner is only if you want to install it in MS Media Center Edition. MCE requires ATSC and NTSC tuners, although there is a work-around for that. You might want to do some research at AVS Forums, there are absolutely huge threads there on the relatively few HD tuners available.