Best TV Card picture

[topher]

I'm curious to get other's opinion on the best TV card. I've used an All In Wonder Radeon and not so long ago replaced with a TV Wonder PCI and 3d card (didn't want to replace the entire card just to update 3d card). The picture quality is pretty good with the all in wonder being a little better I think. All I use the card for is to capture shows, then edit commercals out to make VCD's (and in the near future DVD's). I've downloaded some encoded shows that have extremely good video picutres and are around 100 meg for a 21 minute show. I don't care about other options (tivo for example) as I don't use those, just capture then edit with TMPGEnc. What are you're opions on the tv cards that give the best picture quality.

[tomreedtoon]

I've tried the TV Wonder card, but found that the Xtasy Everything provided cleaner video. It's similar to the All-In-Wonder in that it has a video card (although it's a card that can run two monitors, or one monitor and a separate video out feed). Its advantage is that its tuner is located outside the computer case, in a little green "dongle" thing. This keeps the computer's heavy RF fields from interfering with the tuner. The "dongle" also is the sensor for the remote control, which lets you control the DVD player and the DVR capture program.

Only drawbacks: the capture program sucks! As does the complicated editor that comes with the card. Also, the video card itself supposedly isn't state-of-the-art, so you can't see all the blood splatters or the screaming children when you kill people in video games. Since I don't play video games, and my previous cards were all on-motherboard, I consider the Xtasy a step up.

But since your primary criterion is how clean the tuner is, that should do it. (Of course, you might use a cheaper card, and use an old VCR for the tuner by connecting the VCR's video out into the video in of the capture card. But you would have a time figuring out how to get the VCR to change channels for you, and programming it would be another mess.)

The workaround for the capture program is supposedly iuVCR. Haven't tried it yet, but it sounds good.

[ItsMe]

I have tried 3 different cards.

PCTV Pro. I had this one for a couple of years and was very pleased with it. The latest software allows realtime capture to MPEG, this is dependant on PCU horsepower. Has sync issues when cutting MPEG's.

Hauppage PVR 250. Took this one staight back to the shop.

Vidac VMagic TV Plus. This is the one I am currently using. Good picture quality. Hardware MPEG capture & transcoding, no audio sync issues. This card is expensive, but it works well.