Are all US tv tuner capture devices going to ATSC models??

[yoda313]

So just as dvd recorders are now starting to get ATSC tuners in them with the impending analog switch are computer tv tuners also going atsc? I have a hdtv capture card in one computer but I use it mainly for analog captures.

What I would be interested in is if the cheap no name under 50.00 tuner devices will start being outfitted with atsc tuners. I would see buying one maybe to put in my extra computer to receive clear ota signals.

[redwudz]

I see this posted on Newegg for some analog TV tuner cards:

Consumer Alert: This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after February 17, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the Nation's transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles.

One of the cheapest ATSC cards I see listed there is the KWORLD ATSC-110 PCI card. About $70US.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100140

But they will likely all come down in price with more competition.

[yoda313]

well theres hope at least for the cheapo ones - thanks redwudz.

[edDV]

I got the Hauppauge HVR-1600 for $59 if I ever get the rebate or $79 without.

Take note. It is all about the software and the company that will fix the software. Not the best time to bottom fish.

When will the low end cards get software support? Only from third parties that support their hardware if and only if it is widely owned. Look for that kind of solution after 2009. Current "quality" vendors still have more work to do.

[vhelp]

@ yoda313

I could be wrong, but I think moving onward, we will be see a lot more USB-2
capture-type devices. Dual Core cpu's is showing that USB-2 is more than
capable of being utilized in the video department.

Here's an example..

My ADS VideoXpress, a "tiny" USB-2 capture device, with s-video and composite,
can capture w/out any loss or frame drops at RAW AVI setup. And also, the
ULead VideoStudio 9 SE software bundled with it, does a pretty good
job of real-time capturing and encoding direct to MPEG-2 rather nicely, and also
without any frame drops. All this on my latest upgraded system to XP Home.
(see my sys specs)

Another example, though slightly unrelated..

However, not with-standing, I've also been testing the Hauppague HVR-1600
(PCI) card and it's onboard Hardware MPEG feature. Personally, I don't like the
quality when using it's featured (bitrate) defaults, but when (hacked) to 20Mbits,
and [x] 3d-comb setting checked, its actually quite good, though I'm
not sold on this "tweaked" state, completely. I'm just exploring my options, you know

In another topic elsewhere, I once commented that my next HDTV type capture
card/device would be USB based. I was not kidding. An assumption.. with
todays motherboards, it seems that they are reducing the PCI slots to 1 or 2.
My system only has two slots. I need more than two, but I'm left with one,
thanks to my HVR-1600 card. If I could, I'd replace it with a USB hdtv tuner.
And I may just do that, though later one, in time. I think that having a good
(internal) analog (PCI based) capture card is the most beneficial part of a video
capture setup. And so far, my Winfast TV2000 XP Expert is the winner, here

-vhelp 4329

[edDV]

PCI, PCIe USB2 makes no difference.

ATSC is already encoded as it comes from the air. USB2 should be able to receive a 19Mb/s TS stream but you can't monitor it without extreme computation. Decoded SD let alone HD exceeds USB2 bandwidth. So unattended auto recording can be done but real time viewing is tough. The way it is done is the USB device sends the TS or individual TP streams to the computer and the CPU+graphics card makes the preview.

That means the tuner software needs to be compatible with the graphics card or there is no preview. If they tie too closely to the graphic card like the Hauppauge HVR, and the dispaly card can't keep up, the capture is trashed. This is inexcusable and indicates the software writers don't understand the problem.

We are dealing with really stupid software writers on these consumer cards. They hide their beta feedback. We are supposed to trust Hauppage to figure it out. Why in all understanding would you trust a lower cost vendor to get it right?

[mvdude]

Personally, I don't like the quality when using it's featured (bitrate) defaults, but when (hacked) to 20Mbits, and [x] 3d-comb setting checked, its actually quite good...

Vhelp, was that accomplished with Graphedit or something else? I'm looking for those tweaks. Thanks.