"best" digi card for the pc?

[manthing]

all,

i'm thinking of getting a digital tuner for the pc. primarily to capture freeview channels.

here are some of the brands i've seen:

nebula digitv
terratec cynergy 1400
compro videomate dvbt200 / dvbt300
wintv nova
avermedia dvbt

what i'm looking for:

best picture quality captures (should be straight stream to hard drive from digital source right?)
stable recording scheduler
epg (not essential)
around £100 (or less!)

so can someone advice me as to what's "best"? also what to watch out for? eg. nebula's earlier models had mono sound?

my spec: amd athlon 1800 Ghz cou, 512 MB ram, 160 GB hard drive, aiw 9800 video card, soundblaster audigy 2.

cheers

ps. admin - if this belongs in another forum, then i apologize and you're free to move/delete this thread.

[Methanoid]

Pretty much any BDA compat card is a possible as you could use free S/W like DVB Webscheduler which also integrates in the UK with Digiguide nicely.

What is important is the signal strength. A friend living close had a Hauppauge card which failed to find most channels and was very blocky (poor signal) but my Pinnacle 300i (cheap too) found them all. The difference being that has a digital tuner unit on the card and the Hauppauge (and 99% of cards) have an analog tuner like the Phillips/Temic units.

I also like the 300i digital tuner cos it puts less heat out and is smaller so helps air flow a little in my SFF PC.

BUT, the Pinnacle s/w is VERY bloaty so I ditched it. Lots of people use Mediaportal (free), I mainly just capture and watch later and DVB-WS is superb at that as it doesnt display the TV so uses less CPU resources.

Hope that helps somewhat!

[manthing]

ah DVB Webscheduler. see i learn something new everytime on this forum.

digital tuner unit ... must research this next.

ta for this Methanoid.

[Methanoid]

The only "digital tuners" I am aware of are in the Pinnacle DVB-T cards and the new ATI All-in-Wonder X800 XL (not out yet). There was a digital tuner used in the VoodooTV FM cards that were out some years back but they were for analog TV only.

Oh one other cool feature in DVB Webscheduler... you can enable web access and then set a program to record at home wherever you might be (work, frineds house or whatever). Not used it yet but its nice to have.

[SatStorm]

"freeview" is the british digital terrestrial transmissions right?

From what I read, those pinnacle DVB-T cards are the best for now. If you ever interest for satellite reception (Free To Air channels, like BBC/ ITV / etc) I suggest a SkyStar 2.

Mediaportal and GBPVR are 2 great freeware programs, that you can use with any DVB-T card for adding EPG, schedules, etc.

[manthing]

SatStorm, yup "freeview" is the british digital terrestrial transmissions.

so, you're also in favour of the pinnacle DVB-T card eh?

okay, will research into this.

ta all for your help.