TV Card

[Mutley]

Can anyone reccomend a TV card for around £50? Are they good quality?

I guess I can record stuff to my PC, what else can I do? Thanks.

[Asus]

If you just want to watch TV on your PC then you can get a basic software based TV Tuner such as Hauppauge's WinTV GO or ATI's TV wonder pro. The CPU would handle a lot of the recording and they might have a audio plug to your soundcard for it to record the sound.

If you are going to record the shows and maybe later put them on DVD go with a Hardware based TV tuner like ATI's TV Wonder with a 550 or 650 pro chip OR Hauppauge's WinTV PVR-150 or WinTV PVR-250 cards. These models have a lot better picture quality and the chip on the TV card does the video/sound recording. I think my card uses 10% CPU usage when it records, 25% if I'm watching TV.

I have 2 ATI TV Wonder cards with the 550Pro chip and they work great. Very good quality assuming the signal is good too. One is PCI and the other is PCI-Express. I do not use the program that came with the cards to record. It was sorta sucky. I bought BeyondTV which is not a basic TV recording program. It's much more like a TIVO.
Those are analog cards though. We don't have digital TV tuners for the PC (except for over the air signals) in the US. I'm not as up on the digital tuners.

[Mutley]

Theres 2 I have seen:
Hauppauge PVR150... £50:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_pvr150mcekit.html
Hauppauge PVR500... £95:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_pvr500mcekit.html

Is it worth paying more? I like the models which have their own chip to record sound. PCI only to please, don't have any more PCI-e.

[Asus]

Make sure it supports your OS. A lot of times Media Center kits are for Windows MCE only. If you have Windows XP make sure it says it on the box.
There is a quality difference between 150 and 250. Not sure about the 500 model. It might be the same as the 250 model but with 2 tuners on 1 card (watch and record different channels).

If you can't find a PVR 250 model then go for the PVR150. Do you have a local store you could go buy one and then return it if it wasn't what you wanted?
Not a MCE kit (http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_pvr150.html)
I guess they have a 350 now. (http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_pvr350.html)

[Pi Mu Rho]

I picked up a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T for about £30 (PC world!). PCI card, works perfectly. Great for recording TV too (especially if you use GB-PVR instead of the bundled stuff). And it's digital.

[Mutley]

Is it full screen quality?

[Asus]

Do you have a analog or digital TV. It would make a difference.

[Pi Mu Rho]

Is it full screen quality?

Yes.

[Mutley]

Do you have a analog or digital TV. It would make a difference.

Not sure what you mean?

I guess to use a TV card you plug in that white cable into the back of it?

[Asus]

Not sure what you mean?

I guess to use a TV card you plug in that white cable into the back of it?
I didn't mean TV in other post but TV signal.
If you have a digital TV signal (Digital Cable or Satellite) then the digital TV tuner would be the one to get. If you have an analog TV signal (Cable or Antenna) then you will have to get the analog TV tuner.