I was looking into purchasing a TV Tuner card so that I could record TV onto DVD's and convert some old camcorder tapes to DVD. I've seen cards ranging from $20 to $300 and am lost as to the differences between them. I'm hoping to do this for under $100. I'm also concerned that my middle-of-the road Dell (2 year-old Dimension 4600 Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.66GHz with 533MHz front side bus, Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 video card) may not be able to handle this. Does anyone have any advice as to what TV Tuner card would be good for this purpose for that price range? Thanks, Matt
although i dont have one my self. Pinaccle makes very good tv to Computer devices. I dont know much about them but i know thier is RCA input jacks and it should be as simple as opening the conversion software and plugging hte device in. go to circuit city they ussually know more about it or bump for someone at the top that may know more.
you have 4 ways to go Uber Cheap=Under 50/Quality is ify= Composite(RCA) vid only to Cable TV,Svid,Composite(RCA) and audio http://www.directron.com/sbttvfm.html http://www.directron.com/vsltv7131rf.html ------------------- Cheap =40-90/Quality is ok=Cable TV,Svid,Composite(RCA) and audio http://www.directron.com/wintvpvr150mce.html http://www.directron.com/atsc110.html ------------------- Well rounded =90-150/Quality is good=It will Get Cable TV,Svid,and audio some will get HD and RBG and newer TV format types. http://www.directron.com/wintvpvr250mce.html http://www.directron.com/wintvpvr500mce.html (dual tuner inside http://www.directron.com/hdtvwonder.html) ------------------- $$$$$ =150-400 /Quality is godly=it can do anything http://www.directron.com/showcenter200.html --------------------- Top brands Pinnacle kinda ignores its older products ATI easy to mix side cards with whole cards Avermedia older brand mostly makes VGA to TV boxs Focus Enhancements older brand mostly makes VGA to TV boxs Medium Brands Hauppauge solid hardware iffy drivers Adaptec MSI Iffy Brands Kworld watch out they can be bad. Unknown to me Bytecc Compro Leadtech Siig Sabrent I am giving you mostly my take on things as always its best to do your research find a product you like and then ask more questions about it. Also if you plan to do ANY gaming be warned only some newer High def component TV cards are capable of doing it without lag and motion blur.
Thanks for all of the advice. Basically what I am looking for is a way to record cable TV and possibly convert some old camcorder or vcr tapes to DVD. I've done some more research and read that a dvd recorder might be the way to go for this purpose. Do you think that might be a suitable solution for my needs? Also my video card is the Dell integrated card that came with my dimension 4600 so I am concerned that I may also need to upgrade that at an added expense. Thanks again, Matt
mb1 It dosent matter what Vid card you have,ok so you are only going to do vid no gaming heres acouple cards to look at both under 30$ http://www.directron.com/sbttvfm.html http://www.directron.com/ra330.html it would be helpful to know what OS you run and how much ramm you have(you need at least 256 ramm for video editing I would go with 512 tho sicne they are cheap but its up to what you need.),also how much are you willing to spend? this is about the best card you can get under 80 http://www.directron.com/wintvpvr150mce.html its a solid card heres one thats abit cheaper its a diffrent version of it but still in the 150 line http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116633
Thanks for the links. I am running XP on a Dell Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.66GHz with 533MHz front side bus 512MB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 333MHz I was hoping to do it for under $100, but don't even know if that is a realistic budget. If I could get acceptable quality for $30 that would be fantastic. If it matters my current TV isn't an HDTV. I have a DVD RW drive. Am I correct in assuming that if I buy one of these cards that is all I will need to receive and burn cable TV from the coaxial input and copy movies from a camcorder or vcr through the component inputs? Will the quality be the comparable to a dvd recorder? Thanks again for the advice, Matt
mb1 I have doen video on lesser comps so your comp is ok Quality well be fine this is the best all around one I can find http://www.directron.com/wintvpvr150mce.html 59$ heres another one http://www.directron.com/wintvpvr150.html 89$
I just bought a TV wonder ELITE by ATI. its priced at 89.99 USD from ATI so u should be able to find it cheaper. For your purposes this should do very well (but u might look to download some freeware or purchase 3rd party software because the ATI software isnt that great)... You can watch cable TV, and it has a coax input, S-video, and composite cables so you should easily be able to copy your videos onto the computer and burn them to DVD.... You can record TV shows and there are various other features also. If you want at least decent quality video I would stay away from low end tuners because they tend to lock up alot and give u choppy quality at best. Since you dont have HD I would highly recommend this card, but happauge makes some good ones as well... I have a similar computer and this card works perfectly for me (Sony Vaio 2.66Ghz, 533FSB etc. etc. I would highly recommend upgrading your ram though because I have 512MB DDR333 and its BAAARELY good enough.)
redZoneOS newer ati stuff should be ok still you will find issues with soem of there stuff. this one seems a bit to cheap http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815294002 this one seems to be good but tis 119 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815294001
Any thoughts on this card? PHILPS 7130 Chipset Super Digital Video Capture TV PCI Card Retail, SKU: TV-PCIRC http://www.censuspc.com/PHILPS-7130...-TV-PCI-Card-Retail-SKU-TV-PCIRC-pr-3182.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815276002 look at the reviews sabernet suxs,and yes alot of cheap manufators team up with decent brands and "hide" the name of who realy made it...
