Hello I have been researching USB Tv tuners for a long time now and from what I have read the Pinnacle PCTV deluxe seems to be the best. This is ONLY based on company websites, which I know are missleading because they want you to buy. Has any one used this USB Tv tuner? Does anyone recommend a better USB TV tunner? What USB Tv Tuners should one not buy? Thanks
I have tried the ATI USB TV Wonder - USB edition. As far as I can tell, all of these devices, at least if based on USBv1, are limited by the bandwidth of the USB Bus, hence producing video that is "NOT SO GOOD". PCI Cards like those from Hauppage, have more potential. You need to be careful what you get, ie regular Cable Capture VS Digital etc. I am currently looking for a HDTV capable capture card, so far without conclusion, though the folks at CineFX offer one.
after the pain of 5 different usb tuners standard and 2.0 i went with and ati 8500dv card and never looked back the usb devices allways had problems sharing the irq with the sound card and hard drive tommays
Hello If possible looking for a USB TV tuner capable of both analog TV and Digital TV. Dgital Tv is very slowly growing in Canada and almost all signals are still analog, but in 2008 all signals in Canada have to be digital. So something that is multifunctional would be good. As far as I have read the Pinnacle PCTV deluxe is the first USB 2 tv Tuner and allows Mpeg 2 (DVD quality) capture. As I have a Notebook, the tuner would have to be USB based as I don't have PCI slots. I do have Type 1,2 and 3 PC card slots, but there seems to be very few tuner cards for the PC card slot. Any other comments would be appreciated. Thanks
Do you by any chance have fire wire on your laptop ? or could you put a firewire card in a pcmcia slot? Some of the new cable boxes have fire wire output, or at least appear to in the specs that I have read. Additionally some external video capture boxes take either the (yellow RCA) video jack or SVHS connector (plus audio Right and Left channel) and ship it out by fire wire to the PC. A cludge I admit , eg tuner box (such as a VCR)>>video capture box>>>by firewire to>>>PC.
Hello Yes I do have an iLink firewire port on my Notebook (I forget about it most of the time), But I do like simplification. The ideal set up would be Tv (analogy or digital) --> Tuner --> Notebook (Firewire or USB 2.0). Allowing for the PC to be the Digtial VCR and without any decrease in signal (some VCR actually kill the incoming signal by a lot). This setup may be cheaper as well, As I have seen the PCTV deluxe for around $200 US, where as buying VCR minimum is about $100 and I don't know how expensive video capture boxes are. Thank you for the information, alternative setups are appreciated.
