TV Tuner Card / Software

[geekguy]

I want a TV for my dorm room. However, buying a tuner card for my rig just makes alot more sense. So what's the best card out there? I'm not too worried about this since I was just gonna get a leadtek and be done with it. However....what software? I was considering Beyond TV but it only encodes to WMV ewww. I want something that can encode to mpg4...DivX I guess. Suggestions anyone? This isn't a home theater PC either, just to keep that in mind.

 

[]-[itman]

Well, I can't tell you from experience, but I hear a lot of great things about the hauppauge cards from around the web.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=15-116-602&DEPA=0

 

[G2145]

msi tv anywhere master
i have great results from this card and less than $60

records in mpeg 1,2 and 4

i record in mpeg-2 for quality...it makes a larger file size, but when i make a dvd from a recording, it looks pretty damn good

 

[]-[itman]

Ya, I hear good things about the MSI one too. It's up to you, either one should give you what you want. Just so you know, if you look around newegg a little, there's a cheaper hauppauge card there for around $65 if I remember right, the one I linked to was just the first one I found. Again, either one should give you all you want.

 

[Nero]

For my dorm-room TV viewing and Xbox playing excitement any 'ol tv tuner will do. Seriously, my ultra-cheap BT878-based tuner is (for all intents and purposes) as good as it's going get, considering that we're dealing with low-res analoug signals here. For viewing, I just use the robust freeware program Dscaler, but for recording I use the software that comes with my tuner card PowerVCR II.

 

[FearTec]

I use the Leadtek TV2000 Expert:
http://www.leadtek.com/multimedia/winfast_tv2000xp_expert_1.html

I can watch free to air, radio and record anything with the built in software. it can automaticaly record to MPEG 1,2,4, WMV SVCD (easily) or even encode to XVID or DIVX if your CPU/MEM is fast enough.

This card is dead simple and I have not had to use 3rd party software.

The only thing it does not do is cut out the ads when recording the TV/cable signals. (We wish

 

[Dc5e]

i use the leadtek tv2000 deluxe, its works okay... personally i dont' like the software, (it doesn't have fullscreen support for dual monitors) but other than that its great. I record using the picvideo mjpeg codec which gives you a good raw file. It gets really large, then from there i compress it into divx. Works great for me, but my method requires lots of space.

I also couldn't get divx to record directly from the tv, it just crashes.