TV Card suggestions?

[Cabadam]

Its been a while since I've looked at TV cards at all, but I'm interested in getting one now so I'm wondering what you guys think. I would probably use it mostly for simply viewing, but also a decent amount of recording (preferably at a pretty high quality if possible). I'm looking < $100, what do you think a good choice would be?

Athlon 2500+ (It should be a 3200+, but I'm having issues with my motherboard...)
1GB PC3200 (2x512MB)
WinXP (SP2)

Thanks!

[hartford]

Well, you're asking for the impossible (also against the rules).

I have two cards, both Leadtek: the 2000 Expert and 2000 Deluxe.

Under NTSC, Expert goes to 720x480, Deluxe to 640x480.

Both have sound problems: they introduce a weird noise at times.
Haven't figured-out why.

The work. The Expert seemes to have more "rainbows" than the Deluxe.
Why? beats me.

Neither works for me with various 3rd-party programs except at 320x240.


Best of luck in your search.

[cypher_soundz]

Asking was card is "good" is not agaist the rules to my knowledge.
alot of things are good, but "BEST" is a different matter ;)

If i were you i would go for a WinTV-PVR-350 or WinTV-PVR-250
link to the 350 datasheet.
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr350_datasheet.htm
you should be able to pick one up for about the $100 mark.
ive been using one for a while now, had no issues with it , even using the software that came with it :eek: .
Regards
cyph

[Bizarro]

I got the WinTV-PVR 350 and setup was easy and picture quality is excelent with svideo out. There are quite a few 3rd party software programs supporting this board also. It has the benefit of onboard Mpeg compression and de compression to take much of the load off of the cpu letting you use an older cpu to run your system with.

[Cabadam]

Originally posted by Bizarro
I got the WinTV-PVR 350 and setup was easy and picture quality is excelent with svideo out. There are quite a few 3rd party software programs supporting this board also. It has the benefit of onboard Mpeg compression and de compression to take much of the load off of the cpu letting you use an older cpu to run your system with.

Thanks for the responses.
I went back and read through the posts linked to from the Capture FAQ question #3. Problem there is all the posts are rather dated, I figured things may have changed since then :)

In the second thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20030), someone suggests that if you are aiming for quality to get a card without the MPEG compression as there will already be some quality loss before you get the video. Have you noticed anything like this Bizarro?

[Bizarro]

I have cable and notice more problems with the source than I would with artifacts from compression. I use the svideo in from my cable box and get a decent capture. If you save it out at higer settings, it is as good as the live feed from the box to the TV using svideo. It's not on the par with a DVD but it is good enough for a 28" TV. I would go hdtv capture before I worried too much about the compression degrading the output too much. Just depends what you are expecting and what you are willing to live with. With the 350's svideo out some programs don't put anything to the svideo except the video that is shown in the TV display of the CRT. It won't display VGA to svideo to run say Winamp, so you might want a stand alone video display card with the 250, but this causes other problems.

Anyone have a good choice for an AGP card with svideo out to use with the 250/350's?

[Cabadam]

Well, I've already got the Aylum Geforce FX 5700 Ultra as my graphics card. It has s-video out and works pretty well for it. Got it for $150, I've been pretty happy with it.