I got a gift card at Best Buy so I went out and picked up a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150. It installed fine, but the image quality is pretty bad. It's probably based on the same Philips tuner as the ATi TV Wonder, which I also thought was crappy.

I'm going to return it and was wondering if you guys know if something decent exists out there?

 

:crickets:

After playing with this card for a few days, I enjoy the PVR function, but the image quality is still sub-par. From my reading, it sounds like the ATi TV Wonder Elite is probably the best solution on the market, but I think the slow channel change would get on my nerves in a hurry. Anybody have one?

 

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...asp?CatId=1427

 

Dont expect much from tv tuners or all in wonder cards. They all suck, even the"HD" ones suck. They have great features, but picture quality kills it for me. The only reason i like the tv tuners is because i can control them and view live tv via my pocket pc, but a Slingbox will be better for that. With the slingbox, i can control my cable box and even rent On Demand, and record/play shit off my dvr, it's great. If you really want good quality tv on your computer, you have to get card similar to what security camera systems use to see video in real time at 30+frames per second. And those run to well over 500 bucs.

 

After considering the alternatives on the market, I'm probably just going to keep this one. The PVR feature works quite well, and the remote is handy. It's not the best image quality, but it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

 

I am also not satisfied with the picture quality of the one I have. I was waiting for you to get the ati so you can post some reviews.

 

I think the slowness of the ATi TV Wonder Elite would drive me crazy. It's about 2 seconds to change channels from the reviews I've read.

 

The one I have currently changes channels fast when its first started....once I have it on for a while it starts taking its own time changing channels.

I am hoping ati addresses this issue in their next release, and more importantly, other manufactures start putting great picture quality as their requirement.

 

I have a regular DVR from my cable company but i just got a new laptop a few weeks ago and it came with HP ExpressCard Analog TV Tuner / PVR with MCE Remote Control. I havent used it yet however.

 

2 gigs of memory and a hard drive with 16mb of buffer will solve that problem asap.

 

Every TV tuner i've tried has sucked. I gave up. If i knew more about the devices I'd go off and invent a better one.

 

I've gone through everything from a $25 KWorld tuner to the $300 Elgato HD eyeTV on my iMac. I've returned them all. Nothing is as good as a plain old cable box.

 

Seriously, it can't be that difficult.

What do HDTV's use for their signal converters? You'd think they'd be able to adapt one of those to a PC...