I'm in the market for a better cable TV adapter for my desktop computer and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions.

I'm currently using the Hauppauge Win/TV card. I noticed today that ATI has an external USB device.

I'm looking for something that will give me stereo sound as well as a good picture. The Hauppauge is mono-only and some of the channels just don't come in well.

On another note, do any of these adapters work with Digital Cable? I may have to upgrade to that shortly.

Any suggestions?

 

check this url http://www.techadvice.com/help/Products/T/...vTunerCards.htm this has a listing of different tuner cards. It looks like both Haugpage and ATi have Stereo TV tuner cards.

 

I have this card also and am having a bitch of a time getting it to work properly with Win2000.

 

I have Win98 running on my desktop box and I don't recall having any extreme problems getting it to run, though I do know that it's conflicting with the iLink adapter (it's a Sony Vaio). I don't use the iLink plug, so I'm not too concerned about the conflict, however that may be the reason the video goes haywire on me every so often.

Not having any hardware conflicts is one thing that leaning me in the direction of the ATI USB device, but the box doesn't say anything about the sound being in stereo.

SilverSurfer, thanks for the link, I'll check that out.

 

My understanding with USB is that it does not have the bandwidth to move video at an acceptable rate ( whcih is part of the reason that firewire was developed). I have a USB video in device (not TV tuner) and the quality is not great though it could also be due to my source.

I've heard a lot of good things about the ATI all-in-wonder cards (other than the stand alone tv tuner card. --You'd need to get the all in one solution for it to work properly). I've also been seriously looking at the new Nvidia Personal Cinema cards - based on a GeForce core, it has a breakout box and a remote control. CompUSA has one sitting on the shelf if you want to see it - It's the "Xtasy Everything" I think. My only issue with getting one now is that they are based on the GeForce 2 chip and not the GeForce3. Those are coming soon, so I hear. I doubt anything works with digital cable.

 

I've had every generation of ATI's All In Wonder card - the latest one - the All In Wonder 8500 Radeon is fantastic. It has lots of great digitizing and video recording capability etc etc. Also comes with firewire ports. Or you could go with the outgoing version the All In Wonder Radeon.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DaveZ
[B]My understanding with USB is that it does not have the bandwidth to move video at an acceptable rate ( whcih is part of the reason that firewire was developed).

 

No, that's the one that sucks (from what I heard) -- you'll need to get an all in one card if you want good quality.

There's a great article on TV cards (including a discussion on digital cable) at Tom's Hardware Guide: http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/00q2/00...0418/index.html The article is a bit dated, but worthwhile nonetheless.

There's also a good article on Extreme Tech about the Nvidia card and they have some references to how it stacks up to the all-in-wonder cards. http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,...53D13108,00.asp

 

I don't think any of these cards will work with digital cable. At least not yet. The conditional access protection in digital cable is much stronger than in analog. I'm guessing that unless tehre is a smart card interface for any of these cards, none of them will work with digital cable.

 

Tom's Hardware mentions that there are two cards (well, in April 2000) that support digital cable: "Skystar 1 DVB and Siemens PCI-DVB Cable" I'm guessing there are a few others by now that also support it.