[humorsavesmysoul]

im looking to get a cheap tv tuner card for my desktop, does anyone have any suggestions

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compro tv-300 or something along those lines is supposedly decent.

[warriorscot]

compro tv-300 or something along those lines is supposedly decent.

[Thebinaryman]

i got the COMPRO VideoMate TV PVR PCI card from newegg.com not too long ago, at about $30 its a great buy, especialy if your main purpose is to watch tv. my main purpose was to record "capture" video from my junky 1995 video camera, for editting and transfering to dvd. i was disapointed with recording quality, (it's mpeg-2 encoder is more concentrated on maintaining framerate [no skipping] on slower machines, than on maintaining a higher quality), video captured at 6mbps on this card is much lower quality than video on a professional dvd thats 6mbps. in simpler terms, you need a fast cpu, to capture at the hiighest quality settings, just to get ok quality.

as i said, for viewing live tv, and using your computer as a tv for a vcr, or video game console, its exelent. but for recording, (especialy recording to be put on a dvd) you should get a better card that uses a built in chip for encoding video, not your processor.

i found contepmtness when i used free software "virtual dub mod" (http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/) to deinterlace the video and add improvement filters on it to improve recorded quality.

overall rating 3.5 out of 5

[warriorscot]

Such things as that though for that price dont exist in order to get good image capture quality you need a pure video capture card for a tv card it is very good compared to most.

[lionelhutz5]

This is exactly what I was looking for!! I wanted to watch TV in my room but did not want to buy a whole TV. This is great guys. Thanks for the info. Oh, and the audo in, is that for 1/8" plugs for your computer speakers? And do you have to use those? I think that I would for sound stick wit the integrated until I get a sound only card.

Thanks,
Jared

[humorsavesmysoul]

that's the main reason for my thread. i wanted something to watch tv in my room at school instead of having a bulky [bleep] TV.

sound cards haven't been at the top of my priority cause i have an m-audio fast track that doubles as my sound card on my laptop right now. when i order mine im gonna do the same stick with integrated/use my m-audio till i find an internal sound card that i want.

[lionelhutz5]

So when installing this card, should i do anthing special with my video card...on tigerdirectwebsite, they mentioned having to chaneg something with the AGP video card. Shoud I be doing something, or just leave the PCI tuner card completely separate, like it is just another component?

Thanks,
Jared

[Kerryman87]

It's completely different; you should just have to plug it into a PCI slot. At least, that's all I had to do with mine. I have a KWorld "Terminator" TV Tuner card and it was one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, on Newegg. It works amazing. Obviously the quality isn't that good, but I just use it at school for watching TV and playing video games and such. That way I don't have to have a bulky TV.