Possible TV card options.

[Moose]

I will need to get a TV card soon (in and out)
and I am wondering what options I have.
my budget isn't that big (around $150/can)

my system:
Aopen AX6BC mother board
Pentium 2 @400mhtz
128mb PC100 memory
Guillemot MaxiGamer (16meg AGP TNT2)
SBLive! Value

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

 

[morc]

I don't get it clearly what you want. Do you want a card with video (NOT TV) in/out capabilities or you want a TV tuner card?

There are VGA cards with video in/out out there, but I haven't seen a TV tuner card which would have had a video out. But you can come over the second with a VGA card which has a TV out so if you put your TV tuner's application to full screen and connect your VGA card to a TV/VCR you have what you wanted (if you wanted this).

Regards,

Morc

 

[Guest]

There are two choises. First there is ATI's new All-In-Wonder Radeon Board. This board does excellent capute and output, albiet it is very system demanding. From you current specs and price range you could use a more hardware oriented solution. You could look into a board from Pinnacle systems, as they have a good name and have good products. The other solution, and the one that would work the best, is the outdated Matrox Marvel G-400TV. There is a new card in this line out soon, but it also uses a software render like ATI, which would make your captures drop a lot of frames. The matrox system has superb image quality and due to the hardware can do excellent captures on your system. This card is outdated for 3D, however, so it isn't much of a gaming card. One more consideration. How large is your hard drive? The standard capture, such as in ATI's board captures in popular MPEG and MPEG2 format. This is a highly compacted format that most computers can read. The other type is MJPEG, which is what the Mavel G-400 does. This format is very uncommon and takes up gigantic amount of HD space. If you are into capture you need a hardware solution or need to totally update your system though.

 

[Moose]

Thanks for the info. I have to say that the Radeon is a wee bit out of my price range... Also I would rather not get a card as a replacement for my TNT2 because I haven't really needed a card that is more powerfull. (but mostly because it seems a bit of a waste of $$$ to get a new gfx card every year...)

I've looked at the G-400TV and It looks nice but I think I've decided on the Pinnacle Studio PCTVpro. Does anyone
know of any 'Gotchas' for this card?

 

[Guest]

Hi all, the Pinnacle PCTV Pro card is excellent. I'm running it on an Athlon 700, 128Mb and Savage 4 32Mb on LG Flatron 795+ (1024x768 - Full Screen - No deterioration in quality) I love the sterio (TV and Radio for PRO) on my new SoundBlaster Live Value with FPS1000 - 4 Speakers kicks ass. The price was also good when I bought it.

TV Quality is excellent. I'm connected to a ordinary arial (outsite though) and the quality is compared to sattelite.

Only problem was with my Creative Savage when I installed new drivers, but after re-installing old drivers everything is A OK again (Creative doen't have any newer driver). Savage is already 1 1/2 years old so will upgrade nextyear.

A real good buy with nice extra features - Can capture form S-Video, VCR, etc. Quality great for a TV card (320x240 looks great / can even watch recorded files in full screen - 1024x768 does look like medium qaulity mpg from web though).

Con - Can't output to a VCR, but then why would you? Rather buy the more expensive DC10 for video's or if you really want to go into video making - broadcasting or the likes buy a DV solution - way too expensive for the home user.

Enjoy.

PS. I see Pinnacle has a PCTV Satellite which can also be an interesting option. GO check out their website: www.pinnaclesys.de/uk

Going, going, gone......

 

[Moose]

Thanks for the info