Good + Cheap TV Tuner?

what is the cheapest tv tuner i could buy that will record video just as good
as the release groups?

nice username, been one my whole life 🙂

as to your question, it might be better to google the information you are
looking for. cheapest is not necessarily the best but be that as it may, prices
would be too variable to suggest any...you would have to take into account
location, country, etc and so forth.

all i want is a tv tuner with the ability to record video as good as lol, xor,
etc. i've checked ebay but i don't know which brand is good. in the past i
spent $40 on a tv tuner that looked good (good specs) but it turned out to be
a piece of junk. so if anyone can help i would really appreciate it.

suggestion was given in this thread already.. no need to continue asking.

use google.

hiya honey 🙂 sorry i've been away a bit.. 🙂

:scratches her head: okies lemme try to simplify this. cubfan, hon, adyin's
correct, you are asking an ambiguous question. there are tons of boards all over
the internet that can help you, just google for it.

i'm not 100% on all the technical knowhow, so i apologise for any holes.

most dvb cards will do the same thing - capture video as.. i want to say mpeg2.
so as long as you have a good decoder, for example - one from dvd playing
software (powerdvd, etc), one card's video should look the same as the next.

i could be wrong though, so don't quote me. i swear that's what someone told me
anyway.

so as long as you have a hd stream to capture from, you should be able to
capture at a comparable quality to scene groups. also, your videos won't be
encoded to xvid/divx, so won't have lost any quality because of that. i don't
have a hdtv or hd stream, but my wintv nova-t 500 captures at very similar
quality to pdtv from uk freeview.

basically, buy what you can afford and don't use the software the comes with it.
i do like my nova-t 500, coupled with media portal though. up until last week
i'd been using vista mce, but it's gash as far as flexibility is concerned.

-edit

i forgot to mention, if you're capturing from a satellite source, you'll need a
dvb-s card. whereas if you're not, get a dvb-t job.

if you have a dvr box and a firewire cable then that works for ripping
720p/1080i .ts (exact replica of broadcast) but thats usually from satellite or
hd cable which tends to have a lower bitrate the over-the-air broadcasts
depending on location.
i would give a link but the site that i got that info from is down

if you dont live in the middle of no where and know that you can recieve ota
signals then just get a digital hdtv card that can record from over-the-air.
i've heard ati hdtv wonder was one of the top 5 cards

but just as a heads up the source file for these .ts file is at 60min is around
5-6gb with commercials because its on the fly mpeg-2 and ac-3. size gets down to
about 3-5gb when the commercials are cut depending on the station and bitrate
you recieve

thanks for the suggestions! 🙂

google what?

i have a wintv-pvr 150 personal video recorder. i got it for about $60.

it has a timer program so you don't have to be at the computer to record.

it would be nice if it produced a dvix or xvid file instead of a mpeg2 file
but
the video and sound are great. the sound is only in stereo.

now you have something to google.

people should be more polite and it's no crime in sharing info.

oh the card has a remote.

what i would like in a card is 5.1 surround sound and dvix files. why ... i
have 2 dvd players that play avi files so i don't have to convert downloaded
movies to dvd format to play on a dvd player. although the players will play
the mpeg files .... i can edit avi files better cause i have several avi edit
programs so i can edit out commercial easier.

thanks for the info xmarine! i will definitely look into it.