Can someone recommend me a good tv tuner card from umart, but nothing too expensive.

Is it worth getting a digital one?

Is the reception the same as a tv would get, like, thru its antenna and so on? Cos my reception where my pc is is kinda s***...

ta

I have a dvico fusion hdtv tuner card, digital HD, dvd quality picture. With digital you pretty much either get a picture or you don't unlike analog where there's varying degrees of quality.

I got crap reception with my analog card, snow, ghosting, some weird diagonal line that used to go across the screen but with my digital one none of that. Mind you when it rains sometimes I can't get anything whereas analog I at least get a s***ty picture. We've always had crap reception here though for analog tv.

edit: this is it. you didn't mention how expensive was too expensive.

last edited by whoop at 23:02:00 26/Jul/06

digital is quirky, because you either get the full quality signal, or nothing at all. i have a Compro DVB T-300, its a dual analogue/digital PCI tuner. Couldnt be happeir with it, digital is awesome, i only get around 50% signal most of the time and it cuts/scrambles rarely.

I got a dual dvico thingo, good s***. A total c*** to setup the drivers but.

I have a Twinhan DTV card I got uber cheaply, I had an analog tuner previously which was really snowy and crap but now its crystal clear and I'm only using rabbit ears.

It does skip occasionally when someone walks by my room between where I have the rabbit ears and where the signal is coming from.


My only whinge about it that it doesn't pickup SBS, but now that the world cup is over I don't watch it anymore :)

I got a dual dvico thingo, good s***. A total c*** to setup the drivers but.

how so? I just run the setup file and it installs the software + drivers.

If you do that you dont get all the USB drivers (for the second tuner). You gotta do this whole other bulls***.
Basically you gotta install and uninstall several billion times to get all 8 drivers. If you dont you only get 6 and the dual wont work.

http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/tv-tuners-digital-analogue/8938-dvico-dual-digital-tuner-setup.html

so ur saying stay away from dvico then?

i hate messing around with installing/uninstalling software drivers, its the biggest c*** ever.

The dual cards are a little bit ghetto... 1 PCI + 1 USB = urgh.

I have a dvico fusion plus... Cost me $169 or something through CA. I get perfect reception with no skips at all... I have a new chunky connection to my rooftop aerial though.

I find the most frustrating thing about it all to be finding the perfect deinterlacing settings. The DVICO software is fairly weak on options as far as that goes, you can only really use the DVICO filters...

I use a program called DigitalWatch when I really want it to look pretty. It uses text files to set the filters you want to use for sound / video.

Unfortunatley, DigitalWatch doesn't have a sleep timer, which I want to use all the time, so I'm stuck using FusionHDTV (DVICO software)

to add to this thread anyone using media center 2005 with it?

I have a dvico nano, which is the USB version.

Once you download the latest drivers, it's sweet (the ones that come with it are f***ed)

What's the software like for recording with the dvico?

So what's the advantage of getting a dual (digital and analogue) over a pure digital?

And is there any difference to the PCI cards and the USB stick? The USB seems like a better option, unless it's s*** quality or something? Be able to take it around with me appeals, even tho i dont have a laptop.

With Dual you can watch two programs at once, or record one and watch another etc etc. Funny thing though, I cant even get PIP (picture in picture) to work, gonna wait until I get my new monitor to try again but cant say Im entirely happy with this card.

With Dual you can watch two programs at once,

Not with the digital/analogue ones you cant (which is what I think My Cock was referring to).

I have the compro dvb300t and if the digital reception f***s up for whatever reason (which it sometimes does randomly, my dodgy rabbit ears at the end of 5m of co-ax probably doesnt help) you can fall back on analogue reception, which while it may not be pretty will always have some sort of picture. But you cant watch one digital show and record one analogue at the same time.

ive got a haupage "freeview" one. its free digital tv. put that in a windows 2005 media centre pc and i love it.

pause live tv, rewind, record ect.

I still don't really understand what media centre is...

it's just some basic program that plays music and videos?

Yeah what the f*** is the advantage over normal XP?

I have the dvico fusion plus and no trouble with interlacing except on ch9 when they play the rugby but since I hate rugby I'm all good.

What's the software like for recording with the dvico?

Seems fine to me, you can use mediaportal just fine with my card as well so you can record in that dirty dvr-ms format for now or with the fusion software capture the entire transport stream which means you get the HD channel, the SD channels and the tv guide stream as well.

XP media centre is just what it's name suggests, a media center. It's meant to be used on a computer that's hooked to a TV and used as a vcr, a music player, dvd player and other such home entertainment uses. If you want a legally free version use mediaportal.

Yeah what the f*** is the advantage over normal XP?

Its sort of just a shell that sits over a XP Home backend and makes it pretty, gives you simplified access to Music, Pics, Videos, TV (If you've got a tuner) etc

It's good because its something you can use easily with a remote, and it behaves more like a riced up DVD player menu than a computer (ie easy).

I would only bother if I had a bitchin screen plastered across the whole wall though