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Television Media Entertainment Hardware

USB TV Tuner Recommendations and Experiences? 60

Posted by Cliff from the computer+USB-tuner=instant-PVR dept.
grocer asks: "Due to a piano, the living room suddenly has too much furniture and the TV is going upstairs. I just got a Dell Dimension 4600 with DVD (ROM and RW), 17" Flat screen, and the good speakers and it's staying downstairs. The Dell is under warranty and I'm not opening it, so card based solutions are out. I know it has enough power/space (2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, 60+ gig free) to run MPEG-2 and do PVR, I just can't find a good review/comparison on the web of USB PVR hardware. I've it gotten down to the Adaptec VideOh! DVD Media Center USB 2.0 or the AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300. Any other recommendations for USB tuners? Anybody else move the TV and replace it with a computer?"
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USB TV Tuner Recommendations and Experiences? More

USB TV Tuner Recommendations and Experiences?

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  • and do what you want with it. It's a PC-- that is Personal Computer. Warranty, schmarranty. Next time, just pick the pieces you want and assemble it yourself and save a grand or two...

    • Re:open the stupid box (Score:3, Informative)

      by dietz ( 553239 )
      Next time, just pick the pieces you want and assemble it yourself and save a grand or two...

      Not necessarily... Dell can get parts CHEAP. I just bought a dell "server" (no OS) for $350. Throw in some more RAM (Dell overcharges on the RAM) and a better video card (it's a server, so it comes with some shitty PCI card) and you're ready to go. But you'd never get an equivalent case+motherboard+processor as cheap as I got it from Dell, even off pricewatch. I tried.
      • Too true. I try to motivate friends and family to let me build them their machine rather than go with whichever maker hit the lowest price point this week, but even with shopping around as you said, the only benefits are reliable parts and assembly (100% success rate so far!). Trying to beat Dell's or whoevers' prices is still very difficult, and most people can't take their glazed looks away from that sub-$600 price tag.
      • For a bottom end, dirt cheap machine, you can't beat the prices that OEM's buy thier parts for. That $300 PC is something thats a lot more difficult to put together without the big bulk orders.

        When you're trying to build a high end machine is when things change. Buying the best parts and putting them together yourself will save you lots of money over any pre-built machine. On a high end machine the markup over retail prices is sickening. On top of that you still don't know wether you're getting good pa
        • Aye, mod this one up please he hit it on the head.

          Alienware, are starting to make thier own custom mobo's now. So depending on what the come up with(dual pci x16 anyone?) and your need for bleeding edge they might be the solution for you.

          Otherwise you can get what they and others like use off of Pricewatch or Newegg for a lot less(minus the flashy cases). Of course you need to know what your doing if you go his route, but with a little time spent on research it isn't that hard.

      • Uh, well - pricewatch isn't exactly the end-all messiah. I put my computer together for ~350 by attending a computer show.
        http://www.greatmidwestcomputershow.com/
        And unlike filling Dell's coffers, I actually get the parts I want (AMD, specific chipset, specific memory, specific disk manufacturer).

  • Open It Up (Score:5, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:31PM (#9784173) Homepage
    Open the PC up. Put in a Happgauge 250 or 350 and be happy. They are great cards, hardware encoder (even with a fast computer, it's nice), work great with Windows and Linux.

    Open the PC up. That doesn't void your warranty does it? If so, COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN. It's not like your doing a motherboard replacement. You are just sticking a card in a slot. Besides, if you ever have to send the PC in for warantee, just pull the card out first and they'll never know.

    USB things will take up more CPU time than a PCI based solution. If you must go external, I'd spend the cash and see if you can find a FireWire TV tuner. FireWire is designed to handle digital video.

    Sorry, I just don't understand the "won't open the PC" part. It's not like it's a laptop. Those slots are more than just decoration ;)

    • What's a "Happgauge"? I googled and got no results. I'm thinking of getting a TV Tuner for my computer as well, and I need to find a good PCI card.

      - shazow

    • Re:Open It Up (Score:5, Informative)

      by hawkstone ( 233083 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @05:12PM (#9784593)
      Open the PC up. That doesn't void your warranty does it? If so, COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN.

      I realize there is the occasional anti-Dell sentiment here (not that I'm accusing you of this), but as someone who has both built machines from parts and bought them from Dell, they have been quite good about warranty issues in the past. I have not dealt with their service in the most recent few years, but I have certainly had good experiences with Dell -- they seem to be very kind to those of us who are going to open the cases anyway.

      Case one: Bought new computer from Dell without a sound card. Bought soundblaster AWE-32 full-length (and I mean full length!) card. Realized motherboard would have benefitted from extra spacers near the last slot. Called Dell, told service rep I was liable to crack the mobo, and she said she would make a note of it in the system so I wouldn't get any grief should I have to get a replacement.

      Case two: My Dell computer, my sister's defective hard drive. Wasn't sure if her IDE card or the drive itself was going bad, so I hooked her hard disk up to my Dell. Momentarily, sparks and smoke from my power supply. Called Dell, they overnighted a new power supply to me with a return box to overnight the defective one to them. And this was as a normal home user's costumer service, not some priority business service.

      So in short, unless Dell has had serious problems in the past couple of years, they should be just fine with you installing whatever the fsck you want in your machine.
      • I agree. I own many Dells, and I'm typing on one now. I don't believe that opening it would void a warrantee, but even if it did Dell is quite nice.

        Really I've never understood the anti-Dell bias. The worst incedent I know of was when a neighbor's laptop's power supply died and she couldn't charge her laptop and needed to write a term paper. They sent her a new one but it didn't arrive in time and didn't work. She wrote the paper on another computer and was fine, but mad a Dell. So they sent her another ne

      • when I got a dell several years ago (PIII-600's were new) there were some initial problems (sound card)

        Hell...they made me open it and look before taking it back for warranty (not that I hadnt already done so).

        If you are REALLY worried about it, call them and make up some BS problem and when they tell you to open it, stick the card in and say that the problem is better now.

      • Dell has remarkably good service. I bought a dell laptop from my boss last year who has purchased it at a sale at a university the year before that. P1, 64Mb ram, nothing special, but it was tiny. Anywho... so i got it, it was wiped, installed a copy of 98SE i had laying around, but a lot of things didn't work. Called up dell and they guy spent half an hour on the phone with me looking up sound, video and modem drivers for a 5 year old laptop that i'd purchased fourth party. Thats what i call service.
    • This limited warranty does not cover:

      * Software, including the operating system and software added to the Dell-branded hardware products through our factory-integration system, third-party software, or the reloading of software
      * Non-Dell branded and Solution Provider Direct products and accessories
      * Problems that result from:
      External causes such as accident, abuse, misuse, or problems with electrical power
      Servicing not authorized by Dell
      Usage that is not in a

  • you can open it (Score:3, Informative)

    by IRNI ( 5906 ) <irni@OPENBSDirni.net minus bsd> on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:32PM (#9784184) Homepage
    opening your box probably won't void your warranty. They expect that you will be putting cards in it. In fact I believe when I had a Vaio, sony told me I could open it and add components. The warranty covers the items from manufacturers defect. So if a card just suddenly stops working then it will cover it. If you spill coffee all over it, it won't unless you buy the complete coverage plan. But this whole thing of not opening your box is retarded. I am sure you can open it and put in a good tv tuner card. I use the ATI TV Wonder
    • I have this card and it is fine, though I don't use any of the pvr functions. I wish i had bought the hauppage though. From all i read/hear they work great and they are better supported (MCE and linux). Besides, I am annoyed w/ ATI's driver crap anyway.

  • Make sure the device you get accepts audio thru the device and can do the recording of the audio without you pluging the device into your audio card.

    It will save you the hassle of trying to make sure the levels are correct.

    I just built out a HTPC this week... consider these sites for some basic info...

    Linux - http://freevo.sourceforge.net
    Windows - http://www.myhtpc.net

    Lots of luck!

  • I used an ATI USB based tuner... (Score:4, Informative)

    by galaxy300 ( 111408 ) <daltonrooney AT gmail DOT com> on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:35PM (#9784212) Homepage
    It was absolutely horrible. Very small, grainy, jerky picture. I would skip the USB and go with a high quality internal card. I can't imagine that would void the warranty anyway - they just won't provide support for the card.
    • First:

      avoid ALL USB solutions that are not usb 2.0, usb 1.1 simply has not enough bandwidth to do captures (think webcam quality).

      Ati has announced a usb 2.0 product in april 2004, and i would be supprised if the parent of this post had a usb2.0 solution or the old "usb" solution.
  • But AFAIK, my parents computer is a branded one and comes from a big national retailer. Opening the box to add cards or memory specificaly don't void the warranty for the remaining of the piece. The only thing that is specified on the warranty is that the warranty don't cover the cards you add or if the new driver cause instability to Windows. But it absolutly don't void the warranty.

  • My experience (Score:3, Informative)

    by Smartcowboy ( 679871 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:54PM (#9784410)
    I have an Hauppauge [hauppauge.com] WinTV-GO [hauppauge.com]. It's the cheapest of Hauppauge tuners but it works great for me under both Mandrake Linux and Windows 2000. The only thing is that I don't have a processor fast enough (500mhz Celeron) to record and encode on the fly so I have to save to uncompressed AVI. You have a better processor than me so you should be able to encode your shows on the fly and do PVR no problem with that low-budget card. Good luck!

    A final tip: find a video editing software to cut the publicity in the programs you want to keep!
    • I have a Hauppauge PVR 250 PCI card in my EPIA ME6000. It has a 600MHz passively cooled C3 processor which runs at 8% load when encoding MPEG2 (using the card) and 40% when decoding same with the hardware decoder builtin to the motherboard. Quality is fantastic with MythTV using a digital cable source.

  • Say no to ATI TV Wonder USB (Score:3, Informative)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:58PM (#9784447) Homepage
    I had an ATI TV Wonder USB, and the thing was crap all around. Image quality blew, as did sound unless you hooked your sound right up to the VCR (assuming you had one). If that wasn't bad enough, the ATI TV software is absolutely wretched. Unstable as hell, basic stuff like crashing if you click the channel-down button past the first channel (in my case, channel 2), etc. Pretty shoddy all around. I've heard good things about Leadtek's TV2000, though that is an internal card. Definitely be careful about these external TV devices, and stay away from really cheap stuff.
    • Actually, the cheap stuff can still be really good. I got a Kworld TV/FM tuner for about $14, it uses the common BT878 chipset and thus is fully supported in Windows and Linux. The software works, leaves a little to be desired but I use DScaler instead. In Linux, byt playing with the frequencies a little bit I can even pick up local police bands. Does anyone know of a scanner application? You can scan through the frequencies to initially find your FM and TV stations, but I want to find a scanner applicatio
  • They have USB TV tuners. I have their PCI PVR, the USB one must be pretty good as well.

    http://www.hauppage.com/pages/prods_usbs.html [hauppage.com]
  • I got rid of my desktop and wanted to also to get
    rid of my TV and luve entirely off my laptop.
    So I got AverMedia to watch occasional TV like
    world cup soccer but it will be unused for months
    at a time. In any case here goes:

    Picture is fine, rather crisp though the UHF antenna
    connection is made with an extra cable which looks
    flimsy.
    Sound does not go through USB but comes out the
    audio jack and you can run it into your
    microphone jack in your laptop to get sound. This
    sucks as the sound often lags, esp. if you a
  • Since we seem to be saying "No, you have to use a PCI card, USB solutions stink" let's shift just a little and talk about PCI solutions.

    There's not much point in going non-HDTV, at this point, and I'd like to wait until the last minute to buy -- as I expect them to improve. But buying them before they are forced to include DRM seems paramount.

    What are you other folks thinking? Do you expect them to improve? Do you expect DRM to appear before the July 2005 cutoff?
  • Very nice product (except the ugly interface on the software)
  • opening your Dell does NOT, I repeat NOT, void the warrenty. I dont know why people think that.

    Get the best card on the market, the Hauppauge WintTV-PVR250, and behappy for ever. You can get it for less than 150.

    If you are really averse to opening your machine, get the external version, the WinTV-PVR-USB2.

    Both have a hardware MPEG2 encoder builtin, and produce fantastic quality, much ebtter than the Avermedia crap you are looking at.
    • I second that. I've got the USB2 version of the WinTV PVR - works like a dream. The picture quality is good (especially from the S-Video output of a digibox) and the built-in MPEG2 compression means the PC just has to stream stuff to disk.
  • My post on the subject [imaginaryplanet.net].

    My conclusions: My basic conclusions (after researching a few websites and user forums). USB 2 TV cards are pretty commonplace, although there are only one or two HDTV cards that are USB-based. Linux supports a lot of TV cards, although it's iffier for USB devices (and nonexistent for USB/HDTV devices). Even with a TV card, support can be iffy, so you better have access to good tech support (or buy it locally if you want to swap it out). Laptops can get HDTV, but it uses a lot of
  • I have a PCI PVR-250 from Hauppauge, and I love it. The video quality is great and the applications are stable and easy to use. I would imagine their USB models are also good. Get something with a hardware encoder if possible. It makes it much easier to record a show while using your computer for something else.

    I previously had an ATI TV Wonder, and I could never get it to work right with my nVidia video card. I wonder if they do that on purpose? I gave the TV Wonder to my brother, and it works ok

  • DISH Network? (Score:3, Informative)

    by David_Bloom ( 578245 ) <slashdot@3lesson.org> on Friday July 23, 2004 @07:57PM (#9785870) Homepage
    If you have DISH Network, get a DVB-S card, get Nagravision decryption software, and download Dish Network keys. You can get the raw MPEG2 stream that way :).
  • I don't know if they've solved this problem, but the early-generation USB tuner I have (Hauppage WinTV PVR USB) buffers quite a bit of data, making things like playing consoles through it effectively impossible.
  • According to the spec sheet, it's got almost the same features as the ATI All-in-wonder, without having to crack open the case. In reality... it doesn't even come close, despite costing $99 even at a discount.

    Left three phone messages over a two-week period for the support group. None of them was returned. Sending them email, you don't even get an autoresponder.

    After wasting a lot of time on it, I threw it in the garbage.

    ATI's all-in-wonder is great, but I don't think they make a USB version. The Hauppag
  • See here:

    www.usbhdtv.com
    www.sasem.com
    www.reed-electro nics.com/ ednmag/article/CA411162

  • hauppauge WinTV-PVR-usb2 is the only way to go. Its got onboard mpeg2 encoding. I hear its basically identical to the pvr 250 pci model but in a usb2 form factor.

    Slightly more expensive than pci, but worth it.

    All usb models have to do some video compression, the cheap models do some really crappy compression, the mpeg2 ones are decent.
  • And I have had no problems with having Motherboards and stuff replaced after I had opened the case. What use is having a few free slots if you can't use them until the 3 year warranty is up?
  • ...just as a thought - make sure your ports are USB 2.0 ports.

    On that note, is there a firewire solution?
  • ... that may not be an option, for example on a small form-factor PC with only one available PCI slot. Like the Mini-ITX PC currently sitting beside my TV. It already has a PCI card installed (wireless ethernet, though at some point I'll run some wired ethernet in and get a second internal tuner card).

    So for me, an external DVB tuner was the only option, and I purchased a Hauppage DEC 2000-T box. This box also has the advantage of also functioning as a standalone DVB-T tuner if desired, which may be han
  • I've used the Adaptec VideOh USB 2.0 on a 1.3GHz Duron system for about a year and it works very well. I then use a Gateway Connected DVD to play recorded video The only caveat here is that although the VideOh outputs MPEG-2 video, the audio stream is raw PCM (LPCM) which the Gateway doesn't handle. Therefore I have to either re-encode the audio or transcode to something else like Divx.
  • I have a couple recommendations.

    If your not picky about picture quality, the Hauppauge USB TV works fine on my laptop's 15" screen albeit, a little fuzzy when I blow it up to full screen.

    Better however is the newer Hauppauge (http://www.hauppauge.com) PVR USB offerings as they have built in hardware compression and can deliver a rather stunning picture at full screeen. The downside is to make sure you have USB 2.0 and not the 1.1 as that would create problems.

    I have both of these models, and also use a p

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