PEATS and Dixons: PC TV tuner card.DVD HDD recorder

Cassiel

PEATS: Pinnacle PCI TV tuner card €29.99 (dunno if its OEM or retail or MCE compliant). good price tho'.

DIXONS: Toshiba 160GB HDD DVD recorder €379 - no dual layer drive, no DV input. Reduce from €579.

Kintarō Hattori

It's not OEM, but it won't work with MCE.

s8n

have peats got it for that price in Blanch ??

norbert64

s8n wrote:

have peats got it for that price in Blanch ??

yep, they do.

this is the card on offer, doesn't look that bad really :cool:
tv tuner card

TheMonster

Will the TV card work with NTL?

Mossy

More details on PCTV Stereo here.

A review in PCW from 2004.


From the review:
Overall rating: 4/5
Average user rating: 5/5

Verdict: An easy-to-install, good quality card. Great value for money.

This excerpt worries me though:

According to the packaging, the software supports mpeg1 recording but can be upgraded to mpeg2 at additional cost. Despite this, we managed to select and use the mpeg2 functions from the start without any problems. However, the burning software only supports VCD and SVCD until you upgrade.

Does that mean that you absolutely can't burn your recordings onto DVD, or are the files recorded in a format that can be used by third-party burning software?

norbert64

Mossy wrote:

Does that mean that you absolutely can't burn your recordings onto DVD, or are the files recorded in a format that can be used by third-party burning software?

whatever format we get, could we not simply convert it to a writeable format, with any number of programs freely available on the net, or are you saying the card itself, should be able to do that from the get go?

Mossy

I'm saying that the software that comes with the card won't burn onto DVDs, so if the recording software stores the recordings in a proprietry format then we won't be able to convert it or burn it, but if the recordings are stored in an open format then we will (be able to convert and/or burn).

I guess it'd probably store as a straightforward MPEG, but it ain't necessarily so.

mollser

Am thinking of buying one of these tv cards at lunch

I'm not great with the hardware aspects of computers - i've a dell dimension 3100, is all you do open up the back and slip this fella in - is it as easy as that?

I think there are a couple of spare ports, all I have in it is a soundcard at the moment - would that sound right??

cheers

s8n

has anyone picked up one of these tuner cards, are they compatible with a digital signal ??

markyboy

This review here of the "deluxe" version doesn't look promising

caster

Did anyone buy one of these?
Any ideas where the serial number for the software is ? No sign of it on the CD sleeve....

caster

Actually I found it. Its on the CD itself (not the sleeve as it says).....