looking for good dual tv tuner for laptop

mkennedy

hi.
can anyone recommend a good DUAL (digital and analog) tv tuner for a laptop.

either pcmcia or usb is ok, once its discrete i'm not bothered.

preferably something that records DIRECTLY to avi/divx (not just mpeg) so i can watch the recording on a pda.

also, do some of these tuners require very powerful processors? iirc one tuner i looked at needed atleast a 2ghz pentium4 processor (2.8ghz for analog recording). i have a 1.7ghz intel centrino laptop-would this be good enough?

i looked at a hauppage wintv usb tuner with digital antenna in pc world recently -hauppage is a good make, isn't it?

and the "digital antenna" included -i presume it will pick up both analog and digital won't it?

i also looked at a kworld pcmcia dual tuner in maplins-anyone know if this make is any good?

any help appreciated.
thanks.

Tom Dunne

mkennedy wrote:

preferably something that records DIRECTLY to avi/divx (not just mpeg) so i can watch the recording on a pda.

I am not aware of any tuners that do divx, the vast majority only do mpeg. Do what I do for my PDA - record using the likes of GB-PVR and have it transcode during the night (or whenever).

mkennedy wrote:

also, do some of these tuners require very powerful processors? iirc one tuner i looked at needed atleast a 2ghz pentium4 processor (2.8ghz for analog recording). i have a 1.7ghz intel centrino laptop-would this be good enough?

My understanding is those that require powerful processors are cheap, PCI cards that rely on the processor to do all the work. They don't have hardware encoding built in.

mkennedy wrote:

i looked at a hauppage wintv usb tuner with digital antenna in pc world recently -hauppage is a good make, isn't it?

Well, I use Hauppauge PVR2 with my laptop, so it must be good.

mkennedy wrote:

and the "digital antenna" included -i presume it will pick up both analog and digital won't it?

I believe it will.

However, I find the analogue reception to be unwatchable at best - I take my signal from the rabbits ears/cats ears/whatever.

I'm going to move this thread to the HTPC forum - you will get more people with experience/knowledge of tv-tuner cards over there.

subway

i got a usb mpeg 4 tv tuner in lidl before.
sold it a while back but they do exist so keep your eyes peeled.

Tom Dunne

subway wrote:

i got a usb mpeg 4 tv tuner in lidl before.

Doh! Divx=mp4, isn't it?

Forgot that.

subway

http://cgi.ebay.ie/Typhoon-TV-PVR-Universal_W0QQitemZ110063639779QQihZ001QQcategoryZ136519QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

thats the one i had,
not sure about a dual version of it tho.