TV tuner cards

raido9

Hi,
I'm buying a new dell desktop and want to use it as my htpc.
Dell want to charge me an extra €155 for their tv tuner card so I think I'll buy one myself.
I've been sifting through the old threads and came across two recommendations.

The internal option: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=323375
with: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=309575

or the external option: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=319858

At the moment I'm leaning towards the external one, because its cheaper and I'd be saved the bother of putting it in the pc. Is there any serious disadvantages that I cant see with the external one.

Tom Dunne

raido9 wrote:

At the moment I'm leaning towards the external one, because its cheaper and I'd be saved the bother of putting it in the pc. Is there any serious disadvantages that I cant see with the external one.

Apart from the cables, no.

I use a Hauppauge USB2 PVR external and I have never had a problem with it. There is a slight delay on the picture, so it is useless for connecting a games console, but other than that, there is no real difference.

If you really want to be re-assured, I also have my DVD burner, sound card and Hard Drive external. (I'm using GB-PVR and a laptop, btw).

Ghost Train

raido9 wrote:

Hi,
I'm buying a new dell desktop and want to use it as my htpc.
Dell want to charge me an extra €155 for their tv tuner card so I think I'll buy one myself.
I've been sifting through the old threads and came across two recommendations.

The internal option: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=323375
with: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=309575

or the external option: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=319858

At the moment I'm leaning towards the external one, because its cheaper and I'd be saved the bother of putting it in the pc. Is there any serious disadvantages that I cant see with the external one.

The internal one says it does hardware compression, this is a huge advantage if the card does full hardware compression. I have a haupauge pvr 150 & a 250 and they both do hardware compression. Means you can be playing games and recording tv at the same time, you never get dropped frames in the recordings, and the quality of the recordings is usually better. Software compression is heavy on the cpu. Cards with hardware compression will usally only record direct to mpeg1&2 not divx or xvid. Also the hardware encoding always introduces a delay in the video and audio so no good for using with a console like a ps2 etc. Internal usually is neater with the cables

raido9

I spotted this one, which is MCE compatible:
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318199
is there anything drastically wrong with this, I'm a bit wary as its a good bit cheaper

Also is this one MCE compatible?
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=309529&view=detailed

Thanks

Ghost Train

raido9 wrote:

I spotted this one, which is MCE compatible:
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318199
is there anything drastically wrong with this, I'm a bit wary as its a good bit cheaper

Also is this one MCE compatible?
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=309529&view=detailed

Thanks

first one uses software compression for recording, not hardware which the one in your first post had
second one does digital dvb-t tv, which mightn't be any good in ireland since only trials of digital tv are going on and the final dvb-t standard which will be used hasn't been confirmed