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-   -   Digital tuners for the pc (http://www.homecinemabanter.com/showthread.php?t=27648)

[email protected] September 13th 04 10:54 AM
Digital tuners for the pc
 
Does anybody have experience of the new digital tuner cards which are
now appering for the pc ? The reviews I have read so far tend to
concentrate on the computer issues rather then the quality of picture
etc which are of significence to me.

Is there any reason why pc cards would be intrinsically worse than a
STB due to design compromisses?

Bob Tidey September 13th 04 11:56 AM
wrote:
Does anybody have experience of the new digital tuner cards which are
now appering for the pc ? The reviews I have read so far tend to
concentrate on the computer issues rather then the quality of picture
etc which are of significence to me.

Is there any reason why pc cards would be intrinsically worse than a
STB due to design compromisses?

I have both STB (Grundig 1500T) and PC card (TwinHan VisionDTV).

In my experience the quality is pretty much identical.

Iv'e compared them by putting native MPEG recordings from the PC onto disc
and playing them back via RGB Scart from a disc player into the TV, so that
the viewing medium is the same. If one were to to use a TV Out direct from
the PC then that may have some effect on the quality, but that is controlled
by the graphics card not the tuner.

Playback on a local 19" LCD on the PC also looks pretty good.

The main quality constraints are the encoding process and any break ups due
to reception errors.

The encoding is obviously common to both the STB and the PC card so a poorly
encoded channel with low bit rates is going to suffer on both.

As far as break ups are concerned I've been pleasantly surprised by the
performance of my PC card which if anything suffers less from the occasional
glitch than the STB. I have made sure, however, that both get a good feed
from an external aerial with a distribution amplifier in the loft and CT100
cable to minimise interference.

regards

Linker3000 September 14th 04 06:57 PM
wrote:
Does anybody have experience of the new digital tuner cards which are
now appering for the pc ? The reviews I have read so far tend to
concentrate on the computer issues rather then the quality of picture
etc which are of significence to me.

Is there any reason why pc cards would be intrinsically worse than a
STB due to design compromisses?

I have the Hauppauge Nova-T TV tuner - usual story from this company:
good hardware, crap software.

having said that it works well but the user interface designers need a
kick up the arse, and have done for many years.

L3K


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