Wanting to buy Freeview PCI card: recommendations/links?

Will use it in Dell Dimension 5100 with 2407 monitor

Terratec Cinergy 2400i would be useful in that its a pci express card

Nebula Digitv seems to be popular

Any experiences/advice/links to sites with good info?

Thanks all

Tolgan

Tolgan wrote:

Will use it in Dell Dimension 5100 with 2407 monitor

Terratec Cinergy 2400i would be useful in that its a pci express card

Nebula Digitv seems to be popular

Any experiences/advice/links to sites with good info?

Thanks all

Tolgan

I searched Google Groups, found previous posts praising the VisionDTV,
but can't find the card itself anywhere.

The USB based ones seem to be all the rage now (based on what's for
sale, rather than user comments).

Cheers,
David.

On Thu, 5 Oct 2006 22:44:02 +0100, "Tolgan"
wrote:

|Will use it in Dell Dimension 5100 with 2407 monitor
|
|Terratec Cinergy 2400i would be useful in that its a pci express card
|
|Nebula Digitv seems to be popular
|
|Any experiences/advice/links to sites with good info?

I use Nebula and find it excellent.
Huappauge went in the bin.
--
Dave Fawthrop dave hyphenologist co uk Google Groups is IME the *worst*
method of accessing usenet. GG subscribers would be well advised get a
newsreader, say Agent, and a newsserver, say news.individual.net. These
will allow them: to see only *new* posts, a killfile, and other goodies.

I've used PCI TV cards for years. The main thing is to avoid Hauppauge,
because although the hardware is fine, the software is dreadful - both the
drivers and the TV applications.

I strongly recommend you take a look at the USB devices, because that's
where all the action is these days. For instance, I've just bought the
Pinnacle product, which is only a bit bigger than my thumb but has both an
analogue and a digital tuner.

The Pinnacle software isn't much cop, so I tried Cyberlink PowerCinema. No
good - in widescreen format the picture ratio was wrong. I checked it with
my ruler and in 16:9 widescreen mode it was actually displaying 16:9.6 -
enough to make the picture look subtly wrong. After much messing with my
screen resolution, emails to Cyberlink support and numerous fiddling in the
application settings I gave up and uninstalled it.

The best application by far in terms of performance and versatility is DVB
Viewer:

http://www.dvbviewer.com/en/index.php

The user interface is rather 'techie' but once you've got it all set up it
works brilliantly. And, it costs an incredibly bargain price of 15 Euros
(about £10.80).

So, my recommendations a

1/ Anything but Hauppauge, and preferably...

2/ Pinnacle hybrid USB with DVB Viewer

Thack

wrote:

I searched Google Groups, found previous posts praising the VisionDTV,
but can't find the card itself anywhere.

The USB based ones seem to be all the rage now (based on what's for
sale, rather than user comments).

Cheers,
David.

VisionDTV = TwinHan DTV

www.pcnextday.co.uk amongst others

price around 30 UKP. SUpplied sw is nothing to write home about, but if
you are using BDA drivers and 3rd party applications like MCE or
webscheduler then these are cheap and work well.

Thanks all for the advice.

I've just discovered I can buy a SCART to component or s-video converter so
I may just feed my old Freeview box straight to the screen for a while.

Otherwise I have to admit the usb option is tempting, much less fuss and I'm
a bit short of computer PCI slots.

Cheers

Chris

"Staiger" wrote in message
...
[snip]
So, my recommendations a

1/ Anything but Hauppauge, and preferably...

2/ Pinnacle hybrid USB with DVB Viewer

Hi Staiger, follow up question: If I plan to use the USB device only with a
strong signal from a decent external freeview aerial, I could save money and
just buy the non-hybrid PCTV USB Stick for 40 quid?

What are the benefits of hybrid - I guess the idea would be that i could
plug it into a conventional laptop when travelling and pickup ordinary TV
broadcasts?

Cheers

Chris

What are the benefits of hybrid - I guess the idea would be that i could
plug it into a conventional laptop when travelling and pickup ordinary TV
broadcasts?

Exactly that. I bought a hybrid USB tuner so that I can stick it in my
laptop when I'm on the road, and at least get some sort of watchable signal
from the analogue broadcasts. At home I only use the digital tuner.

If you're going to use it only at home, and you've got good digital
reception, there's no advantage in getting a hybrid device.

Thack