- #Tv tuner pci card reviews Pc#
- #Tv tuner pci card reviews plus#
- #Tv tuner pci card reviews tv#
- #Tv tuner pci card reviews windows#
Besides, there are certain cable channels that I would want regardless of how good my OTA DTV is, like ESPN, Discovery, Cartoon Network, etc. At my location, a small indoor antenna is not sufficient for receiving OTA DTV, and while a larger antenna mounted on the roof might work fine, that's often not an option on rental or apartment housing.
#Tv tuner pci card reviews tv#
Depending on your location, OTA Digital TV reception can be easy to get with something as small as the pictured Silver Sensor antenna, or you may need a large roof-mounted antenna with a signal amplifier. Cable companies use QAM encoding on their digital channels, and while no cards currently support playing encrypted QAM channels, being able to record/timeshift the unencrypted channels is a definite plus. Watching a clip from a widescreen NBA game followed by another clip from a different game that is upsampled SD shows a dramatic loss in quality for the latter.įirst, let's answer this question: Why is QAM decoding important? For those who live in areas where "terrestrial" or OTA (Over The Air) broadcast reception is poor or downright non-existent, cable or digital satellite is generally required. ESPNHD SportsCenter broadcasts provide a great example of the difference between native HD and upsampled SD, as the program contains both types of content. Generally speaking, if a broadcast isn't in widescreen format, it's not truly HD (though it could still be Digital TV). The vast majority of programming is still standard TV upsampled to HD resolutions. The USC games for most of this season, for example, were not available in widescreen - only the recent Bruins game was in HDTV. The major networks all have HD channels - ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC - but the amount of actual HD content is relatively limited. It's entirely possible that there are areas where most channels are available in HD, but at least in Washington, the options are rather limited. Unfortunately, reality tends to make the importance of HD functionality less important than most people would like, and the ability to receive and record analog channels well may actually be the more important factor for most people. At first, it might seem like this is an unfair match-up, as we have HD capable cards going up against a card that only handles SD analog TV. Where the former offer QAM decoding, HDTV, and digital and analog capabilities, the Theater 550 is an analog-only card.
#Tv tuner pci card reviews plus#
The MyHD and Fusion5 cover the "everything plus the kitchen sink" range of tuner cards, while the Theater 550 is more focused. (Older DVICO and MyHD cards may have handled this as well, to varying degrees.) The third card marks one of the first truly interesting PCIe X1 cards to appear on the market, the PowerColor Theater 550 PCIe. The cards are the MyHD MDP-130 and the DVICO Fusion5 Gold.
#Tv tuner pci card reviews windows#
Two of the cards are - as far as I'm aware - the only HDTV tuners currently available for Windows that will handle QAM decoding. Today, we have a trio of TV Tuners for review, and while they have some similarities, they're also quite different in features, software, and performance. Our last TV tuner card roundup is almost six months old, and while much of the information is still current, we do have some new cards some might be considering.
#Tv tuner pci card reviews Pc#
Of course, the ability to do something like watch or record TV on a PC is not the same as the ability to do that well, and thankfully, we've made some serious progress in that area over the past decade. ATI's All-In-Wonder line has had TV-In capability since the days of the old ATI Expert line with Rage graphics chips. TiVo was the first such device to gain mainstream recognition, but in reality, PC owners have been able to do most of what TiVo offered for a long time. Most of our readers have probably used a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) device at some point in time.
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