TV tuners

**~~Cecil900~~** · 06-04-07, 09:15 AM

Is there a difference between a video capture card and a TV Tuner with DVR?

**Gumby** · 06-04-07, 05:00 PM

typically, a video capture card can grab s-video and RCA video. A tuner can grab those and broadcast and cable tv signals.

I have an ATI rage theater 500 and I like it a lot. I recommend a separate tuner instead of something like an ATI All-In-Wonder product. With the AIW, anytime you replace your video card, one of the most often upgraded parts, you have to replace the tuner as well. My tuner will last as long as there are PCI slots on motherboards.
Oh, and yes, you can use an ATI tuner with an Nvidia card. I run mine in an Nvidia Nforce 4 motherboard with an Nvidia 7900GT video card.

**~~Cecil900~~** · 06-04-07, 05:10 PM

Thx for the info Gumby. I think ill go with a TV Tuner then because we'll be getting cable when we move into the new apartment(we had satellite before)

**~~Cecil900~~** · 06-06-07, 05:15 PM

No one else?

**Gumby** · 06-06-07, 05:36 PM

Originally Posted by Cecil900

No one else?

well, tuners are not real common hardware. I don't even use mine for tuning much anymore. I mostly use it to capture analog AV from my camcorder and convert it to mpeg-4 on the fly. Makes storing and watching home movies a lot easier.

**MotoZ** · 06-06-07, 05:56 PM

Cecil,

I had an ATI X800XT All-in-Wonder for about a year. It included a TV tuner that connected directly to Comcast Cable. It could only receive the analog channels, so no On-Demand or any of that stuff. The only time I recall watching TV on it was during the space shuttle launch last year. Mostly I used it for work to watch videotaped interviews at home. The TV and sound quality was acceptable, but not the greatest. It was a little more grainy than normal analog TV.

For video capture my video camera communicates over FireWire (IEEE-1394), which does not need a tuner card. The video quality from that is pretty sweet.

That's all I can offer.