The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Are you looking for USB or CardBus? Are you wanting hardware or software encoding? What is your price range?
A good hardware encoding USB device is the Hauppage WinTV-PVR USB 2.0. I use it and its great. Its not the smallest device, but if you aren't needing a portable tuner, its the one to use. One of the best.
I have also used the Avermedia AVerTV MTVCARDBUS PCMCIA TV Tuner Card. It works pretty good too. The picture is just as good as the Hauppage, but it does not have a hardware encoding chip. That mean your CPU ussage is higher. I also found the AverTV got quite hot.
I have to agree with RogueMonk about the Hauppage WinTV-PVR USB 2.0. I used it and a Hauppage PVR-350 (PCI) in my last computer (not at the same time) and I had great results. The cpu usage was actually about the same as the internal card - I forget the number but it was very low. They both have hardware mpeg encoding which is probably the reason why.
One good thing about the Hauppage cards is that there is alot of software to support it. I use GB-PVR (
www.gbpvr.com ) but just about every bit of software out there for PVR purposes supports the Hauppage cards. Whatever card you get make sure it supports your software before you buy, some cards have alot more support than others.
I think I'd prefer the hardware encoding and USB. It doesn't have to be portable because I don't plan on taking it around but I am gonna be using it on my notebook. As for the price range, I can't really say because I'm not sure how much these things cost...I don't wanna spend too much money on it though.
If you want to play console games with your computer via Tv Tuner, consider those with software encoding as there is a 1-2 second lag with those that hardware encoding ones.
If that doesn't matter to you at all, by all means, the Hauppauge is a very good one.
I'm new to this TV Tuner thing, got a few questions.
I just purchased a Dell laptop E1505, but I forgot to add a TV tuner card. I can still contact Dell to modify my order to include it (costs about extra $120).
1. Is it worth it to pay Dell to include the TV tuner card in my laptop? or get a TV tuner card later on?
2. What's the difference between an internal TV card and an external TV card? Which one is recommended?
i am also getting an E1505, and i would like to have a tv tuner so i won't have to worry about setting a vcr to record my favorite shows and then have blank tapes laying around and stuff... i can just set it on my computer and it will record to the hard drive. it will be more convenient than a tv/vcr combo, and a tivo or dvr setup isn't really feasible for me.
i am leaning toward the AVerTV MTVCARDBUS PCMCIA TV Tuner Card because i just bought a new Xbox360 and it'd be really sweet to be able to hook that up to my laptop, which is possible with this card because it is software encoding right?
since i'm getting the T2400 duo core processor in my E1505, do i really need to worry about slowing down my computer? if i'm wanting to watch tv the most i'll do in addition to that is surf the web or maybe type a paper for one of my classes... cpu usage shouldn't be a problem should it?
one last thing, i read something somewhere that the PCMIA cards get pretty warm after an hour or so of use. is heat going to be an issue with one of these cards?
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
