USB TV Tuners?

Wasn't sure where to post this but I figure it's an external peripheral.

Does anyone here use a USB TV Tuner with their laptops? I was looking into getting one but I was having trouble finding out what ones would work with something like MythTV under Windows (blasphemy I know). I'd prefer not to use WMC if possible but I wasn't sure what good alternatives there were, since XBMC now supports MythTV Backends I wasn't sure if you could use MythTV under Windows and have things 'just work' or if anyone has any experience in using these USB tuners.

 

If you do not get any good ideas here I would post here Home Theater Computers or on one of the subforums there.
BTW how do you feel about people that end sentences in "you know" ? (my pet peeve) LOL

 

I've used the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q for several years. Does great for SD and unencrypted HD. But since last year I got there HD-PVR. This thing is AWESOME!

 

I completely forgot about AVS forums, I'll have to keep them in mind definitely. The 'You know?' thing doesn't bother me too much but it is poor form to write like that.

Thanks for your input, it seems few people actually use any of these devices so it's hard to find any input anyway.

 

Well, the HD-PVR encodes the vid for you, so anything that can play .mp4 can be used afterwards, just don't try to watch the show on your computer display, there is some lagg, the pass through works pretty well though.

EDIT: See the next posts below.

 

Well that really defeats the purpose for me, the entire intent is to watch on my computer display, but the HD-PVR is way too large for me, I'd rather an HDHomeRun Prime if I was going that big/expensive.

 

I feel like certain users here in the forum fixate on other user's speech idioms (i.e. all y'all need to let it go).

I watch my recorded files on my HDTV, not my laptop display. I just store it on my M17x so I can play it back whenever I want. I haven't noticed any lagging with the native x264 encoding the PVR does.

 

There is no lagg with the file on playback or anything like that, but if you try to watch the video you're capturing on your laptop while you are capturing it, then it will lagg, that is what I meant. In short, record then watch or record and watch on your HDTV with the passthrough while recording.

Sorry if I was unclear, now that I reread my post, it is misleading.

I actually noticed that when I looked into whether you could use the HD-PVR to play games using your laptop's display, there is some lagg between what you record and what is displayed on your computer's display if you try to watch in real time while recording. There are no issues with playback after recording.

 

Ahh, I's gonna say. I recorded Big Bang Theory last season and this season in 720p with the PVR and only one episode came out weird, but that was my own fault. Yeah, I always watch the recording show on my HDTV. I don't need to utilize the pass thru because my cable box will output to the component out and the HDMI at the same time (don't ask me why).