tv tuner suggestions please

at my college dorm they provide digital cable. instead of buying a television i'd like to purchase a tv tuner card for my computer. can someone suggest what i should get? i was looking at the ati tv wonder 550, but i'm not sure what their current model line is anymore. i was trying to find the ati tv wonder elite, but haven't found it anywhere.

suggestions please

 

Is this for a desktop or a laptop? If so, tell us a little about the laptop, so we can recommend the best solution for you.

 

i have a asus a8js with 2gigs memory

but i don't think i'm going to be watching television on that one .. do you mind answering this question for my desktop? i kno this is a notebook forum =X

 

I don't know much about the desktop cards, but you can either get a graphics card with a tuner, or a separate tuner card. The separate cards are probably cheaper than a laptop tuner. Someone else may have more experience here. I have an ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 for my laptop. Its great when it works, but no doubt, I would much rather have a desktop caliber card.

 

gotcha .. all right then thanks a lot

 

Just to point out- you won't have access to any of the Digital channels without a cablecard-enabled tuner. You'll just get the basic 1-100 selection.

I like the xTasy Theater 550- it has the high-end dedicated tuner chipset off the ATi Radeon cards and its own memory. It makes a lot of difference.

 

what do you mean by the "access to any of the digital channels"? i don't think my school pays for the premium stuff .. just a couple channels (50 in all) like news, sports, abc, nbc, fox, etc. nothing like movie channels and other stuff. the tv they provided (it's old and crappy) runs fine and i do believe it does not come with those cablecard enabled tuner.

i will however check out the xtasy theater 550. thanks!

 

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3336

 

Analog channels are 2-125 (I believe it was 125). The digital range is much greater. However, those are usually encrypted, thus you need a cable card or some such. But your university probably doesn't have it encrypted.
More than likely, they have an advanced QAM or Blondertongue setup. So those channels the university receives a digital channel that is 342 through their provider. What they would do is down map that channel to say, 24.

this simplifies everything so that the university doens't have to deal with tuners or anything of the kind in each dormroom and classroom.

As far as tuners, get a dedicated one. Don't use the built in ones on the video cards (unless it's an ATI all in wonder) because my experience (with both ATI and nVidia) is that they give poor quality video. A dedicated unit gives much better results.

I would point you over to newegg.com to check out some tuners there.