Recommend me a TV tuner card?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

HI i am looking for a good decent tv tuner with PCI connection to be compatible with my old pentium 4 pc which allows me to record and watch at the same time in freeview?

any recommendation?

cheers in advance

[jackvdbuk]

do you mean pci-e? or just old school pci?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

plain old.

[Funkstar]

PVR functionality is really down to the software rather than the card. Most software will need multiple tuners if you want to watch one channel while recording another. However some, like MediaPortal, will let you record or watch all channels in a single multiplex at the same time with only one tuner.

This page shows you all the Freeview channels grouped by multiplex.

I have two Hauppauge Nova-T 500's, they are decent cards, perhaps not the best, but solid and have worked perfectly for me.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

So its possible to use and have multiple tv tuners installed in your pc?how does windows 7 MC determine which tuner to use to record or watch a channel?

edit: is this one any good?http://www.scan.co.uk/products/haupp...ce-vista-ready

has a dual tuner but the when ihave a look at the specs below it says it doesnt?

[CaptainCrash]

edit: is this one any good?http://www.scan.co.uk/products/haupp...ce-vista-ready

has a dual tuner but the when ihave a look at the specs below it says it doesnt?

That should be OK, and it's definitely a dual-tuner model (not sure why there's a red x next to "dual-tuner compatible").

So its possible to use and have multiple tv tuners installed in your pc?how does windows 7 MC determine which tuner to use to record or watch a channel?

WMC enumerates each tuner it finds as "Tuner #1", "Tuner #2" and so on, and it will use them in order according to availability. If you want, you can override the tuner priority for each individual channel in the WMC configuration settings, under "Edit Sources".

[j.o.s.h.1408]

what do you mean by OK? what about this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/PEAK-DUAL-DV...7992620&sr=8-2

[Funkstar]

The Peak cards get a lot of recommendations from guys on the MediaPortal forums, great cards regardless of how affordable they are.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

sweet. just ordered it. cheers dude

[CaptainCrash]

what do you mean by OK? what about this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/PEAK-DUAL-DV...7992620&sr=8-2

Well, I meant it will do what you want it to do.

And you're very welcome.

[this_is_gav]

what do you mean by OK?

A bit late now, but they're excellent (hence they've gone up a good £10-15 since I ordered mine), but if the Peak one is fine (I've no idea as I've not been looking) then it's clearly far better value.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

yea im going to give the peak one a go and see

[Behemoth]

I've always liked the ComPro range of TV Cards, have had several of them and they've been brilliant.

[Sputnik]

I've always liked the ComPro range of TV Cards, have had several of them and they've been brilliant.

I've got a Compro E700, The hardware is pretty good but, I didn't like the bundled software.

It works faultless with Windows media centre, Of course this particular card is PCIe so would not be any good for the OP.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

yea im going to give the peak one a go and see

i just picked up this tv dual tuner and i cant pick a single channel using one of those indoor aerial boosters that u plug in the mains

occasionaly when i do the scan for chanels in windows 7's media centre i will pick up around 30 channels but none of them i cant actually display anything as it says the signal is too weak. maybe i should have cough up the extra money for the other one from scan but maybe even that may not work!

[chris_argyle]

I think you would be much better getting an indoor aerial with a higher gain, rather than replacing the card hoping it has a suitably higher sensitivity.