Which Digital TV Card

[vicar]

I am currently putting the finishing touches to my uber rig, and one of the few items left is to put in a digital/analogue TV card.

I am currently torn between the Leadtek WinFast DTV1000 T ( good review from Custom PC) and the Leadtek WinFast DTV2000 H(Still trying to find review for thi card).

Q1 Which of these two cards should i choose?
Q2 Is there a better card out there?
Q3 Picture quality and low price are important.

Many thanks in advance

[Silent Shark]

I don't know how the cost compares to the others, but I'd personally recommend the Compro Videomate DVB-T200 or T300. The hardware is solid and the latest software and drivers are pretty robust. I have the T300 and we have a T200 in another PC. Both should be available from Scan .

Quality is excellent, and using the right tools, I've made DVDs of quality on par with proper bought ones (it does help that DVD and DVB-T both use very similar MPEG2 coding).

[vicar]

Thanks will look into it, i suppose the T300 is the newer version?

[Boreades]

I've ordered a 2000H - because it's one of the few tuner cards that has 64-bit drivers
Scan has it for £37.50 + VAT http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=378684

[undergroove]

Add another vote for the Compro T300. Bought one a few months ago to sling in an MCE box I built.... it's been recording away ever since, storing up top quality Freeview recordings like a little hamster about to hibernate. Didn't bother with the Compro software and installed only the drivers, enough to get XP MCE working really.

I stream the recordings to the 360 MCE extender too, as well as the live TV from the MCE box and watch it all on the Dell 2005 WFP.

[kojak71]

Q1 Which of these two cards should i choose?
The 1000 is a straight forward freeview card, the 2000 looks like a hybrid card (freeview & analogue). Can't tell if the analogue side of things is handled in hardware or software. Hauppauge equivalent to the 2000 is the HVR1300 & HVR1100 (the former handles the analogue bit in hardware, the latter in software).

Q2 Is there a better card out there?
Depends on what you mean by better, but Hauppauge, Blackgold have offerings. Nebula supposedly are the best. These comments only relate to the software side of things, under MCE2005 all the tuners are treated the same.

Q3 Picture quality and low price are important.
Digital (i.e. freeview) quality is pre-determined by the broadcaster, so a capture on a digital card should be the same from any manufacturer (especially true under MCE2005).