What PCI Tuner to select

[madstoft]

Hi Everyone,

I need your advice on selecting a cheap TV tuner card.

This is what I'm looking to do. I'm a Dane currently living in Sydney, Australia and I miss watching my Danish television programs.

Going back to 'Dane-land' in August and I have an old compact COMPAQ Deskpro P3-800/256Mb that I want to bring. I can set it up at my brotthers place in Denmark and put a tv tuner in it and still get my programs in Sydey.

I want to spend NO money on this project if I could, but I need to get a cheap TV Tuner card. I'm pretty sure that cheap in this instance means non hardware encoding. I'm willing to accept an average video quality.

The only thing the PC would be doing is sitting on top on a cuppard streaming live TV to me...nothing else.

What card should I be buying? If you have a look ebay.com.au you can see what I can choose from.

I was looking at the Leadtek but it is unsuppported. However he card is on the list of supported cards for the BTWINCAP drivers which is said to be working with BTV http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/supportedcards.html.
Any experiences with this?


What are your suggestions?

[Bilar Crais]

Do you need a PAL tuner?

I have an ATI All-In-Wonder 7200 32mb PAL tuner that I would give you for free for the cost of shipping. (Does BTV work with PAL?)

Last time I had it installed, it would work with ATI's native MMC software, version 8.1. I regularly used it to capture and burn SVCDs from my cable box.
I also had it working with BTV version 3.4.

This would meet your qualifications of free!

Let me know if you are interested.

Edit: I checked...it seems Denmark utilizes the PAL format.

[madstoft]

Hi Bilar,

That is the best offer I've had in a long time.
I would love to have it.
I've checked with USPS and a 5oz letter (max dimensions: 36", combined) is $4.40USD (Airmail Letter Post).


When the server is up and running I'll have to mail you so you also can watch some Danish TV :-)

How can I pay you? I'm happy to pay for packaging ect., and don't worry about software CDs, I'll pick it up on the net. Please let me know the total shipping cost.

I'm at:
4/105A Ben Boyd Road
2089 NSW Neutral Bay
Sydney, Australia

Good karma to you, mate!!

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by madstoft

Hi Bilar,

That is the best offer I've had in a long time.

It wasn't doing me any good just sitting in the closet...I have no use for a PAL card. Come monday, I'll package it and see what postage comes to.

Originally Posted by madstoft

When the server is up and running I'll have to mail you so you also can watch some Danish TV :-)

That would be a hoot! I'd be interested in checking it out.

Originally Posted by madstoft

How can I pay you? I'm happy to pay for packaging ect., and don't worry about software CDs, I'll pick it up on the net. Please let me know the total shipping cost.

Do you have PayPal? I don't think it will be more than $10.00 for sure. Packing will be free...I have enough materials left over from various computer purchases over the last few years. I'm going to burn a CD with the ATI software on it...the individual drivers package that I know works with it. Are you familiar with ATI line of tuners? I believe the AIW 7200 was one of the first tuners they ever came out with. It's also a 4x AGP video card. A few years ago, ATI came out with version 8.1 of Multimedia Center (MMC), which was a vast improvement over the old MMC software. I'll include the DAO drivers, MMC 8.1, and Catalyst 2.3 and control panel drivers, and associated WDM drivers. Of course you are free to experiment with newer drivers, but that's the combination that I found works well with this card.

One other thing...ATI heatsink fans are infamous for failing with alarming regularity. Last time it got squeeky, I pulled off the stock fan. and screwed on an old 486 heatsink fan. It's a bit ungainly looking, but it works.

Originally Posted by madstoft

Good karma to you, mate!!

I'll let you know what the USPS has to say about shipping costs.

Cheers,

CF

[madstoft]

Sounds great. I don't have much experience with ATI Tuners. I did have a Voodoo TV/FM TV Tuner (Europe) once, but when I moved to WinXP there were no drivers available so I passed the card down to a mate still running 98SE. I see now that there are 3rd party drivers available for it.

I have a Paypal account I can use for payment.

Thanks Again!