HD Tuner Card

[mitchell2345]

Im sure this has been discussed a thousand times but I want to make sure what im getting is good for my system.

First here is my computer setup...
Maxtor 80GB EIDE HD 7200/2MB/8.0/ATA-133
Maxtor 120 GB SATA HD
Ultra 500W ATX Power Supply w/ 2 80mm Fans Black
DFI 875P Infinity Socket 478 Motherboard
Thermaltake Spark 7+ for Intel P4 478 3.06Ghz & UP
Intel P4 3.2Ghz 512k Cache, 800FSB SocN 478 HT
TDK 4x DVD+R/RW Internal EIDE Recorder
Corsair Value Select 2x512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz CL3
Vantec Iceberq 4 VGA Cooling Kit-Copper with Blue
Connect3D Radeon 9200 256MB DDR 8X AGP w/TV & DVI


Here is what i want to do...

Record OTA HDTV and view on my projector vai DVI
Record Analog TV from cable/vcr
Time Shift Analog and Digital
I want it to work in Beyond TV of course...

What card would you guys sugest?

Thanks for any help
Mitchell

[cbb77]

A couple of recommendations. First, I would highly recommend upgrading your drives. 80 & 120GB is small these days; particularly if you are planning on recording HD. I guess it all depends on how many different shows you plan on recording. I personally find with convienence of this system, I record alot more shows that I would normally watch. This gives me the option of having something available to view when nothing else interesting in currently on TV. Also frees me to watch what I want when I want. For example, I don't have to rush to finish whatever I'm doing to watch LOST at 9pm if I'm in the middle of something. I can easily start it at 9:10, 9:15, etc since I record it. I truly think once you begin using the system and see how convienent it is, you'll end up recording much more than you planned and quickly run out of space.

Second, not sure if your video card is up to specifications, particularly HD playback. Forget what the requirements are, but you can find them on Snapstreams main site. I think rest of specs are fine.

As far as PVR cards, I use the Hauppage 150MCE & 250MCE for Analog recording and Fusion 5 USB for HD recording. All work great. Note, the 150 is actually a better and newer card than the 250.

[tscales]

I'd upgrade the hard drives and use anything OTHER than Maxtor. My experience is very bad with them.

I have over 1,000GB and need more.

Tom

[gohandbz8]

You would probably need at least a radeon 9500 to be able to view hd smoothly. Like everyone else said, get bigger harddrives. A 1hr HD show takes up approximately 8.5 gigs (thats 11-12 shows on a 100 gig harddrive).

In terms of tuner cards, I would recommend the hauppauge pvr500 for analog and the Fusion HDTV5 card for digital because it supports qam. I haven't had any problem with this setup.