Cheapest BTV Compatible Tuner Card

[ilovellamafood]

For the longest time I have been using the Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP tuner card and it worked just fine. Recently, I reformatted and lost the original driver CD so just downloaded the newest drivers from Leadtek's website. However, it seems these newest drivers just don't seem to work and I have no idea what version driver I was using in the first place.


Because of this, Beyond TV will just crash whenever I try to stream live TV. Sometimes I can get it to start sometimes not. It usually records but I have a big error that stays on the screen after recording starts, but as long as I don't close the error box the recording will finish. I guess this is why it is unsupported. I am using the exact same version of Beyond TV as I had before, same executable even.


Instead of trying to figure out how to get my old drivers, which may not even work anyways, I am just going to buy a compatible tuner card. I only use beyond TV for streaming over the internet and nothing else, so I need a card that does not have HW support. I have a 3.0 GHz P4 1gig ram 160gig SATA drive PC and a 512Kbit upload connection that is completely dedicated to Beyond TV, so I can stream at the full 640x480 at really hit bitrates with no problem.

• All I am asking is: What is the cheapest compatible tuner card? One that will allow me to stream live TV over the internet. Perhaps even video out if possible, but video out is strictly an option.

Also, do most cards tune at about the same quality? I know there would be a PC performance difference between HW and SW encoders, but what about the actual tuning quality? My Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP looks okay, not as good as a normal TV, but it is somewhat acceptable for streaming. I don’t suppose I can get TV quality since the tuner is converting from analogue to digital, but do some cards come closer to the quality of a regular TV? The tuning quality is also not terribly important since I will mostly use it for streaming live TV, maybe just an occasional recording of certain TV shows.

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by ilovellamafood

.

• All I am asking is: What is the cheapest compatible tuner card? One that will allow me to stream live TV over the internet. Perhaps even video out if possible, but video out is strictly an option.

I have 2 Happaugge PVR-150s. You can find them at newegg.com or even at Circuit City for $69 sometimes. Now, these are hardware MPEG encoders, so in order to stream Live over a LAN, you'd need to use Beyond TV Link. If you want to view live TV from the BTV web interface, you need to record in .WMV which would be a software encoder. Check out http://kb.snapstream.com/?kbid=20 to find what for SURE does not work. They have a list of what is also known to work and is supported. Everything else might work - buy it, if it dorsn't work, return it!

[nanook105]

You can't stream live TV with a 150. You could with a WinTVGO.

[BenH]

A few downloads from driversguide.com will give you drivers . A google search for a many drivers for your card might find older drivers . I found old drivers on driversguide.com .

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by nanook105

You can't stream live TV with a 150. You could with a WinTVGO.

Right! Which is why I said you'd have to use BTV Link to do that. :-)

[nanook105]

But, the question was for a tuner that streams live tv over the internet. Can't do that with BTV link.

[ilovellamafood]

The WintvGo looks cheap enough, however it does not have stereo sound. How about other suggestions?
I am also in need of a video card (PCI Express) as well, so if there is a good graphics/tuner combo card available then please suggest. For this I would look to spend around $100-$150.
Please don't just tell me what graphics card to get unless it is a graphics/tuner combo.

[ilovellamafood]

Actually, it seems that alot of tuners have mono. I guess I should ask if U.S. broadcast cable is stereo or mono?

[BenH]

A good steroe card is a Hauppauge wintv401 . It is called a wintv fm-dbx and other things . It has a FM tuner ,steroe sound , audio in , audio out , internel input , internel output . It is tough to find software that use all that hardware . The wintv selector you have to use to hear audio from the cd input on the card . I paid 99$ for mine about 5 years ago . I think they are 69$ now .

The wintv theater 5.1 is not the card to get . Standard TV is steroe on some channels but not 5.1 on any channels . I do not know why you want to have tv on your monitor with 5.1 sound .

The cheapest way to have steroe sound on the mono tuner cards is to use a externel tuner and send the steroe sound to the sound card. The tuner picks up the picture on it aux inputs . People used to do that to make copys of vcr tapes to the computer .

[mrlumpy]

The cheapest I've seen is the ATI TV Wonder VE (Value Edition). It's a piece of crap though. It doesn't have built-in MPEG encoding, and the picture isn't as good as the PVR-150, but it can be bought brand new in stores for around $20. Check your local "big box" sized computer store, it's still available at most of them.