best usb tv tuner

[fch928]

I just recently bought a 22 inch lcd monitor and i want to know what is the best usb tv tuner i can buy to go with my laptop so i can watch cable plus ota hdtv and use it with BTV at the sametime. Any advice is appreciated, thanks in advance .

[mtmsol]

There are no USB cards that support analog & ATSC recording in BTV at the moment. The Hauppauge PVR950 is called a hybrid in that it's supposed to support NTSC & ATSC, but only the ATSC is supported in BTV. With BTV you REALLY want a hardware encoder for recording from analog sources. Check the system requirements for a list of supported tuners: http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/sysreq.asp

[mtmsol]

Might have spoke too soon. I see AverMedia has a USB product that supports ATSC and hardware encoding for analog: http://www.aver.com/mpd/hybrid_ultra_usb_ap6r.html. It's not on the list of supported tuners from BTV yet, but if it's using BDA drivers then it should work. Only purchase if you can find it at a store with an open return policy, just in case it does not work. If anyone has one of these, please post with your experiences!

[fch928]

Thanks for your help !