TV-tuners: can someone help me pick the right one

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slewis

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Hi, I am semi-new to the forums. For the last few months I have been browsing through here, unregistered, just to see what is new in the computer world, but now i have a question that i think some of you could help me out with.

my question is, as the title stated, what would be my best option in terms of a new video card. I have been browsing newegg and have found a couple of options, but I am not completly sure what will be my best choice in terms of reliability, performance, support, features, etc.

I will be using this for recording as well as watching if that makes a difference.

I have a $100 gift card i plan on using to buy this, and i was wondering whether or not that is enough to get a good card.

the overall impression i got from other tuner discussions is hauppage cards are good, so i will list a few of their cards that i was intersted in.


1) Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 MCE PCI Interface 1042 Tuner Card $61.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116620


2) Hauppauge WINTV401 PCI Interface TV/FM Tuner Card
$68.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116606


3) Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150 PCI Interface Tuner Card
$84.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116625


4) Hauppauge 1062 PCI Interface WinTV-PVR-150 MCE Kit Tuner Card
$84.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116631

Q:whats the difference between number 1 and numbers 3 and 4? Why the difference in price


My comp is a Dell XPS 600. Save the Dell bashing, i got a good deal on it through thier refurbished outlet on thier site and i love it. It's specs are
P4 HT 3.4 Ghz cpu,
1gig RAM,
nvidia 6800 graphics card,
creative x-fi sound card,
and 250 gig HDD,
and the operating system is Windows media center.
I think that is all the specs that are relatively pertinent, just ask if you want to know anything else.

Any feedback or reccomendations of cards, hauppage or not, is greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
#3 - its great quality and it has hardware encoding/decoding and some of the others require Windows Media Center to work.
 
#1 has no FM tuner on it, and #3 comes with a remote.... NOTE You DO NOT need Windows MCE to run these cards... just that they are compatible with it... They will work with XP Home & XP Pro also. They also for Linux.

Since you have a $100 gift card, I would SUGGEST looking at this one....
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 MCE This card has DUAL CATV tuners, so you can either record TWO shows at once, or record one show, and watch another... I currently have my 'old' computer set up with an ATI 9800 AIW card, and I can record shows to it. The ONLY problem with that one is that the encoders are software, so the CPU has to handle the encoding.... With the Hauppauge cards you have listed, they have HARDWARE encoders, so the CPU doesn't have to do anything for the cards.
 
thx for the input

I have windows media center so would it be better for me to get the special media center cards or does it not make a difference.

i am trying to save some money right now, so since i cant reallly put a gift card in savings i kinda wanted to only spend that.

thank you again for the responses, any other input is appreciated

EDIT: also how does the image quality on these cards compre with other brands like ATI and others?
 
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