I'm looking to get TV tunrer card over christmas break, but I'd like a little input before purchasing anything. I'm looking a card that performs well in two areas:
1. Can make high quality captures easiliy, without any issues of out of synch audio or low video quality
2. Produces a high enough frame rate so that it will perform just like a regular TV (I plan to hook up a console via S-Video port).

Any advice would be appreciated. Feel free to throw up links to any reccomendations.

I'm not too sure about 1), but with regard to 2), I know hauppage is a good choice. I actually have an *old* hauppage (going on 6 years old now), which I use to play both my Xbox and Gamecube on. The only thing I recommend is to use a program called DScaler (provided you're using windows) for those gamings. It has lots of filtering options and also uses a faster refresh rate than the standard TV apps that hauppage supplies, which results in a very nice looking game.

the hauppauge pvr cards have hardware decoders, so there's a second or 2 delay before its shown on screen... great for pvr stuff, worthless for using your pc as an xbox/gc/etc monitor. other than that, they are great cards. ive had a pvr-250 for about 2 years now.

Or you could try an AIW card, that is, if you feel like upgrading your graphics card at the same time anyway...

I play my xbox/cable on my monitor all the time, depends on the mode, one will give you no delay. Recording mode gives a delay though.

I had an AIW in my old computer, it was a great card.

The best cards ar made by Compro and they have s-video in as well as coax in and can be found on newegg.com. I have the Gold Plus and it is good. The Ultra is also a good choice if you want to shell out $80 for one.

which card do you have?

any new tv tuner will have svideo and coax

second! i have a ComPRO personal cinema card (the nVidia equivelant to the ATI all-in-wonder). i got it two years ago over winter break... the price is very decent (i think i paid 150 for 64 MB DDR Geforce4 MX -- had i known i would have opted to get a non-MX card at the time...) the card's performance is nothing less than satisfactory. Doom3 runs at 1024x768 with all default graphics settings, UT2004 ran full speed with every graphics option maxed out at 1600x1200... i'm surprised how quickly this card still runs cutting edge games. even "farcry" which was supposed to require a super-high end system ran perfectly fine at 1024 on my system.

as far as the VIVO box, the external box is great. it has s-video, RCA video, and mini-phono inputs, coax input with mini-phono output (to give tv audio into your line-in input on your audio card) and then RCA and s-video outputs. the only limitation is that the cable that connects the VIVO box to the card is about 3 feet long, but the supplied miniphono cable (to give TV audio to your graphics card) is only about 1 foot long. this isn't too much of a problem if you get a 25' S-video cable. the card is capable of video overlay, which means that any video stream played in windows mediaplayer, real player etc. will automatically capture your output television set, 2nd monitor or whatever you set. which reminds me, my card also has dual VGA outputs (this was two years ago, i'm pretty sure they have DVI avalable now)

the other thing i really liked about the card is that it came with InterVideo's WinDVR as a tv tuner. also supplied with the card are WinDVD and a useless video editing package.

winDVR's preset recording levels are crap, but if you set up custom to NTSC DVD quality at full resolution you can easily run it through a divx codec and convert it to .avi (the card records in some funky ass .mpeg format). one other annoyance is that for some reason virtual dub doesnt' recognize the recorded video in it's native .mpeg format. i use mpegmediator to convert it into .avi with divx on its highest setting. then i use virtualdub to lower the quality more and edit out commercials. i usually use a final divx compression at 400 kb.

i actually capture a lot of TV shows. it's a great alternative to tivo, i think. for instance i recorded the adult swim shows i missed last night so i could watch them later in the evening. if you want to see some recorded video samples i took with my card, you can find them at \\gx1327\movies\incoming. there are several completely raw .mpeg files in there i recorded, but i don't recommend looking at all of them because some of them are huge. "xplay_newworldorder_clip.mpeg" is a pretty funny review of a completely crappy video game on tech tv's xplay. it was recorded at NTSC 1/2 DVD i think. "unscrewed clip.mpeg" is an interview with the chick from "ideepthroat.com" on tech tv's unscrewed. it was recorded at full NTSC DVD. "nelly.avi" is when i recorded the nelly tipdrill music video, it went through a divx codec. you can see what a compressed video will look like

ATI 9800 AIW

hauppauge's pvr cards have a delay because of the hardware mpeg encoder. none of ati's cards have hw encoding.

i am curious though... i think those compro cards (the gold and ultra, not the integrated gf mx one) have a hw encoder, do they show video in realtime or is there a second or 2 delay?

edit: im not sure of the details on the 9800 aiw, but i dont think it uses full-on hw mpeg2 encoding... feel free to fill me in (or not)

yea i had a pvr and sold it to my roomate, its workd great for him.. i alsohave a happaguse wintv card, it works great as well... i dont think you can really loose either way

i'm curious what delay you are talking about... like audio and video being out of sync? not at all. there IS a delay between when you hit record and when it actually starts recording, but there's nothing wrong with that

if you have a real tv sitting next to my computer, the audio AND video on viewed through the pvr card is a second or 2 behind the live tv... because it feeds it through an mpeg encoder and the mpeg stream is what is actually played on the pc

interesting. well let's find out

zero delay. compro/nvidia personal cinema

lets find out if it initiates a delay when recording

nope

what is the disadvantage to having this delay... the only thing i can see is if you have a tv tuner open on your desktop while watching a tv, and i could see how that could get really annoying really fast

the only disadvantage is that you cant play video games through the video input