HDTV card selection

[Gog]

The broadcast flag is almost there (well, not for a while now but that nice congress of yours can still do us in) and although as a Canadian it is not yet clear what the future will bring I'm starting the quest for the best HDTV card.

I looked around and there are a few alternatives to HDTV. As you have guessed, I have a hard time choosing. I read a bunch of reviews, pretty much all of which said "cool" but no comparative study so here is a quick recap for each card. Please feel free to comment with your experience or tell me if something is missing.

If you have guesstimates of CPU use for playing and recording for the cards I'd also like to be able to compare with that. Thanks to stranger, I now know that there is no encoding done, the digital stream is just saved by those cards so CPU for writing shouldn't be an issue and CPU for reading should be pretty much the same since it's the same stream.

So far the Fusion has the lead

Gog

**********************************************************
DVICO FusionHDTV3 Gold
MSRP: 199
Froogle: 149$-175$

OTA and QAM
CX23881 chipset
HDTV ATSC tuner with s-video in

System Requirements:
Pentium 3 750MHz CPU (with ATI RADEON series with DxVA VGA, nVidia MX440, FX series)
Pentium 4 1.6GHz with DDR266 or faster memory for non DxVA VGA
Windows ME/ 2000/ XP or later version of Windows

Good:
Tested with the Stealth's HDTV Network encoder
Available in low profile

Bad:

Sources:
http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/Eng/
http://www.digitalconnection.com/Pro.../fusion3qt.asp
http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=fusion3_1


**********************************************************
ATI HDTV wonder
MSRP: 199$
Froogle: ~150$

OTA
No QAM
HDTV ATSC, analog NTSC and breakout box (s-video and composite audio/video)
Antenna included in the package
The remote wonder is also in the package
NXT2004 Digital Modulator

System Requirements:
* Intel® Pentium® 4, Celeron™, AMD Athlon® or compatible, operating at 1.3GHz or greater
* 256MB of system memory
* Windows® XP with Service Pack 1 or higher
* Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 †

Good:
Tested with the Stealth's HDTV Network encoder
Tunes HDTV ATSC and analog signal

Bad:
Driver were unstable but it's getting better
ATI's time shifting software sucks (who cares...)
System requirements
Difficult installation
Nicknamed the HTTV "blunder" http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1641011,00.asp
Not available in Canada (due to low penetration rate of OTA HDTV stations)

Sources:
http://www.ati.com/products/hdtvwonder/
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/video/20040917/
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1641011,00.asp
http://reviews.designtechnica.com/re..._main9163.html


**********************************************************
Avermedia A180
MSRP:
Froogle: ~80$

OTA
Don't know about QAM

System requirements:
* CPU: Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz, 256 RAM or higher
* Operating System: Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005

This is a MCE card. You need to use BDA drivers to use it outside of MCE.

Good:
Tested with the Stealth's HDTV Network encoder
Cheap!
"A180 and ATI HDTV Wonder are pretty close to being the same quality. Most people wouldn't notice the difference."

Bad:
Very steep system requirements
New card, not much feedback on the web yet.

Sources:
http://www.aver.com/products/tvtuner...mce_a180.shtml

**********************************************************
VBox DTA-151
Price: 249$ http://www.visiblelight.com/mall/pro...w.aspx?pid=614

OTA
Don't know about QAM

HDTV ATSC tuner with s-video in
Proprietary chipset

System requirements:
* Windows 98, SE, 2000, Windows XP
* Pentium III 600 MHz processor or better

Good:
Picture quality comparable to the wonder
Seems to work well with MCE 2005

Bad:
Expensive
Unknown card, not tested with the HDTV Network encoder, may be harder to find

Source:
http://www.vboxcomm.com/
http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=vbox_1

**********************************************************
MyHD MDP-130
Price: ~250 http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/hdtv-cards.html#myhd
~315 with DVI daughterboard http://www.copperbox.com/lite/mdp130.php

OTA and QAM

Good:
Hardware decoder (the only one in this list)
DVI output through optional daughterboard
Included timeshifting software not as bad as other bundled software
tunes ATSC and NTSC

Bad:
Expensive
Not tested with Sage
Haven't heard it works with MCE either

Source:
http://www.digitalconnection.com/pro...deo/mdp130.asp
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/hdtv-cards.html#myhd


*Edit(05-07-2005) to remove the no hardware encoder caveat
*Edit(05-11-2005) to add MyHD MDP-130

[batorok]

I have the ati blunder, it's not been a blunder for me, but I haven't tried the other cards. I figured ati would eventually fix it, and the avermedia wasn't available when I bought.

None of the cards have hardware encoding, hdtv is broadcast already compressed and the cards just write the info to the hard drive. The decoding is the issue, you need a good decoder, good gpu, and powerful cpu for any of these solutions to play back smoothly. Only the MyHD cards have hardware decoding, none of the above do.

I chose ati because they're huge and not going anywhere, and the card works great for people in MCE so the rest of the problems I don't care about, I just wish sage would officially support it. The fusion's advantage is cable support, but that's pretty sketchy still. The Avermedia is cheap, and would be what I would buy if I were looking now, and planning on putting it into a sage or mce pc.

You might try asking on avsforum, people are more critical of hardware there, there aren't many hdtv viewers here since sage doesnt' support it.

[pen25]

Originally Posted by Gog

The broadcast flag is almost there and although as a Canadian it is not yet clear what the future will bring I'm starting the quest for the best HDTV card.

I looked around and there are a few alternatives to HDTV. As you have guessed, I have a hard time choosing. I read a bunch of reviews, pretty much all of which said "cool" but no comparative study so here is a quick recap for each card. Please feel free to comment with your experience or tell me if something is missing.

If you have guesstimates of CPU use for playing and recording for the cards I'd also like to be able to compare with that.

So far the Fusion has the lead

well i have the a180. no issue for me as i do not need qam. i cant recive it. as I recive my local hd via ota and who knows what is going to be the case with cablecard. though they do claim to support qam right now from what i understand even ms mce does not support qam. or can just isnt implemented. anyway for the price of the a180 it cant be beat.

[stanger89]

If you want an HD card, get the A180 now (cheap) and wait for the whole CableCard/PC thing to shake out.

[mayamaniac]

Thanks to Gog for posting his research here. With the development of Stealth's HDTV for SageTV, I'm interested in HDTV tuners now and nice to get overall summery of what's currently avialable.

Originally Posted by batorok

None of the cards have hardware encoding, hdtv is broadcast already compressed and the cards just write the info to the hard drive. The decoding is the issue, you need a good decoder, good gpu, and powerful cpu for any of these solutions to play back smoothly. Only the MyHD cards have hardware decoding, none of the above do.

Is that really true that "the cards just write the info to the hard drive?" How taxing is this to the CPU, none or some? Also for decoding, how much CPU is used like say a 3ghz P4? Also, Nvidia's Geforce 6XXX series have this Pure Video thing that claims to be hardware decoding, will this help in playback at all? And lastly, the Xcard, this should the optional for hardware decoding right?

[mikejaner]

Is that really true that "the cards just write the info to the hard drive?" How taxing is this to the CPU, none or some? Also for decoding, how much CPU is used like say a 3ghz P4?

Yes, all HDTV capture cards are just writing the stream from the air to the hard drive, about 5% CPU. There is no compression being done, cause it's already in the signal. Kinda like when your ripping a DVD to your hard drive. It's already compressed.
Requirements vary between systems, but I have an ATI HDTV Wonder, which works great for me in MCE, and playback only uses about 20-25% on my P4 3.0GHZ. This is due to the Decoders, Nvidia for me, and the video card, ATI 9800. Don't expect to get the same results with an ATI 7000 and a 2ghz CPU.

[Crazedz]

Not available in Canada (due to low penetration rate of OTA HDTV stations)

Hehehe he said penetration!


Ok childish i know but i just couldn't resist it lol.

Yeah i would say get a fusion but with the way things are at this time it's better to go for the a180 at least you don't have to evest much till the cablecard issue is sorted out. Gives you a cheap entry with not much lost if things don't work out.

[jptaz]

On the XCard for decoding. The XCard is not capable of decoding HD resolution streams. it can only decode up standard TV resolution. It can scale standard resolution up to HD, but not playback actual HD Streams.

[jethro]

OK, I have what may be a dumb question as I am a Noob with the whole HDTV thing.

- If I get an HDTV card for OTA broadcasts ONLY (no cable now or in future), with the right video card can the SDTV broadcasts be output to a regular old fashioned TV? For that matter, can the HDTV broadcasts be converted to work as well?

I would probably just be using the component out to my TV. I'm just looking to get better broadcast quality at home. My analog setup is horrible on all but a couple channels (I live in LA). I'll probably get a newer Media Center PC, so I'd like to know what to look for (processor, video card, etc.).

Thanks!! I was trying a PVR-150/SageTV setup with my regular analog antenna setup on an old computer, but it just wasn't cutting it (computer too old) so I'm returning it. But the quality was really bad, and I know bad in=bad out.

[lovingHDTV]

I'm using an A180 and during capture using HDNE and Sage on a PIII 933 it is about 80% cpu load. For the PVR250 it is ~10%, I've not looked in a long time. Playback for me on a AMD 2500+ with integrated NVIDIA G4 MX and Sonic decoders is ~25% cpu.

The one card not mentioneda above is the new Fusion5, some talk that it has better reception qualities.

[stanger89]

Wow, those are some high utilizations, I'm at about 5% recording with HDNE on my A64 3400.