Need recommendations for a TV Tuner Card

jawzforlife · 10 Oct 2011

I'm looking to install a TV tuner card into my computer. I want to be able to record "over the air / ATSC / free" tv shows (no cable or satellite) like a DVR. Then I want to save the file onto a USB stick so I can plug it into my Sony Blu-ray player and watch it in my living room on my large TV.

I have a gift card for Office Depot, so if I could get one they sell, that would work out great. But if all they have is crap, I can get else were (newegg, amazon, ect)

Here is what office depot has
tv tuner - Search at Office Depot

A dual tuner would be nice so I can record 2 shows that are on at the same time, but it is not mandatory.

I do not need a remote.

I'm pretty sure I will need some kind of program to act as my DVR interface (hopefully included with the card).

I would like an internal card.

I do not want the tuner card to bog down my system.

P.S. I will not pay a monthly fee for Tivo.

Thanks for the help.

jawzforlife · 10 Oct 2011

looking at this one:

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Media Center Kit TV Dual Tuner

New Egg $105, Office Depot $156
Newegg.com - Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229 PCI-Express x1 Interface - Video Devices & TV Tuners

TVeblen · 10 Oct 2011

I like my Hauppauge cards in my PVR. The 2250 is a nice card. You will not be disappointed.

You will be disappointed to learn that the Dual Tuner thing is very misleading. There is one Analog tuner and one Digital tuner (two tuners). But unless you have both analog cable TV service and digital cable TV service the second tuner is pretty much useless to you if you want to record 2 shows at once.

For that you will need two cards.

The Hauppage cards have hardware encoders so they will record shows without using any system resources. They run very well on older systems.

You will need to pay attention to the file formats. The Hauppage cards record in transport stream format (.TS extension), convertible to MPEG-2 format using the packaged WinTV software. If your blue ray player will play mpg files then you are good to go out of the box. If not you will need to either convert the files or find a card that encodes in a format that will play on the Blu-Ray.

Hope that helps.