PC TV Cards

[Macy]

Anyone any experience of these? Thinking about getting the WinTV-PVR 250 for the boys toys room in the house.

[Closed Account 2]

Yeah I've a PCTV Card made by Pinnacle, about 4 years old now. Quite good, but has some compatability issues now. Used it a fair bit at Uni to watch the world cup, and rigged it up to the Playstation.

It's worth paying for a decent one, mine cost £30 and is ok, but you really needed a fixed aerial connection (it wouldnt get a decent picture with those portable aerials). Also you can record the TV onto your hard disk and save it as an AVI file with most. Some of the new ones can also act like a digital decoder, and let you have the Free Channels if youve got a cable connection but no set-top decoder box.

Also check if HDTV is coming to Ireland soon, and if it is then it might be worth waiting a bit.

[onenilgameover]

I was looking into getting one myself. They're goin on ebay germany for around sixty bucks.

Heres the url

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=38863&item=5185979251&rd=1&ssPageName=WD2V

[Peadar]

I would suggest you look at something like the AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300. (http://www.aver.com/products/tvtuner_UltraTV_USB_300.shtml)

It's an external USB device which makes it more portable in the sense that you can use on different machines if you need to and you don't need to worry about compatibility issues if you replace or upgrade your machine.

It's not the cheapest solution but it is loaded with options.

[Peadar]

Just looked on e-bay.co.uk and there's loads of cards and external devices for a few quid.
Can't go wrong with most of them in Ireland since we'll be stuck with analogue TV for some years yet.