On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 21:11:25 -1000, "
wrote:

Dang it. I accidently hit another key and sent the post. My typing
skills are atrocious.

So in the movie area Im not sure the hardware makes a huge difference
but I maybe wrong. I havent seen it with my 800XL

One thing the HDTV LCDs are lower res than the PC widescreen big
screens. They tend to be 1280 x 768 or 1366 x 768 mines the latter.

Now the tuner area you want to get the newer AIW. Im not even sure
what TV tuner they put in that. In the old days ATI used the third
party conexant chips and their theater chip I think its called in
different products.

They have a new generation chip out now called the 550 theater or
something. It was first used in the separate cards they and other like
sapphire came out with. At best I think they would use that stuff. I
was all hot about getting it and so were many others cause there was
lots of hype at their site and other sites picked up on it about how
they had all this extra processing through hardware that cleaned up
the TV pic etc. They had split screen examples of graphics at their
website. It looled amazing.

When it came out some sites had people who ran out and bought the
sapphire to compare against the the popular rival the Hauppauge 150 (I
have this card now) which just came out too months before and set a
new low price record for hardware compression cards. They uploaded
clips of captures from both and commented on both and frankly there
was NO big difference. Not a big deal. Anandtech did a test later and
found a LITTLE difference mainly in the text which was a little
cleaner and he had to point it out in his review. Not really a big
deal. His comment was something like --- TV quality is so low that
there isnt a whole lot you can do to it nothing dramatic with the
technology they have now and the more important factor was getting a
good signal etc

One guy claims he was using some old TV card and got really bad pics
but with DSCALER there was a dramatic improvement. The problem here is
how bad was his original setup? Ive used it before when I was going
through lots of software and didnt notice much of a difference but
havent used it recently so anything is possible but I dont see TV card
sites raving about how its way better than all the other programs in
Pic Quality. Sure they say its a good program but so are a lot of
programs but like i said havent used it recently.

That doesnt mean all Tuner hardware is created the same but I havent
really heard of any TV tuner hardware being vastly superior etc except
that the Hauppauge line and the cards using the ATI 550 Theater chip
are generally fine and use hardware compression for capturing so they
are preferred. However they do look grainy etc when blown up TV feeds
just do unless its HDTV of course cause the res is low.

I was thinking of HDTV Tuners and the fusion is popular but we dont
get a lot of hDTV channels here and I dont want to guess about whether
ANY of the channels QAM are scrambled or not. But if you do get QAM
signals free and clear I guess its worth having as many are buying
that card. WIth the higher res it should look better obviously because
of the higher res.

So basically I think everyone is saying --- you dont probably need the
extra power for only 2D work/movies and that there probably wont be
any big differences in pic quality going to a more expensive card in
terms of hardware and that various software may or may not make a
bigger difference.

Im going to look that up though. Is there any "upconverting" aspects
that are drastically improved on newer cards. Who knows you may be
right but I havent heard of any. In general Ive been underwhelmed with
the new TV tuners claims of great improvements in pic quality etc I
generally havent seen any big improvements from old vid cards and even
TV tuners though I think the hardware compression features and
software support and general other qualities make the Hauppauge a good
buy though its NOT HDTV capable obviously.