On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:54:39 GMT, kony wrote:


I was talking about the actual tuner previously, as that is
what pertains most to video quality so far as
noise/pixelation/etc on the incoming signal (all else
remaining equal, for example completely ignoring the SNR of
the signal). If he buys a card that's just hyped for gaming
and has the same quality tuner, he gains nothing.

I can do a gross comparison of tuners since I have one of the most
popular top rated ones the Hauppauge 150 and I bought a recent cheapo
for one of my other PCs ---- a Norwood (yuck yuck) TV tuner.

Norwood is Compusa's house brand. They used to call everything FMI ---
their cheapo housebrand but they started using other brand names like
Norwood like on their cheapo housebrand LCD screens.

Anyway I just got all my system cleaned up so I can finish fixing them
up expecially since I DUH --- found out SeagateTOOLs file structure
test was invalid for WIN XP since it was written for WIN98 etc.
according to tech support.

Heres one tip ---- the new generation CHEAPO TV tuners that use the
newer conexant chips, not sure if they can use any generic WDM drivers
that are compatible with 3rd party programs.

Ive posted many times Ive bought lots of cheapo TV tuner cards --- 3
generic brand cheapos around 5-15 after rebates and a Pinnacle top of
the line at the time card --- all at the tme had no hardware
compression which was incredibly expensive then and all used the older
conexant chips BT878xxx the problem is that gen chip had several
drivers you could d/l from the net that were developed or modded by
several people that let you break free from the awful Pinnacle drivers
and other drivers and let you use almost all the software out there
that worked with nonhardware compression cards. Many of the hottest
progs and WIN MCE dont work with nonhardware compression cards but
all the older programs do ---- like PowerVCR -- they stopped
developing that I think and came out with Power Cinema . Anyway WINDVD
etc all work with all the old cards with the WDM drivers you get on
the net or the reference drivers often bundled with the noname cards.
In general Ive found the old ones look good generally speaking of
course as long as you dont need hardware compression. In fact one of
my beefs is the newer cards dont really add all that much in terms of
actual visual quality despite all the hype like in the ATI 550 chip
which was a vast disappointment. But Id still buy the 150 hauppauge or
ATI 550 because of the hardware compression and since the prices have
really fallen though strangely theyve been going slightly up the last
6 months.

However the new generation of cheapo non-hardware compression cards
using the Conexant CXxxxx chips --- Im not sure they do. I bought the
Norwood for $20 on sale several months ago thinking I got another
decent usable nonhardware compression card that could be used with
most of the software out there except the ones I mentioned that
required hardware compression like Beyond TV and MCE etc.

It DOESNT WORK ! The drivers that come with it from Norwood seem to
be the ONLY ones that work with it. I thought I could slip in maybe
tons of next gen cheapo card drivers from Leadtek and other brands but
none seem to work right. That makes me wonder if their drivers work
with other software too.

And thats the problem. The cheapo Conexant based Norwood cant use any
other drivers and it cant use any other program except the cheapo
bundled norwood program ! A major problem as far as Im concerned. The
program does work with the card adequately but even the old Power VCR
and WINDVD look and feel far better than the Norwood program as you
would expect. But its not just the look and feel -- there a slight lag
when you change channels ----- it cant as far as I can tell download
programming data so that you get a grid of shows like in ALL other
decent programs a major flaw. Other than that it works OK.

The major defect when trying to use other programs with the driver is
NO SOUND or SOUND thats stuck on one level. I hope someone comes up
with a universal Conexant CX2xxxxx driver for all the cheapo cards out
there cause the BT878xxxx is dead now. No one uses that anymore.

So what cards are supported by the new PowerCinema and WINDVD? Are
they all just supporting the old BT878xxxx ? And maybe the hardware
compression cards? Are they skipping the cheapo new gen Conexants?