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[benn600]

What digital TV USB stick do you, J River, personally suggest?  I have bought way too many cards with less than great results.  Please tell me specifically which one you have tested that works the best (ideally perfectly) and is fast, good picture quality, works well with low signal, awesome MC integration and low computer resource hog (where possible)--and good at recording tv (on MC end).

[cwilliams222]

What digital TV USB stick do you, J River, personally suggest?  I have bought way too many cards with less than great results.  Please tell me specifically which one you have tested that works the best (ideally perfectly) and is fast, good picture quality, works well with low signal, awesome MC integration and low computer resource hog (where possible)--and good at recording tv (on MC end).

I too would be very interested in this.  I have just started doing research on this, and there seem to be a fair enough of these usb sticks, and when you look at the reviews of them on sites like Buy.com, Best Buy, etc., they are all over the place so I'm not all that sure how good the product actually is.  The Haupauge WinTV-HVR-950Q looks kind of good, for example, but can't find good consistent information on it anywhere.

thanks

[Scolex]

When it comes to USB TV sticks quality is more about the software that is doing the encoding/rendering and the systems power (CPU/RAM)
not the actual USB dongle.
My recommendation would be to get either a internal PCI/E card or an external USB box. The reason being is these have hardware encoders
built into them. When using a TV device that doesn't have hardware encoding all that gets placed on the CPU which can cause some
undesirable effects, especially when recording a show and trying to work with another application that uses a lot of processor cycles.
I have had both internal and external hardware TV capture devices and have been very pleased with both. I would never use a software based
TV capture device based on what I saw of the resources it used when recording on a friends laptop, granted it isn't the fastest but still decent
Pentium M @ 1.8GHz and 512MB DDR2 533.
If you decide to go the software encoded capture route I would suggest one from either Hauppuage or Pinnacle which are the 2 leaders in the
TV capture industry.

[cwilliams222]

When it comes to USB TV sticks quality is more about the software that is doing the encoding/rendering and the systems power (CPU/RAM)
not the actual USB dongle.
My recommendation would be to get either a internal PCI/E card or an external USB box. The reason being is these have hardware encoders
built into them. When using a TV device that doesn't have hardware encoding all that gets placed on the CPU which can cause some
undesirable effects, especially when recording a show and trying to work with another application that uses a lot of processor cycles.
I have had both internal and external hardware TV capture devices and have been very pleased with both. I would never use a software based
TV capture device based on what I saw of the resources it used when recording on a friends laptop, granted it isn't the fastest but still decent
Pentium M @ 1.8GHz and 512MB DDR2 533.
If you decide to go the software encoded capture route I would suggest one from either Hauppuage or Pinnacle which are the 2 leaders in the
TV capture industry.

thanks for the reply, but I'm looking for something to use on a laptop (which removes the option of using a PCI/E card).  Additionally, I think I will end up needing to use whatever built-in antennae it has versus having it directly connected to my cable box/tv....so how does that affect an answer on the best USB/external tv tuner?

[JimH]

My recommendation would be to get either a internal PCI/E card or an external USB box. The reason being is these have hardware encoders
built into them. When using a TV device that doesn't have hardware encoding all that gets placed on the CPU which can cause some
undesirable effects, especially when recording a show and trying to work with another application that uses a lot of processor cycles.

I don't agree.  Unless your machine is very slow or your other app is very CPU intensive, this won't be a problem with MC.

I use Pinnacle HD USB sticks at home and work, and they work well.

[benn600]

So I now have a suggestion.

I always go for internal cards because that's the kinda guy I am and I always have problems.  I'm wondering if it's our antenna signal.  I can get channel 32 and all sub channels but nothing else.  On other TVs the picture comes in perfect most of the time, but I think they claim low signal based on the signal strength meter.  Hmm.

[bob]

Pinnacle 800e usb works well for me. The tuner seems more sensitive than others I've tried.

The Hauppauge  WinTV PVR 150 which has a hardware decoder is working nicely (actually 2 of them) on our test server. Runs forever recording continuously. We are transcoding so we don't see the benefits of the hardware decoder on the test server but still seems pretty reasonable on the cpu.

Have also used a DVICO HD Fusion 3 gold pci (Yaobing has used a HD fusion 5 USB). It works fine though the tuner doesn't seem to be as sensitive as the pinnacle.

One thing I've noticed is that the claim for signal strength from the tuner driver varies wildly. It seems like you need around 80% to get a stable signal on some cards. I tried the pinnacle and DVICO in a Mac to see if there was any discrepancies on the number of channels scanned vs MC and the result was the same number of channels.

[Yaobing]

Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 is analog.

I have tried three USB digital devices. One broke down in three days, so I did not really have chance to test it. The second one is a Fusion HDTV Gold 5, as Bob mentioned. This one has the best reception among the three. My particular device however has an over heating problem. It quits working after having been plugged in for a while. The third one is a KWorld PlusTV. It works moderately well, better than my oldest ATI PCI card, but not as good as some newer ones, in terms of signal.

[bob]

Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 is analog.

I guess I "misremembered" that 150 We are just using 2 of them for video capture, not the tuners.

[twistedddx]

I thought the PVR 150 only had hardware mpeg2 encoders. The PVR 350 mentions it has a hardware decoder but I'ld love to question exactly what video decoders support it if any, or if that was even correct in the first place. Hardware encode is good for analog as getting the stream to the standard mpeg2 format is cpu intensive before you actually have to then decode the mpeg2 stream.

DVB-T and I believe ATSC don't require hardware mpeg2 encoders as the stream is mpeg2 to begin with, it doesnt require more encoding. As far as I know these USB sticks only need to lock onto a frequency and directly feed the stream out via BDA or whatever. It's why the USB sticks don't appear to actually have all that many components, because well they don't actually do all that much(USB interface/BDA interface/digital tuner). The only time I could see an issue is if the USB datarate is killing your CPU.

[Yaobing]

Indeed, the 150 only has a hardware encoder.  Hauppauge software comes with InterVideo MPEG-2 decoders which work well with the device.

HDTV devices need decoders.  Some come with decoders, some do not.

[twistedddx]

For random people reading this looking for help.
Free decoders or ones you may already have:

Windows Vista Ultimate comes with mpeg audio and mpeg2 video decoders

ffdshow try-outs
http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

Gabest / Guliverkli2 project
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=205650&package_id=246121

Many DVB-T/ATSC drivers are also installing decoders. Fairly often these are Main Concept licensed decoders.

[dcwebman]

Before Hurricane Ike here, I went to buy a USB TV Tuner. Yeah, what can I say? I bought the Pinnacle HD Pro Stick (82301002301) and it worked great that weekend. I then noticed on Monday that Best Buy where I had bought the previous one had the Ultimate Stick on sale for the same price and figured since there was no software to install as it is all on the stick itself, I went to exchange it. All I had was problems so I returned it for the Pro again. Haven't had a chance to try it yet with MC but looking forward to it.

[MusicHawk]

Months ago I tried the Pinnacle USB tuner that has all the software on the stick, and it sucked.

It took forever to start (had to copy and "install" the software every time) and the picture quality was very poor on my cable, but an ancient ATI card and a variety of TVs all got good pictures on the same cable connection. Also lots of bugs in the Pinnacle software (it would go off every 10 minutes, exactly, and lose channels).

Then there was the beyond-useless Pinnacle tech support, which I'd already encounterd with Pinnacle video editing software a couple of years ago (it drove me to Adobe). For instance, the poor sensitivity of the USB stick's TV tuner was blamed on my PC -- supposedly I didn't have the right video driver! The "tech" seemed unaware of how TV, or the Pinnacle TV tuner, or computers, actually work.

I returned that Pinnacle product and haven't trusted them enough to try again.

[jolo]

So I now have a suggestion.

I always go for internal cards because that's the kinda guy I am and I always have problems.  I'm wondering if it's our antenna signal.  I can get channel 32 and all sub channels but nothing else.  On other TVs the picture comes in perfect most of the time, but I think they claim low signal based on the signal strength meter.  Hmm.

Benn600,

I have to say that you are absolutely correct. An internal card, a direct cable connection will will alwaysbe more reliable, faster and consistent, than a USB or remote connection. What they won't be is as convenient as a device external to the computer.
I don't know where someone gets the idea that something directly connected to a PC/device create more overhead, it is the opposite. There are the speed limitations of USB II connections, plus the additional overhead of additional software that is used, whereas an internal card probably has its own RAM and will be less reliant on software and software drivers to get it to work.

I am someone that still can't stand a remote mouse and keyboard. Those items are essential to me and I am used to connecting and never, ever having any inconsistency with performance.

USB connections also have a speed limit, while internal connections will not have speed limitations, but are limited by the hardware that is created.

Compare the performance of a USB II hard drive to a internally connected SATA II drive. Compare a 1gb Ethernet direct connection to a router/network/switch that accepts 1gb to any wireless connection of external nic card.

BUT ....you can't beat the convenience and the ability to swap external devices from one unit to another.

I too am looking for the best TV/multimedia card that I can find. USB or internal.

Thanks,

Jon