TV Tuner suggestions

[Vertabreaker]

Normally I don't post asking for suggestions because I usually have a clear idea of what I want to purchase, and I read review after review until I get all the information I need on a particular piece of hardware. That's where the problem lies this time.

Here's the situation. The room I have in my brother's house is kind of small and I really don't want to put a TV into it and make it more clutered so I figured since I have 2 monitors, I can pick up a TV tuner and just rock one of those. My problem is that I've never had one before and every card I read about is a 50/50 review. One 1/2 says a certain card is amazing while the other 1/2 says it sucks. Most of the reviews are well written and seem very thought out(I try and rule out the reviews by rtards that type"I HATE THIS THING IT SUXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX")

So, after much reading I've narrowed it down to a few different cards, but then I discovered the Slingbox Tuner which might be the eventual winner.

My question to everyone who has one /or who has used a TV Tuner at one time, what card would recommend if I want recording functionality from the card as well? Having a remote is not required.

Thanks in advance for any input.

[Kimiko]

This I'd like to know as well.

[SephYuyX]

The card doesnt really matter, ive always heard great things with Radeons all in wonder cards though, the software you use with the device is what makes it worth it. I know you can d/l just applications to utilize a tuner, without actually having one (of course you cant really do anything with it) so as long as you can find a good app to torrent or something, doesnt really matter what kind of card you get as long as it has a good transfer rate and the connection you need.

[Isiolia]

If you haven't gone there yet, I've always found this site, http://www.videohelp.com to be an awesome resource for this kind of thing.

I've used tuner cards, but my experience is more getting old crap working moreso than buying a new card. From that I can tell you that a lot of the cards out there are using the same chips anyway. There's a driver here http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ that covers a lot of the older cards out there at least.

[Vertabreaker]

Right on, thanks for the URLs. I"m actually checking them out now.

I think I'm going to get the Slingbox Tuner ( http://us.slingmedia.com/page/slingboxtuner.html ). Of all the reviews I read on it, the people that had issues with it were not super big and the positive reviews overshadowed the negative ones I found.

[SassiAsura]

do those Sling things work with Windows Media Center?

[Vertabreaker]

do those Sling things work with Windows Media Center?

From what I've read it will work but some people had problems installing the slingsoftware. Apparently there's an alternative that works better/was built to work directly with WMC called Hava Wireless. It's a bit more expensive but it also offers HD capabilities.

[Vertabreaker]

Sorry to bump this, but I figured I'd post an update in case others were looking for a tuner.

I just purchased the SlingBox Tuner. The SlingBox Tuner only handles analog cable while the SlingBox Pro and SlingBox AV handle digital cable and satellite, as well as other media.

This thing is fucking sick. It's about 4 1/2 inches wide, 1 1/2 inches high, was a breeze to setup, software installed and scanned for channels automatically. All cables came with the sling(2 coaxel, 1 cat5, and power supply)

I installed the Sling software on both my PC and my laptop. I could take my laptop anywhere, and watch TV from my SlingBox that just sits next to my router. Only problem, is you can only have one PC watching at a time which for me isn't a big issue because I'll either be watching on one or the other and not both at the same time.

It's awesome. If you're looking for a great tuner without installing a new card in your PC, I would recommend picking one of these things up.