Time for me to look at adding this card to my video capturing suite.


> I have to say, after moving up from a Connextant BT878 based SD TV tuner that
> was possibly 8-10 years old (???) that had the left audio channel fail, leaving
> me with monotone out of the right speaker to this beast, I am HEAVILY IMPRESSED.
>
> First off, I've seen HDTV's before, but seeing it on my 22" 1680x1050 monitor,
> it's pretty sweet. In 16:9 mode it's at least DVD Quality. And all of this just
> using a simple "bow-tie" wire TV antenna.
>
> The antenna (compared to using it for SDTV) is VERY directional for OTA HD
> broadcasts. Twisting the antenna like 5 degrees is the difference between
> picking up a channel and nothing at all.
>
> However, this tuner works great with it's built in Arcsoft TotalMedia software.
> I've seen complaints about the TotalMedia software, but it works great for me
> (goes from 30fps to 60fps render by turning on Hardware Acceleration). Plus on
> my 2.77ghz C2D, it uses maybe 15% CPU max. Compared to DScaler, which used up
> 100% CPU time, it's relatively light weight.
>
> Only downside is that it does take about 20s or so for the TotalMedia tuner app
> to start up (must be detecting hw or something). But, overall, for $65 on
> newegg, it was a cheap and inexpensive way to get HDTV on your PC w/ OTA
> broadcasts.
>
> I haven't tried recording (or even know if this version of TotalMedia supports
> it, you may need the 'full version') and I've heard QAM (Digital Cable free HD
> broadcasts) are hit or miss depending on your OS (XP/XP MCE/Vista) and cable co.
> But for OTA ATSC, this thing r0x.
>
> Here's a nice colorful OTA capture:
>
>
>
> _ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _
>