Asus TV Tuner

[Bing Fung]

Anyone have thoughts on This TV tuner Card from Asus?




It uses Conextent's newest CX23880 Decoder with 10bit Video ADC's which are said to capture near DVD video quality with a good Satellite or cable feed. It's max capture resolution is 720x480, so that should look very nice on a PC monitor.

It comes bundled with Power VCR II which will alow time shifting, instant replay and recording for posterity. Also included is Power DVD (Asus), Cyberlinks Power Director 2.0 and Multimedia Show. The hardware comes with a break out box dongle that provides S-Video and composite in for capture from Camcorders or other external sources.



The Asus is also one of the only ones I have seen that claims Stereo support for the Conextent chip. I had actually orderd the MSI TV@nywhere card that uses the same CX23880 chip, however it's been stated buy some useres that it does not support NTSC stereo at this time. I then canceled that card and may order the Asus.

Basically what I want to do is Capture TV programs, well actually I want to capture the Star Trek Voyager series and then burn them to VCD to be played back on my DVD player.

Currently I can't find the Asus in Canada, but I have a buddy of mine in the states ordering one for me.

Any suggestions on what I should do to obtain my objectives?




Bing

[Gordon Moore]

Well expect support from dscaler coming soon for this chip.

I have to say that Asus does have their stuff together. I've played with their dvcr utility 2.3 by pumping-in video via the VIVO fetaure in my GeForce2 card and it does work very well. It allows timeshifting as well and I can use the tuner from an old VCR...It actually looks, not half bad.

The word over at avsforum is that the Asus drivers and utilities are more complete than MSI. Go to their HTPC section and follow the really long thread about this new chip and the cards that support it.

The stuff about the ASUS and the MSI is buried in here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=182360

[Bing Fung]

Thanks for the link Gordon, I'll read up on it. My understanding was the Drivers for the CX23880 chip already performs scaling or deinterlacing, but that certainly is good if DScaler supports as well.

Agreed on Asus products in general. I have built many PC's on Asus MB platforms and I have found those require the least tech support over the other main boards. They really seem to make nice boards and have excellent driver support.




Bing

[JonMarsh]

Looks pretty solid. I'd generally agree re the ASUS thing (built a lot of them) though the last several builds have been MSI, excepting one ASUS microatx board.

How much moola in Canada for the Asus? I assume you're referring to the ASUS 880 TV Tuner card? Interestingly, this is the only TV tuner card that is WHQL certified at this time. The conexant chip provides conversion to RGB and YUV, and MPEG encoding for recording. It's a pretty nice package for $150 or less, and if you don't have access to HDTV, there's no reason to worry about a card doing both NTSC and HDTV.


Here's a pretty thorough review of the 880, to whet your appetite or curiosity.

Note that conflicts between raid controllers and video cards seem to be pretty common (check the review); the MyHD board also has problems co-exisiting with some Promise and HIghpoint controllers.

Unfortunately, it's often necessary to research the idiosyncrasies of the components you want to use and build the system configuration around their quirks! :roll:

Let us know if you get it how it works out for you!


Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Bing Fung]

Thanks Jon, I had actually read that review at Overclokers. I may run it to troubles with my RAID array. If so I will have to install it in a different PC, or migrate my main OS to a single drive. You would think that a capture card should support RAID arrays for the faster writing speeds :roll:

The price should be around $130 cdn. ($79 US) At that price how can a person lose?

One thing I was a bit more curious about was the Silicon (digital) tuner on the MSI TV@nywhere. However that non Stereo issue was a pivitol point in my decision to get the Asus instead. And just as you stated Jon, the Asus is the only one currently WHQL certified, which I have read is a good thing. I have read on TV-Cards.com TV tuner cards can be their worst on Windows XP. I can't substantiate that but it seems to be a common mantra over there.




Bing