Ready to buy - TV tuner/capture card
 

Hi all

I've read through quite a few posts on finding the right linux-compatible TV tuner/capture card. But it seems that
the answer relies on the needs of the individual user. Just
wondering if anybody would have any suggestions of a good
card based on these criteria:

I'd like to be able to watch and record televison. The card would
be hooked up to my cable converter, not directly to the TV feed.
I'd prefer it if the card was able to use a remote control also. Most
of the cards I've looked at that had these features cost upwards
of $100 and were mostly geared towards MPEG-2, whatever I capture would ulitmately be encoded to divx so MPEG-2 wouldn't really do much good....any advice?

thanks in advance!

Any capture chip mention on Video4Linux site. You need to check the manual to find out what chip the capture device has before buying it.

I have Hauppauge WinTV GO. It doesn't have MTX for stereo decoding for the tuner but it has stereo line-in. If your cable box has A/V hook up that has MTX for stereo decoding. Then you can use that to capture stereo. Then use the extra money for the remote that works with LINUX. Many programs like mplayer or tvtime can be remotely controlled. IMO, tvtime has the best picture output than any program that I seen for TV tuners.

Capturing straight to Divx is ok, but its best to capture using no compression. Then convert to divx. This will give you the best quality, compression ratios, and no loss in frames.