Media Center TV Tuners

[AMDCam]

Hey, I'm getting a Media Center Edition laptop and am wondering if Media Center is compatible with ALL TV tuner cards or if I have to buy an expensive built in one. Thanks

 

[Thermopylae_480]

You do mean Windows Media Center don't you? I imagine it is compatible with most main stream TV tuners. I would imagine Media Center Edition would support just as many devices as Windows XP, but as usuall they would be divided into drivers that are "signed" and "unsigned" by Microsoft. I would be willing to bet that, if you can find a third party TV tuner, manufactured by a reputable corporation you would have no issues.

 

[Aevum]

might have a fansy shell, might have a nice sticker on it, or they might try to put it apart from the others raising the price tag,

but at the end of the day, theres only 4 chips, Connexant, Ati, Nvidia, and Philips, and all of them have quite good support on windows plataforms,

and they all identify themselfs as video capture devices under windows,

so, unless you buy some weird chinesse tuner from a company that decided to use some obscure chip to save costs, i dont think your going to have alot of problems

avermedia has pcmcia tuners, and their quite good, so does pinnacle, and they tend to have good windows support, on usb i would also check out hauppage and leadtek, and pci, well, its a laptop isnt it ?

 

[darundal]

Ok. Not all tuners are supported by windows media center edition. The reasoning behind this (set arse to laugh) is that as windows media center edition would be aimed at a different audience, and micro$haft didn't want to offer tech support for every piece of hardware out there, they will only support certain cards (AKA it requires you have a supported card), plus they will raise the minimum system specs. Don't know if the insane requirements are the same on a laptop, though. Thankfully, ATI and Happauge are amongst those who manufacture cards that are media center compatable, so you should be in luck. Truth be told though, you should ask someone on a dedicated media center edition forum, they can give you the specific information you are probably looking for.

 

[AMDCam]

Thanks guys. I'm looking at the AverTV PCMCIA tuner now (it's the only MCE compatible card for laptops). I'm also seeing a Diamond Maxtv tuner, which is getting great reviews and supposedly with it's hardware acceleration, it has the best recording and watching clarity. But I'm not sure if it's 100% compatible with MCE, because I can't find out if it's got an MPEG 2 encoder (which is supposedly what MCE 2005 requires), although in it's little demo on the website it says it's compatible with MCE 2005 specifically. So I'll get the Diamond if it has an MPEG 2 encoder and MCE 2005 support, but if it doesn't I guess I'll have to get the Avertv. Thanks guys