HDTV card selection

[Gog]

The broadcast flag is almost there (well, not for a while now but that nice congress of yours can still do us in) and although as a Canadian it is not yet clear what the future will bring I'm starting the quest for the best HDTV card.

I looked around and there are a few alternatives to HDTV. As you have guessed, I have a hard time choosing. I read a bunch of reviews, pretty much all of which said "cool" but no comparative study so here is a quick recap for each card. Please feel free to comment with your experience or tell me if something is missing.

If you have guesstimates of CPU use for playing and recording for the cards I'd also like to be able to compare with that. Thanks to stranger, I now know that there is no encoding done, the digital stream is just saved by those cards so CPU for writing shouldn't be an issue and CPU for reading should be pretty much the same since it's the same stream.

So far the Fusion has the lead

Gog

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DVICO FusionHDTV3 Gold
MSRP: 199
Froogle: 149$-175$

OTA and QAM
CX23881 chipset
HDTV ATSC tuner with s-video in

System Requirements:
Pentium 3 750MHz CPU (with ATI RADEON series with DxVA VGA, nVidia MX440, FX series)
Pentium 4 1.6GHz with DDR266 or faster memory for non DxVA VGA
Windows ME/ 2000/ XP or later version of Windows

Good:
Tested with the Stealth's HDTV Network encoder
Available in low profile

Bad:

Sources:
http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/Eng/
http://www.digitalconnection.com/Pro.../fusion3qt.asp
http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=fusion3_1


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ATI HDTV wonder
MSRP: 199$
Froogle: ~150$

OTA
No QAM
HDTV ATSC, analog NTSC and breakout box (s-video and composite audio/video)
Antenna included in the package
The remote wonder is also in the package
NXT2004 Digital Modulator

System Requirements:
* Intel® Pentium® 4, Celeron™, AMD Athlon® or compatible, operating at 1.3GHz or greater
* 256MB of system memory
* Windows® XP with Service Pack 1 or higher
* Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 †

Good:
Tested with the Stealth's HDTV Network encoder
Tunes HDTV ATSC and analog signal

Bad:
Driver were unstable but it's getting better
ATI's time shifting software sucks (who cares...)
System requirements
Difficult installation
Nicknamed the HTTV "blunder" http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1641011,00.asp
Not available in Canada (due to low penetration rate of OTA HDTV stations)

Sources:
http://www.ati.com/products/hdtvwonder/
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/video/20040917/
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1641011,00.asp
http://reviews.designtechnica.com/re..._main9163.html


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Avermedia A180
MSRP:
Froogle: ~80$

OTA
Don't know about QAM

System requirements:
* CPU: Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz, 256 RAM or higher
* Operating System: Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005

This is a MCE card. You need to use BDA drivers to use it outside of MCE.

Good:
Tested with the Stealth's HDTV Network encoder
Cheap!
"A180 and ATI HDTV Wonder are pretty close to being the same quality. Most people wouldn't notice the difference."

Bad:
Very steep system requirements
New card, not much feedback on the web yet.

Sources:
http://www.aver.com/products/tvtuner...mce_a180.shtml

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VBox DTA-151
Price: 249$ http://www.visiblelight.com/mall/pro...w.aspx?pid=614

OTA
Don't know about QAM

HDTV ATSC tuner with s-video in
Proprietary chipset

System requirements:
* Windows 98, SE, 2000, Windows XP
* Pentium III 600 MHz processor or better

Good:
Picture quality comparable to the wonder
Seems to work well with MCE 2005

Bad:
Expensive
Unknown card, not tested with the HDTV Network encoder, may be harder to find

Source:
http://www.vboxcomm.com/
http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=vbox_1

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MyHD MDP-130
Price: ~250 http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/hdtv-cards.html#myhd
~315 with DVI daughterboard http://www.copperbox.com/lite/mdp130.php

OTA and QAM

Good:
Hardware decoder (the only one in this list)
DVI output through optional daughterboard
Included timeshifting software not as bad as other bundled software
tunes ATSC and NTSC

Bad:
Expensive
Not tested with Sage
Haven't heard it works with MCE either

Source:
http://www.digitalconnection.com/pro...deo/mdp130.asp
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/hdtv-cards.html#myhd


*Edit(05-07-2005) to remove the no hardware encoder caveat
*Edit(05-11-2005) to add MyHD MDP-130