I'm currently shopping for a TV card for my Pentium system.  So far my only
criterion is that it has to be a PCI bus-mastering card.  I'm wondering if
anyone has any suggestions on brands to look at or avoid.

8 responses total.

I bought a WinTV card during the Christmas sales, but I haven't got it to
work yet.  The Plug & Play feature of Win98 reserves IRQ10 for Plug & Play
mapping, but also lets the WinTV card have it.???  The resulting conflict
locks up my system.  

Tech support has been prompt in responding but even after downloading new
drivers and patches the results are the same.

I'd like to find a VidCapture card without the TV.

I've had the ATI All-in-Wonder recommended to me, because it's integrated
with a video card and hence doesn't transfer data over the PCI bus.  I'm a
bit reluctant, both because of the $180 price tag, and because I don't want
to lock myself into one video card.  Would routing the TV picture over the
bus *really* have that much of a performance hit?

Check this site for reviews on TV Cards.
www.index-materiel.com/english/hardware_reviews/Video_Cards/TV_Cards

the 'english' part of this is still in french .... but it's a few years later.
  
any particular updates on  tv cards? i'm looking for on for a win98se box
with enough horsepower/ram/disk to do it right. 
  
i;'m not so much interested in recording (not at all) as i am in watching
cable whilst grexing.

If you can find a used ATI TV Wonder, All-in-Wonder or All-in-Wonder Pro,
those are very capable TV cards.  I have an All-in-Wonder Pro PCI and it
works great.  Does very respectable video captures at 640x480 and 30 fps,
too.  The All-in-Wonder cards are combination video/capture/TV cards, the TV
Wonder is just a capture/TV card that interfaces with a video card through
PCI bus mastering.

ATI offers some newer TV and combo cards but I don't know anything about
them.

My only caveat about the ATI cards is that they aren't terribly sensitive. 
If you have an antenna instead of cable, you'll need an in-line amplifier. 
(Putting a high-gain amplifier in a computer would likely result in
amplifying more noise than signal.)

(BTW, the reason I eventually got the All-in-Wonder Pro card, instead of a
seperate TV card, is because my existing video card was old and I wasn't
sure it'd be compatible with the available TV cards.  I've been entirely
happy with the All-in-Wonder Pro.)

I had an ATI Rage threeD pro and it worked good for years. :P  Although it
started sucking after threeD became advanced...I have no three on this
keyboard because i fried it...suck.

thankxx for the thoughts ...
  
what i ended up with is ...   wintv-pvr-250  by www.hauppauge.com . 
  
sweet (and it recordes too) ( the pvr-350 has video outputs)
  
seems that office max had this sale/rebate nad after reading
all the fine print, i got it.
  
really good system - lots of thoughtful features iuncluding 
an ir remote, the constuction s solid all the way around.
  
it's running well and records superior video at 1024x768 and can
burn cd-video adn dvds (if you have a dvd burner, of course.)
  
running on a 350 mhz b0x it does cause some lag on loading
web pages (but it can be 'frozen' quite easily adn relieve
the system burden for the duration)
  
instructions only missed one critical point ... ya gotta let
teh 'new hardware' wizard do its thing *immediately* and direct
it to the root of the install-cd before proceeding with the
rest of the stuff.
  
tech support by email was fast and high quality. ( the install trick)
  
more details later .. i like this card a lot.

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