Suggest me a TV-Tuner card (least CPU requirements)

[mceuser001]

Hi,
  I am a newbie and am looking into the TV Tuner cards. Can someone suggest me one from the following list.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Category:TV_Cards

I have the following requirements
1. Least CPU requirement for the TV Tuner
2. Easiest installation. I can tinker around with drivers, but don't want to frustrate myself.
3. Something which has both ATSC and QAM tuners is great, but not a necessity now.

Another question:
My cable company gave me a set-top box. However, when I use it with my TV directly (cable goes into the TV), I get the channels, but not the program gude etc. (obviously).
Question: If I connect the cable TV  to the ATSC tuner, can the tuner scan the channels? Or do I need to have a QAM tuner??

Thanks.

[tschak909]

Very simple:

we support:

SD: Hauppauge PVR-150/250/500/USB2
HD: HDHomeRun

there are a couple of others, but those are the main ones.. get one of each. Easy, plug and play, painless.

-Thom

[mceuser001]

Thanks. HDHomeRun is a tax bit expensive for me.

Are there any other PCI TV Tuner cards, which are ATSC/QAM the one capable of recording HDTV.

Did anyone test any other cards, which have less CPU requirements?

Thanks.

[tschak909]

*hmm* it's not a matter of TESTING.

These are the ones which we have device templates for that are plug and play.

Please listen to me, I am one of the developers.

-Thom

[LegoGT]

Thanks. HDHomeRun is a tax bit expensive for me.

Are there any other PCI TV Tuner cards, which are ATSC/QAM the one capable of recording HDTV.

Did anyone test any other cards, which have less CPU requirements?

Thanks.

Well, depending on your threshold of pain (and type of cable box) you could buy a cheapo FireWire cable then follow these steps: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/FireWire

It's a little tricky to get set up but provides a pure digital path from the cable box to the computer (and most HD). I've used it to pull some clips here and there but you're stuck with only 1 channel at a time and it has to be tuned live. Since you end up capturing the decoded transport streams just like they would be sent to an HDTV the CPU won't do much more than handle the data transfer.

With that, I also ended up getting the HD HomeRun and as tschak909 said it's worth the extra few dollars in headaches.