TV Card questions

[phishman1]

I am thinking of getting a TV card for my PC, but I want to make sure it's worth it first. Some questions:

1. Are their any particular TV cards that I should avoid?
2. Are there any features that I should be looking for?

I have a single cable line going into my office, for the cable internet. Is it possible to use a splitter to split this signal so I can use one end of the split for the cable internet and one end for the cable TV? Or do I have to get them to run a separate line? If I can use my splitter idea, will there be any adverse effects on my cable internet connection? Will the TV signal be crappy?

[atifsh]

1. Are their any particular TV cards that I should avoid?
2. Are there any features that I should be looking for?

1: yes really cheap ones, i got bad experience with MSI TV@nywhere Plus, picture quality was really bad. remote was bad, software was even more crappy.
2: if u can afford get one with hardware encoder, and one which is mce compatible as i think [may not be true] it will be of better quality.

im using pixelview A2200 hardware encoder tv tuner and very happy with its quality, and the recording are excellent aswell using MCE. havnt tried the cyberlink software came with it. but it must be good too. remote is good too.

for the cable internet. Is it possible to use a splitter to split this signal so I can use one end of the split for the cable internet and one end for the cable TV?

i do same in my house, my cable have internet, cable tv and phone running through single wire. i dont find any problems in either tv or internet.

[katzdvd]

I have used the ATI cards (Radeon & AIW) series with pretty good success. I don't really watch TV on my pc, but I did do some capturing of shows that I wanted, & they did work well.

I would say as atifish suggested; avoid the cheap ones. You get what you pay for. A clean cable connection helps as well; if you have "noisy" channels when viewing on your tv, that will carry over to the tuner card also.