TV cards revisited for PC (Linux & Wintendo)

[redrumloa]

I've got some $$ buring a hole in my pocket, I am thinking about buying a HDTV Wonder. I was using a All In Wonder VE until I started dual booting into SUSE, when I scrapped the AIW in favor of a TV Wonder VE for temporary use. Needless to say the TV Wonder VE sucks.

So what's the best card out there? This HDTV Wonder? Any other TV cards have HDTV support? Am I missing any TV cards with DirecTV support(not likely). Are there any TV cards without HDTV support, that other features make it worth getting instead of a HDTV Wonder? Things like AM/FM tuner would be a plus, but not critical.

[billt]

There's a few cards out there. Hauppauge I think has one now, there's the Fusion line, and the pcHDTV card for Linux, and a couple others I can't remember the names of.

There's discussions on these things at www.avsforum.com and there's probably somewhere there comparing and reviewing the things.

[vpcs]

I have the HDTV Wonder the big problem is  "Product does not receive satellite or cable HDTV transmissions" Only airwave HDTV.. Other then that it's a great card.. No problems

[billt]

I think the newest version of the Fusion card can decode cable HDTV, in USA anyway, the QAM standard or whatever it's called.  It seems I had heard another was going to support cable HDTV but I can't remember, may or may not have been a newer pcHDTV model. avsforum will know for sure.

The bick sticking point for USA users is the future of encrypted cable HDTV. Rumor has it that Comcast does not encrypt the "local networks" stations, but you'll be out of luck if you subscribe to HBO HDTV or other premium HDTV channels, as well as much of the digital NTSC channels which are encrypted. I'm suprised no one as made a tuner card that accepts the smart cards so it can legally work with all channels you've subscribed to, encrypted or not, or at least made a PCI smartcard reader that can be used on the data coming out of the "dumb" tuner card.