PC TV Tuners

Can anyone recommend a good tuner?

I use an Elgato Eye TV DTT, which works with Mac and Windows. It's worked great for me. My only complaints are that any export option other than the raw MPEG-2 broadcast (which is what I use for uploading to YouTube) makes the video quality awful, and the screenshot capture does some weird pixellation to the image, particularly text (example). Elgato also doesn't offer any DVB-T2 tuners for Freeview HD yet either.

It's not the most advanced tuner in the world but it's portable, it comes with an indoor aerial, and it works well for my needs.

All I'm looking for is to capture things rather than heavy viewing, in HD if possible, so as long as I can do that then I'm not fussed.

I've been using an Hauppauge PCTV DVB T2 290e (Amazon) for the past two and a bit years, but it burnt out at the end of last week.

I've replaced it with an August DVT T210 HD tuner (Amazon) which works really well and tunes faster than the PCTV above.

Software-wise, I'm using DVBDream (link) for recording. It allows you to record a single channel, or any or all of the channels on a single multiplex, and is a simple to use piece of kit.

That's not really a fault in the software, it's just showing how the video stream is broadcast - 576 lines interlaced, hence the horizontal scroller is shown 'in-between' positions, as it were. Ideally, the capture software would delinterlace the picture to remove this effect.

Oh it's not that sorry, using a screenshot that had a ticker wasn't one of my best ideas I realise!

Here's a comparison between a Print Screen of the window on my desktop (cropped to just the broadcast video itself), compared with the program's built in screenshot tool:

http://up.metropol247.co.uk/012014/1389456919_1474751051.png
http://up.metropol247.co.uk/012014/1389456918_1545611525.jpg

(edit: just realised I haven't turned overscan off since reinstalling the software, otherwise they'd both be the same size)

I wonder if its more to do with the jpg compression setting for the capture? I've just done a screen cap with DVBDream of an HD channel and the fringing is awful. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be an option to change the compression setting...

If you can save it out as a raw .ts file then use VLC to do the screen captures and save it as out as PNG(there is a setting in VLC to do this) to get rid of the compression then save it out as a jpeg using Photoshop or Paint++.

Personally I use VirtualDub 1.9.7 with the Direct Show Input Driver plug-in to do frame captures, saving them by PSP.

Premiere Pro has the ability to take captures of individual frames built in, either by using the export tool in earlier versions, or using an easier method in later versions.

If you don't mind me jumping in, does anyone know of a good TV tuner with built in FM radio capability?

I used to have a good one that worked well under XP but ever since moving to my new system it's been funny and the radio bit has not been working, and there are no drivers for Windows 7.

I use the Pinnacle PCTV nanoStick T2 although avoid the supplied tuner software as it doesn't work with the PSB2 DTT mux since the upgrade to allow the channels to broadcast at 720x576.

I use Next PVR to view and record channels, including HD and my vids for YouTube using Freemake and screen caps using Media Player Classic.