Are these tuner cards really worth it? Should I just cancel my satellite subscription altogether? That is a tough call. I have my own thoughts on the matter, true. However to find out what PCWorld’s take is you will need to read on.

ATI Technologies has sold PCI-based TV tuners, and graphics cards with TV-tuning capabilities, for several years. Its most recent such products make TV on a PC look better than ever before–but they’re still no match for the real thing, TV on a TV.

I looked at ATI’s TV Wonder Elite, a $149 PCI analog TV-tuner card that you install alongside your existing AGP or PCI Express graphics board. It uses ATI’s Theater 550 Pro video processor, which incorporates a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, a 3D comb filter, and a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (most cards use converters with 10 or fewer bits); all of these features are supposed to improve video quality.

I also tried ATI’s All-In-Wonder X800XT, a $499 graphics card that provides the company’s best AGP-based graphics processing, in part thanks to 256MB of video RAM and a 16-pipeline 3D architecture. It also has a TV tuner, but MPEG-2 encoding is performed with software. Both cards offer FM-radio tuners and remote controls that use radio frequencies, not infrared, to issue commands. Neither can bring in HDTV signals; for that, you need ATI’s HDTV Wonder. [Read the rest]