Questions regarding TV tuners...

[seniorpaul]

Last summer i used a bunch of spare parts that i had lying around and built a half-arsed HTPC. Now i think i'd like to put one together that's more functional. I'm fairly comfortable with all my hardware choices, with the execption of the TV tuners. Even after spending a couple of days here reading reviews and whatnot, i'm a little puzzeled about a few things. Hopefully someone here can clear some things up.

1. I'd like to have my HTPC hooked up to my cable. Do i need to have multiple cable boxes in order to record multiple programs simultaniously using two TV capture cards (Hauppauge PVR-150's)? If so, would i STILL need two cable boxes if i were to use a Hauppauge PVR-500? I'm not sure how it would make a difference, but i've been reading some conflicting reviews.

2. Are there any workarounds to avoid needing multiple cableboxs to record multiple shows simultansiouly?

3. It's my understanding that there isn't any way to capture HDTV programing from a cable box. Is this accurate? How far off is a cablecard capture device?

any help is appreatiated.

 

[zaz]

Hi,

I guess for your first question you need to ask...do you *need* a cable box for the cable you are getting? If yes, then yes, you will need 2 cable boxes if you want to watch/record at the same time. This applies to both the 150 and 500. If you do not need a cable box, if you have 2 150s, you can use a splitter in the cable and connect the cable directly to the card. If you have the 500, you do not need a splitter and you can connect 1 cable to the card and both tuners will work.

2. None that I am aware of but someone else might know.

3. No you cant capture HDTV as of right now unless it ot OTA (over the air) HDTV. With the OTA stuff, you can buy a card the same as a tuner card and capture the HDTV stuff.

As far as cablecard, its my understanding that the standard is going downhill so i can't see companies putting an effort into producing a addon tuner card for a pvr pc.

Heres an article from the NY times about cable card and its problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/t...rss&adxnnlx=1152219119-a7vK4sXcQoV+rmGrZSrkiw

 

[CrimandEvil]

3.) The Cable industry was forced into adopting CableCard so right off the bat they hated it. So now you have Vista and it's MCE app right around the corner which will support CableCard BUT only for OEM systems. I'm not sure if any CableCard adapters will pop up on Ebay or anything but it's going to be very hard to DIY a CableCard supported system. Even they I have no idea if MCE will be locked into using it only on OEM systems or not.

2 and 1.) If you're only using basic cable then you shouldn't have any problems just taking the cable straight from the wall to the tuner card. But you'll need the tuner box there to decode the extra stuff like HBO, etc and yes you will need another cable box for each video stream/tuner you want to record.

I would suggest skipping the Hauppauge cards, for a dual tuner the best out there is NV's DualTV card. For a single tuner get one based on ATI's 550 chip.
http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_in...er-ntsc-pci-whitebox/cName/pvr-cardstv-tuners

This tuner is also looking mighty interesting, as soon as I have some dispositable income I wish to pick one up: http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_in...ebate?osCsid=9a7edaec53bc6341f451f9f86b4aa513

 

[seniorpaul]

I guess for your first question you need to ask...do you *need* a cable box for the cable you are getting

I hadn't really thought of this. I don't plan on getting any premium cable services, so i suppose i wouldn't NEED the cable box. That certainly would simplify things a bit.

I would suggest skipping the Hauppauge cards, for a dual tuner the best out there is NV's DualTV card. For a single tuner get one based on ATI's 550 chip.
http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_in...er-ntsc-pci-whitebox/cName/pvr-cardstv-tuners

This tuner is also looking mighty interesting, as soon as I have some dispositable income I wish to pick one up: http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_in...ebate?osCsid=9a7edaec53bc6341f451f9f86b4aa513

As someone who is really new to Tuner cards, can i ask why you suggest skipping the Hauppauge cards? They seem to recieve very favorable reviews (plus they are available in a couple of bundles that i'm considering). I'll certainly read up on the Nvidia card so that i can make an informed choice. Thanks for your help.

 

[CrimandEvil]

As someone who is really new to Tuner cards, can i ask why you suggest skipping the Hauppauge cards? They seem to recieve very favorable reviews (plus they are available in a couple of bundles that i'm considering). I'll certainly read up on the Nvidia card so that i can make an informed choice. Thanks for your help.

They're perfectly usable but there are some outstanding driver issues that Hauppauge refuses to acknowledge. Another thing is that you can get a better tuner card for the money, for one thing Hauppauge's cards don't do any sort of noise reduction to increase image quality (NV has a dedicated chip just for this on their DualTV card).

 

[topslop1]

i have a basic older hauppuage tv tuner card. it's actually for sale - if anyone is interested plz give me a pm.

 

[valve1138]

They're perfectly usable but there are some outstanding driver issues that Hauppauge refuses to acknowledge.

From reading over on the SageTV forums, it looks like the latest Hauppauge driver actually corrects some of the crap that was occuring. I havent tried it out yet, but will in the next week or so. At least for the PVR-150 and PVR-500

 

[IDversusEGO]

only thing I don't like about my nvidia tuner is that you can't use 2 of them in the same PC. Most people don't care about that, but if you want to build a cleint/server setup this matters.