OTA HD recording

OTA HD is digital. As long as your antenna outputs enough signal any digital TV receiver behaves the same - it just record the digital bits.

I am using Media Center for recording and you can schedule the show and you can specify single show or all show in the same name, it supports time shifting etc.

I am using Vista because Windows XP doesn't support digital tuner only. I remember that Windows XP requires hardware Mpeg2 encoder in order for the tuner to work. Vista doesn't have this request.

You want the "best" and "cheap"?

For software, you may want to check out WatchHDTV, a free application that works well for many people using WinXP. Not as fancy as Sage, Windows Media Center or BeyondTV, but it does the basic task of recording, time-shifting and playback. You also get the choice of recording just one subchannel or the entire transport stream of the broadcaster.

Check the tvfool and antennaweb sites for reception info, and then get a good antenna. If you can get good reception, then the tuner you select becomes less critical. (I get very good reception 35 miles from the transmitters, and can use inexpensive KWorld tuner cards.)

Hauppauge native software is not the best and generally cannot run when Window's Media Center is active. Don't forget (free) GB-PVR software as an application.

Most software that come with tuner cards are rarely any good. However, WatchHDTV is very basic and development on it has stopped. You're looking at a dual-tuner card and the only way you can do that with WatchHDTV is if you have two folders of the program, one set-up for the first tuner and the other for the second. Even then, I'm not sure if you can launch two copies of the program at the same time. The experience is also far from Tivo-like.

There are a lot of free alternatives, though. I personally use GB-PVR. Probably not as many bells and whistles as other programs, but I've found PVR functionality to be excellent. I particularly like the built-in web server which let me schedule recordings anywhere I have internet access. There's also MediaPortal which I tried two years ago. It crashed a lot back then, but it probably works better now. There's a MediaPortal how-to/guide stickied in this (Home Theater Computers) subforum. There are probably a lot of others I'm not aware of.

The "system requirements" is listing the environments that will work without having to buy or install more software.

Just check the supported list of tuners for the applications you're interested in. If your tuner is listed and its a WinXP app, then it should work if you can get decent reception.

You have to careful when you say dual tuner. The HVR-1800 is dual tuner but one tuner is analog while the other is digital. I think you want two digital tuners for OTA (especially since analog will go away, eventually).

Also remember XP still requires an analog tuner. I found a way to "unplug" the analog card, but then I wasn't able to reconfigure.

Eventually OTA analog will go away? That's like 13 days away!

Well not quite...the House passed the bill to extend the deadline to June 12, for now...

Alas, maybe not. A lot of HDTVs and CECBs (coupon-eligible converter box) have better tuners than PC add-on cards. Can you quantify that "great reception"? If it's around maybe 90%, I'm pretty sure you're almost guaranteed to get them via a PC tuner.


MCE 2005 does. No such restrictions if you're using say XP Home or Pro and 3rd-party PVR software like BeyondTV, Sage, GB-PVR, MediaPortal, etc.