Recommend me a dual atsc tuner please.

I have one and have been happy with it, but if your budget is around $60, it's about the only choice in that price range I'm aware of.

Silicon Dust HD HomeRun if you want flexibility.

I just realized you had a 60 dollar limit and this would go quite a ways above that. Still, it's on sale on Newegg and it's a really great dual tuner.

It is definitely over your $60 budget, but my Hauppauge HVR-2250 is doing great as a dual ATSC tuner card.

I haven't tried the Duets; I thought I read something here that the Duets may have trouble after waking from S3. Do a little research. Maybe it was an isolated problem, or maybe it is fixed by now.

I dropped Dish over the summer, and I'm primarily ATSC + Netflix. I miss some of the live sports, but it isn't worth that many $hundreds/year.

I would strongly recommend going with a PCIe x1 instead of PCI. Although PCI has plenty of bandwidth for a dual tuner card, PCI has been around since the original Pentium, and I think that it will be dropped in the next generation of Intel motherboards for Sandybridge. PCIe x1 should live a little longer.

I have 2 of the Avermedia Duet's in my SageTV setup for OTA. This gives me 4 tuners & I have zero problems. Highly recommend.

I have an old ATI HDTV-Wonder, Hauppauge 1600 (w/remote), an ATi 650 Combo USB and one of the Duet cards. As you see I've quite an array of ATSC tuners left over from earlier HTPC builds which still operate on my AMD X4 system. I really like the AVerMedia Duet because its price-per-tuner is so low - makes a reasonable upgrade for any system! I managed to catch an open box on the egg for under $50 but today it seems Gigaparts has a good price (Google shopping is your friend).

I had to reboot a couple o' times before Win 7 downloaded all the right drivers, but once it's recognized it's a great tuner. What's your OS and media front-end?

Antennaweb.org says your stations are all North @ 35 miles. The Channel-Master-4221HD would do nicely.

I have a duet and a hdhr. the duet gets used, the hdhr doesn't.

get the duet.

+4
On the Duet. I own 3 of them, started with one and was happy enough to buy two more.

The Duet is hit or miss. If it is compatible with your motherboard, it is excellent. Otherwise, it is nightmare.

I have an Avermedia Combo card and a couple of HDHRs.. The HD HRs don't make great primary tuners unless you have a really good signal. The Avermedia ATSC tuners just do a better job of locking to channels and dont' have 5 firmware upgrades a year that don't seem to do anything. I don't know what Silicon Dust does with all that programming energy they lavish on their network tuners. If you have sufficient signal they work great, if you don't they suck. They have been that way for a number of years regardless of the momentous programming efforts going on over at Silicon Dust. Silicon Dust need to focus their efforts on their CableCard tuner and not the 97th version of their HomeRun firmware. The current devices need more sensitive tuners, and programming won't fix it.

I'm not sure whether it is incompatible or not. I did have trouble with my old 780i board, though, but I also had a weak signal.

The CC came to the building and upgraded the signal. I was using a Combo, but put the Duet in my current X58 and it has been all good. As to whether it is the board or signal, I don't know.

I do know that with my ATI DCT and the Duet I can record 3 channels, which fits those times where I need to do that. I do run in to the situation where I need to record 2 cable shows at one time, so I might have to go the SiliconDust route for cablecard in the future.

What is the VHF channel the signal will be broadcast on? Not the digital channel number but the broadcast frequency.

From that distance you may able to pickup a few of the VHF channels with a large UHF array antenna. If not you can add a small VHF anetenna designed for just the frequency range you need.

The egg has an OPEN BOX available today on their site for $33.99 + 6.98 s/h... I paid closer to $50 for mine back a few months. Don't hesitate or they'll all get sold - and YES, they have a 30-day return on open box items.

Antennaweb shows his FOX on rf-11 as well as ABC on rf-7. Oh well, try it and see.

I bought one two under that deal. I wonder how many "open boexs" they had?

I guess many cause I got one also, with ship=$40. Thinking why so many returns/open boxes. AND it SHIPPED without delay. Seems unusually quick.

As usual no one gives the real pro and cons between the two.
Both are excellent products but with some important differences.
Large distributed home systems should use both.
The AVerMedia Duet is the fastest to change channels, mainly because it has the lightening fast internal pci-e bus.
The AVerMedia takes up no more space as it fits inside of any PC, especially since it has a low profile adapter and sips little power.
No external wall warts, splitters and one cable rather than three as it has a single coaxial input and splits the RF signal internally. Very nice.
Its half the price of the HDHomeRun, especially the white box version. I downloaded just the driver, as WMC 7 is all that I ever want to use.

There can be contention issues between different computers and the HDHomeRun. Simply switching channels can result in someone else "stealing" your tuner! The AVerMedia has no such issues
The AVerMedia Duet requires a coaxial cable to be at the rear of the PC. The HDHome Run can be installed at the network head.
Systems which use wireless only are better off with the AVerMedia as there will be much less dropouts.
The AVerMedia has built in Dolby decoding, so my Samsung 700 receiver does the decoding. The HDHomeRun slyly suggest you go to Russia for the AC3 Filter. Not nearly as elegant.

The best distributed home network system has both types of tuners. The primary DVR has two dedicated. The rest of the computers can use the "floating" HDHomeRun tuners.

Finally parents may find children watching too much TV in their bedrooms (on their computer with the HDHomeRun). So I've disabled Internet and HDHomeRun network access at night using the scheduling feature on my Netgear 3700 router.

The kids aren't getting too much for night watching. Really, what are their OTA choices after bedtime? With a open box Duet going for $40 shipped it kills the HDHR in price.

Times are tough; so Newegg is shipping quick(er).

Prices of memory on Newegg are also noticeably down.


Cheers

I agree with a lot of this. The HD Homeruns make good floaters and 3rd and 4th tuners. For many reasons I prefer the Avermedia tuners but run both. One of the issues that some of us have who fight the battle of adequate signal quality need is to keep splits to a minimum. Raw tuner performance is better on the Avermedia and when combined with the HDHRs you can get video across the house while minimizing your splits. If you are not dependent on the HDHRs they are more useful because you can use them more succesfully on the stronger stations while letting the Avermedia tuners handle the problematic ones.

Bigger, better antenna systems are not always easily done and sometimes you have to make the best out of a bad situation. I have a Centronic STB ATSC tuner that just wipes the floor with all the pc tuner crap. My Tivo also outperforms any of the PC tuners.. but I really want to get away from the montly fee ultimately so the Tivo will go the way of the dodo when Ceton or Silicon Dust cable card tuners are readily available.

To ensure good RF signal quality I use the following amplified splitter at the network head end. I feed two output to rooms in the house and allow my two HDHomeRun unit (four tuners total) to connect to the other two outputs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ef=oss_product
They also make a 8 port splitter too!

Another important limitation of the HDHomeRun is just try connecting it directly to an Ethernet port on your computer. Windows 7 squawks to no end and won't let you create a very simple private network. The firewall prevents HDHomeRun from "getting through" to the computer. Then you are forced to make this simple network into a public one in Windows. Then Windows 7 security complains to no end. Danger!!! Warning Will Robinson! Sheer stupidity, I wish I could bit**-slap someone at Microsoft.

So HDHomeRun falls-on-its sword when you attempt to dedicate it to a single PC (when connected directly to a second Ethernet port). In fact the is how i was forced to buy the AVerMedia Duet even though the reviews have been far less positive than the HdHomeRun.
This now well documented case offers reasons and logic which suggest that the vast majority of consumers are unable to determine the actual situation (because its too complicated and can change overnight). It is true that HDHome run is a great product, and AVerMedia Duet may have been buggy at first.
Same goes for my $350 Samsung 700 receiver, a fantastic amplifier with sound quality better than any other receiver, yet the initial bad reviews have postponed its success. A firmware upgrade fixed the issues. Or that the 2009 Oppo 83 are better than the 2010 Samsungs at 40% of its price. This is why I post much less, as the actual situation changes to become opposite from what people still think. Outdated perceptions and misguided brand loyalty prevent consumers from enjoying superior products are reduced prices... Go figure!

I've been using 2 Duets since they were released. I've had no problems recording through SageTV or 7MC once they were setup.

Couple o' thoughts...

the post about AVerMedia having a 'built-in' decoder - WHAT? These are tuner cards for ATSC which is an MPEG-2 stream. ALL decoding is done in the PC using filters/codecs you supply. While the retail version of the duet has a version of s/w provided, the majority of users on here will not be using it. Many reported their s/w as crappy and buggy. All we want to do is tune ATSC broadcasts leaving recording, playback and decoding to your PC. Besides, if his Samsung 700 is doing the decoding wouldn't he be using SPDIF passthrough anyway? e.g. no decoding, just passthrough.

about newegg's FAST shipping - I've come to expect it! They are a d@mn good company and I very often get 1-day service if ordered before noon... I've even received stuff the next afternoon when ordered as late as 3:00! YES, they use 3 warehouses and if it ships from CA or NJ it will NOT be 1-day service and NO, I do NOT pay extra for 'expedited processing."

about why so many Open Box items - not everyone on here knows what they're doing! The egg has no tech-support so if you don't know what you're doing you're SOL. Their Customer Service is excellent and they'll return anything you're not satisfied with - within their policies, of course. That's why I always shop Open Box or Recertified items. Also, while their site says you may not get all the accessories, I've found they are just as complete as the OEM at full price - YMMV.

HDHomeRun directly into a PC - I have a buddy who learned this the hard way on his Win 7 box... using a switch to connect the PC and HDHomeRun resolved this for him as well. (He uses a WiFi as his primary net connection.) Your explanation was clear and technical - thanks!

and finally, I'm surprised to learn the OP has not dabbled at all on this OTA concept before now! So many are buying HDTVs with ATSC tuners (many are QAM-compatible) and never try using it! They just slave it to their STB and pay through the nose for programming. I'm glad you're coming around but realize this, you will get OTA broadcasting only - no ESPN, HBO, TNT, CNN or any of the cable channels you may be watching today. Although you might have another side benefit IF you have cable (modem) in your house, you might be able to tune Clear-QAM HDTV channels using the AVerMedia Duet and your existing cable. You might find you don't need the antenna OR any OTA if that works at your house, and with your "cable" provider. If you have no cable but DSL then NO, you have no Clear-QAM source... just my 0.02

BTW, the Open Box Duet is now Out of Stock. Gotta jump on these 'deals' when they're there!