DVICO Fusion 5 HDTV tuner - Page 3

I live in Toledo OHIO and get Buckeye Cable. My Fusion5 does NOT get any QAM channels at all. I was thinking they may be filtering me at the line or something, don't know. I do subscribe for the HD service right now though. So I would think filters might be removed. So far I'm obviously not happy with the QAM performance as this is one of my main reasons for purchasing this card.

Tom,

Just for you I connected my cable coax to the F5 Lite card to see if there are any improvements over the F3 QT card and I can report that there is not any. The F5 still has crappy software and it did find QAM (64 & 256) channels it missed many sub channels.

Even the OTA kind of sux because it can't fully read the PSIP data transmitted in the TS. In fact I have to manually add the OTA digital channels and once tuned it does display the call sign but does not remap the channel number.

MyHD MDP-130 QAM tuning (and software) is miles ahead of the F5 (and F3) cards.

Are you sure that you selected the correct settings to scan for QAM channels?

Regardless of being encrypted or not the QAM scan should find all QAM channels and the F5 software (RC3) does combine both 64QAM and 256QAM. I was able to tune both without switching.

Cliff,

When I said I don't get any channels what I meant was NO picture and NO sound, sorry. Actually the F5 scans about 31 digital stations (1) channel 73 and the other (30) 100 - up. So I don't know whats up.

This is just an FYI. Here is an email I sent to dvico and their response;

Hi,

I am currently running 2 of your cards a Fusion3/Qam, and a Fusion 5 Gold, alongside an ATI HDTV Wonder. I have the Fusion3 and the ATI doing OTA HDTV within MCE. I am using the Fusion5 to handle QAM from cable company. Is there a way I can tell the FusionHDTV application to ONLY use the Fusion 5? If I have things recording within MCE using using the ATI and Fusion3, and I then go to use the Fusion5 via FusionHDTV, the recordings in MCE are abruptily stopped. I have specified within the windows registry that the Fusion3 and the ATI are enabled for MCE, while the Fusion5 is not enabled for MCE. MCE seems to respect those settings AOK.

My problem seems to be with the FusionHDTV app. It seems to want to use all fusion cards, not just the Fusion5.

Please help

Reply to your question is as below.
Hi. Sorry about all your inconveniences. FusionHDTV BDA driver supports multiple cards configuration so you can watch one channel and record another something like that. But Fusion software doesn"t support at this moment. We are a working towards getting a solution for this as soon as possible. Please wait for while. Thanks.

Check the thread for your local cable provider to find out which of the channels are your local HD channels. That can save a lot of time! For me locally, the local HDs are all between 81 and 84, inclusive. When I first got my Fusion card it was very frustrating trying to find that out. Because Fusion didn't work with QAM recordings through TitanTV I went with OTA, but I'm now using Fusion 3 for QAM, and finding out the locals saved me a bunch of time and frustration.

Cliff -

Thanks, I guess.

Your info was very helpful but of course equally depressing. My current F3Q card already gets most of the 256 QAM channels known to be available in my area. But it takes a strong signal. I had to complain about my cable box reception twice to get the cable guys to come out and (both times) replace wet filters outside the house. I already have (and have mostly gotten used to) the quirky F3Q software. I don't really expect that to change if I got an F5Q or whatever.

I also get decent, but not great, OTA reception with my equally quirky HiDTV card. So I guess without better reports here there is no reason to drop back to a card with only 1 f-connector and no other advanatges.

But I'll await further reports. With the broadcast flag temporarily exorcised I guess I have no hurry for now.

I don't really care much about PSIP since I consider it still fairly unreliable.


- Tom

Hi,

Sorry if this is overly noobly, but I was wondering if the multipath advantage of the Fusion5 would lend itself better to omnidirectional antennas, rather than unidirectional. I'm going to live in a high-rise condo, and the DB2 seems like my best bet in terms of signal strength (I live in Toronto, and would like to pick up some US stations). Does the new tuner help me at all, or would I be better off sticking to the Fusion3 (which can now be had more cheaply). QAM not an option (all encrypted in Toronto - bastards!)

Could you link the thread please? Thanks

The threads for local cable and OTA are in this forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45

Note: Find an existing thread that covers your cable company in your city--do not start a new thread.

Ok Mr.Cliff i ordered the the Lite version as per your suggestion all i need now is to figure out how to get another RG6 line into here. wished there was some way to combine HD OTA and QAM on same line

Still waiting for a post with solid info. Anyone out there have one of these cards in a CITY environment? Generally, those people will have lots of signal AND lots of reflections.

I enjoy everyones opinion on "how radio works" but please limit your speculation about what might happen.

Your location would be perfect for testing.

I broke down and got the gold version. Just Ordered it. Should have it by the end of the week if they really have them in stock. If it does qam ill be happy since my first fusion 3 card was the first rev that had hardware issues with qam. If not, ill prob stay away from dvico stuff from now on.

Ill try to get some reviews of it when i get it.

MI

I ordered one over the weekend (my ATI HDTV has gone berserk, perfect timing). Will report when it gets here (2 Day Air, hopefully it will be here by Wed or Thu). Any requests?

Gameboy

I get the F5 lite tommarow. I live in the boonies about 65 miles away from the towers so my signal strength on the F2 was mediocre at best. We will see how the F5 does. On another note, they should release an F5 Deluxe Turbo edition with dual coax input and the rage theater 550. that would rock.

Hehe, I second that! At least allow analog audio to be transferred to the soundcard by the PCI bus and not through an external cable.

Yup. (Why do you think I want to know the results?)

We're waiting on you to give us the results.

hmmmmm, i could test it at my friends house. He has an F3 and lives in downtown orlando. He also uses an omnidirectional antenna and gets 100% signal on almost every channel. He tells me he gets a lot of stuttering at random. He can get it to stutter when walking around his antenna too. Ill do some testing over there after my midterms next week if someone else hasnt done it by then.

Quick question, as this is my first peek into HDTV cards: I have two PVR-250's already and was thinking of getting a Fusion. Since I already have access to analog via the Hauppauge cards, would I be just as well served by the 5-Lite as the 5-Gold?

I've been slogging through the searched-out-threads and it seems like everyone is still waiting for the word on these cards, so any help, IMHO or otherwise, would be greatly appreciated.


Curent setup:
P4 2.8 on MSI 865PE Neo2, 1GB PC3200, MX440, Haup PVR-250, Adaptec SCSI Card 29160 plugged into Promise Ultratrak TX8 1TB RAID-5 media server

just an fyi - copperbox is out of stock as some of their shipment is held up at customs. I pre ordred on the 27th of may.

jim

It is gone from Copperbox's web site this morning.

Yeah - I had pre-ordered on May 15th (When the ETA was still 5-16 ) and I just called and canceled my order yesterday and re-ordered from Digital Connection. It didn't ship same day, even though I was well before the 2:00pst window - so hopefully they still have SOME in stock . I sent them an e-mail about it this morning and I'll post an update when I get mail back.

The digital connections site now shows that the cards are "backordered" and the new ship date is 5/17/2005

(yes, it DOES say 5/17, though I suspect they MEAN 6/17)

Ooo, got my email that the card has shipped and is in my city now. Hopefully, will get it today!!!

Looking forward to hearing how it goes.

I live in a suburb in the foothills of the Appalachian mountain range. My house is in the middle of my neighborhoodbasically at the lowest point elevation wise, the neighborhood's typography being something like a bowl. Most of the homes are two-story. Also in a flight path of an intl. Airportmy SDTV with a std. bunny-ears antenna occasionally flickers to the RPM of passing helicopters . The area is also old growth forest, so the trees are a dense concentration of very large, tall trees not only around my house, but also the whole surrounding, higher-elevation area.

Been wanting to get an HDTV capture card for PC and mounting a large omnidirectional, something like a DB8, in the lofty attic, but I been waiting for the HDTV PC card tech to mature and with the BF being at least temporarily halted, I don't mind waiting some more.

Very interested to hear reports, such as yours, of areas with lots of reflections and good signal strenghts.

DrCR

__________

Thanks for the update on Copperbox. The cards have been put back on their webpage, but are now listed as preorders. I hope they can get the cards through soon.

If there was someone at home to sign for it today, I'll have results for metro NYC shortly. If not, I'll have results for metro NYC shortly + 1 day.

Just installed the F5 lite. I have the same prob where scanning wont pick up digital channels at all, none. I have to manually add them in. The good news is that with the F2, abc would stutter very badly but the F5 so far is stutter free . ABC on the F2 would drop signal from 68%-0 and just keep doing it.