Help choosing a HD Tuner card for my setup

I personally am not a fan of ATI tuner cards, some ppl are but I am not one of them.

For SD tuners cards I am a huge fan of the Nvidia DualTV as well as the Avermedia Purity 250 (single tuner) or the 500 (dual tuner) cards.

for HD tuner cards (OTA or Off the Air) I am a huge fan of the Vbox 150/151 or the Avermedia A180.

http://www.vboxcomm.com/
http://www.aver.com/mpd/pci.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/dualtvmce.html

there's also a deal going on right now with Avermedia tuner cards: http://www.aver.com/mpd/promotion/promotion.html

also check out www.pcalchemy.com for all your htpc needs


OAR? Did you mena OTA? if so OTA is easy to do, please reffer to my tuner card recomendations for OTA HD.

As far as getting HD off of satalite, I guess it is possible with this setup:
http://www.nextcomwireless.com/r5000/products.htm

but I personally don't think its worth it, as its damn near $500 - $600 to get it working.

but other than that, there is no way of DVRing HD from Satalite into a HTPC, just yet. there are rumors still floating around that Directtv and Microsoft are working out a deal to get a tuner card for direct tv service for Vista but nothing has been finalized as of yet.

Also what PVR software you looking to run? MCE? SageTV? If your looking to go the MCR route, please not that in order to get any HD tuner card working in MCE you must have atleast one SD tuner card installed and setup in MCE in order to get the HD tuner card working.

- Josh

SageTV is just another PVR applicating just like MCE. If your planning on running MCE and doing streaming to the 360 then the only HD you'll be able to do is OTA HD.


I run MCE and love it.

- Josh

Correct you need atlest one SD tuner to get an HD tuner working.


The only card I know about that will work with this is the original ATI HDTV wonder, but it requires third party drivers and doesn't work all the time.


I've acutally got 4 tuner cards,

SD:
Avermedia 1500 MCE
Avermdia Purity 250

HD:
running two Avermedia A180

- Josh

record, time shift live tv, ect... between me and my wife we've got a few shows we like to watch and with a new baby its nice to pvr them and watch them later on when we have free time.

Honestly I don't use the SD tuners as much as I do the HD ones, I belive between me and my wife we are recording atleast 4 shows a night, some of them are at the same time so two hd tuners are absolutely needed for that.

- Josh

>> I'll get two HD's and one SD card

That's the way I went. I got an ATI 650 and a Vbox Cat's Eye 150. With all the HD sports happening on the weekends (college and pro football, baseball playoffs, hockey and some nascar) there's just too much stuff on to not have at least 2 HD tuners.

also there are hacks for MCE were you can go above the two HD tuner limit, there are a few guys on www.thegreenbutton.com who are running 2 SD and 4 HD tuners.

Though I think thats a little over kill.

- Josh

I thought they had some drivers that let you just use the HDTV Wonder without a SD card when using MCE. I don't have a HDTV Wonder, so I've never tried them.
Link

ummmmm..... Thats EXACTLY what I said.


The Kram drivers are a modified third party driver that allows you to setup the HDTV wonder without the need for a seperate SD tuner card.

- Josh

Looks like the right place to ask. Running MCE

I've been scratching my head at this HDCP thing.
Current video card - ATI Radeon X300/550
was thinking of: PowerColor X1600 Pro HDMI

I was thinking of the AverMedia MCE A180 for HD purposes

I currently have the Angel MPEG dual tuner from Lumanate (emuzed)

Josh, do you have two MCE A180's? I'm assuming it is two separate cards?

Any thoughts on the cards/setup?
Mucho appreciated!

Skid

ps - gonna throw in an xbox extender too

what about the HDCP thing? Whats your questions on it? Really its not needed until vista and if and only if you plan on doing cable card or satalite tv with vista MCE.

Or if you plan on running a HD DVD or BR DVD setup, those two things are the only reason you'd need a HDCP based video card right now.


Nice card but not absolutely nessary. I am personally a huge fan of nvidia, but to each is their own right.


Corect, I am running 4 individual tuner cards. Two Avermedia A180's, one Avermedia 1500 MCE, and one Avermedia Purity 3D 250.

Love the cards, they do what I need and are cheap.


What Xbox? regular or 360? Just and FYI the regular xbox wont do HD, the only HD extender for MCE right now is the 360.

- Josh

Josh,
Thanks a ton.
As far as the video card goes, yeah I was preparing for Vista and hopefully the cablecard in addition to HD-DVD/BRD. Thinking of it as "future proofing" but is there really such a thing?

On the HDCP thing - Through research I was getting conflicting reports (at least to me). Some would say that if a video card had HDMI that meant that it was HDCP compliant, some would disagree. I suppose the point is to make sure the card actually says HDCP compliant.

Thanks for the info on the extender too. It *was* going to be for a regular x-box. Emphasis on was.

I've ran the Vista compatibility program and it says that my computer is Vista ready. With a few caveats of course. But I've also read that the cablecard for HD will only be available on (what's the word I'm looking for??) pre-built machines.

I suppose at this point if I want to watch HD programming it's going to be a better video card and adding an Aver MCE A180.

One other question. Watching live/recorded tv on the computer is much more "washed-out" than a normal TV. Chroma is off, just basically that washed out type of look.
Would the video card help that?
Possibly changing the tuner card? current - dual angel mpeg (emuzed)

I'm getting cable programming through a coax cable to the angel card then watching through MCE.

Extremely glad I found this thread.
Thanks again.
Take care

Skid

Well if your just running vista alone then hdcp isn't needed. also as of right now the only way you'll get cable card is if you buy a pre-built machine from places like HP and dell.

so the only thing I'd be worried about hdcp is with hd dvd and br dvd but if and only if you have a digital display, if your running compoent cables or vga to your display device then you won't need hdcp as you can still (as of right now) do hd and br dvd without a hdcp video card, but only if your doing analog video.


HDMI and HDCP DO NOT go hand in hand, there are plenty of hdmi cards that are not HDCP compliant.

go here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1071342 for a full list of HDCP video cards.

also an article further explaining HDCP and hd and br dvd playback:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==


NP, I was disapointed too, oh well.


Correct. But I am sure someone will figure out a way to buy OEM cable card/OCUR tuners. and be able to run it it on DIY machines but it'll probably be a while before that happens.


Just rember you don't need a hugely powerfull video card to do HD, I am only runninga Nvidia 6600GT agp and I get OTA hd playback just fine.


Probably a combo of both. But can't say for sure. I just know that SD cable for me right now looks like crap, thats why i just stick with mostly OTA HD.


yea same here excpet I have two motorola SD cable box's hooked up to my SD tuner cards via Svideo, it gives me a slightly better PQ and allows me to recored the premium content as well.

- Josh

For the orginal poster,
It depends on what you want to do.

For me, I find that MCE2005 is very robust and easy to use. MCE combines all sources under one easy to use interface.

My current setup;
nMediaPC 200SA case,
AMD Semprom 64/3000,
eVGA 7600GS AGP 256MB video,
1GB DDR400 memory,
SoundBlaster 24 Live USB
2 WD 250G Sata drives,
Dvico Fusion 5Gold (HDTV),
ATI TV Wonder 650(HDTV + SD), and
Nvidia PureVideo Decoder.
I also have an older Fusion 3Gold and an ATI Wonder Elite(550 SD)


My HTPC is attached to an 32 LCD HDTV via DVI cable. I can run the system at 760x1368 resolution. I normally run it at 720p. I play DVDs CDs. The audio is fed to from the Soundblaster Live via optical fiber to my audio system. DD5.1, DTS plays without any problems.



With my current setup I can record two HD programs and watch an recorded HD program at the same time.

As for the Kram harcked drivers, I tried using two Fusion cards with the hack driver. While I was able to use the system, I experianced stablity problems etc.
The stabiltiy problem may me decide to go out and buy the ATI TV Wonder 650 card.

So If you are going to use MCE, I would suggust the ATI TV WONDER 650 turner card which has both OTA HD turner and SD NTSC tuner. MCE requires that you have an SD turner with MPEG encoder. The 650 board satisfies the SD turner requirment.

I you want to watch Clear Quam HDTV programing from your cable company, then the Fusion 5 GOLD RT is a very good choice. But you will still need on SD tuner in the system to satisfy the requirements for MCE.

The ATI HDTV wonder is an older board and I would not recommend it.

My current system is completly stable. I usualy use the sleep mode when I turn it off. Thus when turn it back on the MCE interface just comes back up. I never use the standard XP interface for anything unless I am doing maintance. I only attached mouse and keyboard to do maintanice.

I hope this helps

Bruce,

Which card you like more for just OTA HDTV RT 5 Gold or ATI 650?
Which card has better tuner / receiver?
Which card shifts channels faster? I heard that RT does it 3 times faster then ATI 650 - is it true?

thanks
Mike.

How where you able to get the 650 working? the 650 is just like the original HDTV wonder, where you couldn't get it working unless you had third party drivers like the Kram drivers.


Honestly I think the ATI cards are over rated and not worth the money, the Vbox and Avermedia OTA hd cards are cheaper and work just as good.


You can't do Clean QAM tuning with MCE at all. So not sure what your talking about here.


Correct thats why I recomended the Vbox or Avermeida tuner cards


- Josh

Thanks for your help Josh. Glad I found this thread before I went out and spent too much dough.

Think I'll just get a better video card and the MCE A180.
Josh, were you happy with the installation guide for the A180? I'm not a technical whiz.

Skid

Install guide? WTF are those things?

hehe...

Kidding asside, a tuner card is easy to install, just like any other pci card that goes into a pc.

install the dirvers when it asks for them.

and your good to go.

- Josh

How would you compare VBox and Avermedia vs. DVICO Fusion RT 5?

Can't comment on the Fusion tuner cards, I've only tried and am using the Vbox 150 and the Avermedia A180.

I've got two HTPC's, and I can tell you that botht he Vbox and Avermeida are on part for PQ, the vbox is a little better preventing multipath issues and has better recive sensitiviy so if you need a tuner that will get good signals in bad places the vbox is great for that.

- Josh

check out VBOX Cat's Eye 164e Dual ATSC Terrestrial HDTV