FusionHDTV7 RT Gold

Did u end up buying this tuner a1677c?

The FusionHDTV7 Gold uses the Xceive XC5000 silicon based tuner. Dvico is moving to the Xceive tuner on all their products.

The Xceive tuner has good reviews and performs better then the prevision generation cards that uses the 5th gen LG tuner/Demodulator.

Regards,
Ralph

Eh...a "tuner" (engineering term) is NOT a "tuner"; it's one component of a tuner, and not the most important.

What's meant by "tuner" is usually everything inside the shielded box, and that IS the most important part. RF amplifier, mixer-oscillator, IF amplifier, IF filter, demodulator. But the front end doesn't differ as much between devices as the demodulator does, so the demodulator ends up being the most important.

The demod used in the new FusionHDTV7 Gold is listed as a samsung S5H1411.

Here's some more info on the new Dvico card.

Does anyone know if the new FusionHDTV7 comes with a seperate Tuner Application?

Or is it supported ONLY under MCE?

I am running Vista Ultimate X64 and I have tried MCE and it is the pits. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.

VV

The fusion 5 comes with its own application. I expect the fusion 7 will use that same application, with different drivers.

I prefer using MCE for scheduled recordings, but the included application is very usable for just watching live TV.

adamNJ, Thanks for responding.

I never could get MCE to work under Vista Ultimate XP64. I don't know what the problem is but I suspect it has someting to do with the build-in system security, ACL et al, and possibly the Fusion drivers. I finally gave up after a month of testing. Needless to say Vista Ultimate X64 is a very stable and user-friendly OS but it still has some ways to go before it is as useable as good old XP. That's my opinion...

I am having an absolutely terrible time with Dvico's Tuner AP under Ultimate X64. I am on the 3rd Beta that they have provided to try to overcome some of the MANY problem. Even after reporting them the same bugs persist. It looks like the company doesn't accept input from customers but relys only on their internal QA. Every time I submit a new bug report they always make a point of telling me that it has been "thoroughly" tested under X64 and it works. Then they offer me, yet another, BETA. I am getting really tired of fighting with their software.

However, I have always liked the high-quality of the HD recording using my FusionHDTV5. When it works it is Fantastic! And so this new card looks like an improvement (their claim). But with the problem I have suffered with their app I would view this as a somewhat risky purchase.

One big problem with the HDTV5 was overheating after continuous recording of a few hours. I tried to capture a 6-hour sporting event off of HDTV and I got about 4 hours in HiDef before it lost channel sync. Then I had to switch to NTSC. It sort of ruined the recording. So hopefully this new HDTV7 model will run cooler and eliminate that problem,

I think I will go ahead and purchase the HDTV7 today. I'm feeling Lucky!

VV

So did you get it? And if so, would you recommend it to others?

yea I would like to know how it all works and if there are any quality issues.

Seeing as the PCIe version of FusionHDTV7 is available, does anyone have any feedback on the chipsets at all?

http://www.cyberestore.com/dvico-fus...ing-p-793.html

I had the USB version of the Fusion 7, for about three or four days. It wasn't as good reception-wise as the Fusion 5. Plus, it was dramatically slower on my computer. Not worth getting, in my opinion.

Yes, I did buy the FusionHDTV7 Gold, and No, unfortunately I can't recommend the FusionHDTV7, or the HDTV5 Gold or Lite versions.

The hardware has always been very good WHEN IT WORKS. But these products have always suffered from major problems with the software. And it seems to be getting worse with every new release.

It appears that what they are now doing is throwing out features to make the software more stable. The latest release, v3.68, won't play the audio for my HDTV5 or my new HDTV7, because the sound source selector configuration does not show anything to select. The previous version, 3.66.01, showed LINE-IN as the default and it worked OK for both cards. But there is nothing to select in the new version. Hence, no audio on any TV channel.

Also, the new version scans but can not find the main network HDTV channels that are non-encripted QAM on my Comcast cable. It finds some higher numbered channels but it only displays them in 480i. This new version of the software no longer displays (or records) the 720i or 1080i video. If I can't tune these lower-number network channels then I can't record the special HDTV programming that appears only on these channels. This is the ONLY reason that I have a TV card in my PC in the first place, to capture sports, local news and special programming, etc.

And in a previous version, they deleted the MPEG real-time encoder function, leaving only the TP (transport protocol) version for captured video. So they offered a utility program that would convert the TP file back to MPEG. Unfortunately, this utility will not function on my Vista Ultimate X64 system. It gives an error message that says I am "not authorized" to create files, or some such nonsense. I am the owner/admin and the only user of this system. If I'm not authorized then who is?

I have basicly "had it" with Dvico and their products. I have stuck it out with them for the last two years because I thought that eventually they would work the bugs out. As I said, the hardware works great. But now I believe that this is really a matter of their "corporate culture". I don't think they will ever fix their software because they just don't have the will to get the job done. It has been a classic software-support "horror story".

I am a retired software engineer with 44 years of experience, so I understand "the nature of the beast". Either the company is run by "bean counters" who are too cheap to hire the needed software talent, OR ELSE it is run by narrow-minded hardware engineers who are resentful of software, don't understand it, and won't hire the needed software talent. Been there, seen that!

I am now totally done with Dvico. I am going to dump my two Fusion Lite cards, my HDTV5 Gold and my new HDTV7 Gold, and recover what I can and buy some other vendor's card. I only switched from Hauppauge to Dvico because the former had no HDTV capability at the time. So two years later, I guess I will now switch back to Hauppauge.

VV

I just lost a battle trying to get a VistaView Saber DA-1N1-I to work in my XP system running MediaPortal. I was about to purchase a FusionHDTV7 Gold and give that a shot when I came across this post. The reason I am looking at these two cards is that I need a low profile, PCI card, as the heat sink on my graphics card intrudes on the space of my PCI-e slot.

It sounds like the hardware was good, but the software was junk. Did you ever try using the FusionHDTV7 card with MediaPortal?

I haven't tried MediaPortal but I will check it out. The FusionHDTV7 comes with BDA drivers so I expect there are more than a few 3rd-party TV/PVR applications that will work with the card.

I have very mixed feelings about the FusionHDTV7 card. But it is MUCH BETTER than the previous FusionHDTV5 card that I used for two years. That card used to overheat after an hour of usage and drop the HDTV mode or shutdown completely. No matter what I tried I could never get it back into HDTV mode until my system was turned off for a while. That pretty much kills the opportunity to record off of a live TV event.

The software has always been THE problem with the Dvico TV/PVR product line. But I am kind of used to the problems now. It does its job OK but sometimes the tuner app just suddenly aborts requiring a reboot to stop the background service. And sometime after running the TV card the sound from a TV channel will leak into a movie I am playing from my hard disk. That is just very wierd when it happens; like hearing Jeapordy play on top of RAMBO 3, etc...

But I certainly can't fault the video quality when recording from an HDTV broadcast. I have managed to get several absolutely crystal-clear recordings that are really spectacular. They are written to disk in TP (transport stream) format so they have to be converted before they can be viewed or used. I use EM Total Converter to convert from TP to MPEG2 and then I can edit the video using CyberLink PowerDirector. I have my video work process flow down pretty well now so I am going to stick with the FusionHDTV7 until I can find something better. So far I haven't. And of course, since the problem is the software, it can be fixed with the next release. So I am still hopeful of an improvment.

Good Luck.

VV

Well, my FusionHDTV 7 Gold arrived last night, andbit wasn't with out a little worry I installed it. Foolishly, I installed the drivers and application that came on the CD that came with the card (Who needs instructions?). As the application began its QAM scan... BANG! BSOD.

OK. Lets try that again. I uninstalled the application, downloaded the latest package (dated today! Sweet!) from the DVICO web site, and installed it. After the reboot, the QAM scan (and the subsequent NTSC scan) worked like a champ! 70+ channels found. Now, the quality isn't as good as my cable box, but I have no played with the settings too much. Does anyone have any suggestions with regards to this?

Now, the next step is to get the channels discovered in MediaPortal. Does any one have any experience with getting channels discovered in MediaPortal with this card? Does anyone know what QAM frequency settings to use?

Setup:
Windows XP Home w/ Service Pack 3
nVidia GeForce 8500GT
Intel Core2 Duo - 2.20GHz
1 GB RAM
MediaPortal 1.0.0.0 RC2

dugiehowsa, Congratulations on your purchase! I have the very same card.

I think you are going to like the video quality of the recordings made from this card, especially in HD. I don't own an HD-capable TV or a cable box so I have only the unencrypted QAM HDTV channels to look at on my PC. However, the broadcast quality sure looks great to me.

As far as the configuration of the individual channels (freqs) I don't think you need to mess with that as the individual channels are detected automatically, based on the signal strength. I think the frequencys may be recorded in the Win Registry for review and use by the low-level drivers.

The signal strength cutoff is about 80db and anything below that is not detected, for good reason: no signal. But even if a channel is detected, up in the 90+ db range, there still might not be any video. At least, that's how it goes on my Comcast Basic here is Western Washington. Incidently, it is probably advisable to do a re-scan every once in a while since the cable company seems to be moving the programming around on the spectrum.

And by the way, the included Dvico Signal Checker utility never has worked for me. I always re-try it with every new release but it just doesn't do anything except scan for an hour or more. It never finds even one channel. I don't know why they still include it in the releases.

Sorry to hear about your BSODs. I had some of those a long time ago but none in over a year. I think the TV card likes being installed in a slot as close as possible to the video card, because of the way the backplane priority works. Now for me, the Tuner App just occassionaly aborts suddenly and without warning. I don't know how much longer it will take Dvico to get their SW in order but it seems that their current approach is to just delete more features with every new release. For example, between the v3.68 and the latest v3.68.04 release they deleted a handful of video capture configuration options. In order to get a descent video capture I have to kill every background task and process that I don't need in order to minimize the system overhead. This is so I can get a glitch-free recording. It is amazing how much stuff is running in the background that isn't needed, like Acrobat Reader, Media Center, PowerDVD, etc.; all stuff I don't need or want running. Just fire up your Task Manager and take a look for yourself.

As far as getting any 3rd-party apps running, you may have some problems. I have tried several apps with unacceptable results. The Dvico cards come with BDA drivers only and I am guessing that they might be a little incompatible, based on my experiences. I started with Win MediaCenter but got nowhere with it. The ChrisTV PVR app gave me the best results. But if you have some success please share it with us on this forum.

I am currently bringing up a new machine with a PCIe bus, so I am considering purchasing Dvico's new dual-tuner card. I hope to get even better recording performance since I will have dual-core CPUs and the PCI-Express bus. But my new box is currently running Win Server 2008 which is based on Vista Ultimate X64. Supposedly, according to several forums and blogs, Server 2008 is a better choice for a workstation OS. Pretty much, all drivers and apps are compatible. But unfortunately, it doesn't come with native BDA support. There is info on the net on how to get it running but I haven't tackled that so far as it requires me to move my current FusionHDTV7 card over to the new box. I will be doing this over the weekend.

Good Luck, and stay in touch!

VV

I was originally going to use the AverTV M780 from AverMedia. Its a PCI-E card, and everyone I talked to raved about it. My problem was that when I opened the case to install the card, the heat sink from my video card encroached on the real-estate of my only PCI-E slot. Its a nice card in that it is a combo tuner card, as it has two separate, dedicated analog and digital ports. Here is where I first heard about it:

missingremote.com

Check it out if you're interested.