PC internal TV tuners

Waikiki · Post by **Waikiki** » October 17, 2005, 4:41 pm

I am looking for some advice on a TV tuner card for my PC. The PC will be solely used as a multimedia PC, it's hooked up directly to my plasma widescreen via a DVI in. I don't need a combo video card/TV tuner since my desktop has a GeForce 6800 Ultra and I can't justify replacing it.

I am planning on using it like a TiVO since my Philips HDRW720 turned out to be a buggy piece of crap. My current apartment has digital cable, so this is what I would be interfacing with. Apparently the digital cable is the problem with the HDRW720, it prevents the TV Guide function from working and consequently crashes the system and resets all of the scheduled recordings every night when it tries to update the channel listings.

I'm sure some of you guys have experience with this stuff, and any advice regarding which TV tuner to buy and the software to use would be great.

Thanks!

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » October 17, 2005, 6:35 pm

You don't need much of a graphic card to do what you want. I know you said you had a video card, an ATI 9600 AIW would knock down fan noise (both card and case fan) and much lower heat output, and is pretty cheap.

I've got an ATI TV Wonder, works very nice. Only problem is that the scheduling\recording\menu software that comes with it uses DirectX as a screen interface. That's a problem if your screen saver comes on, you're not logged in, want to play anything else that uses DirectX, etc.. Any of those will kill your recording session.

There's software out there for linux that lets you make what's essentially a Tivo with a PC. If you've a SFF or other small, quiet chassis you could make a very nice set top multimedia box with remote cheap.

http://anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2190

Ransure · Post by **Ransure** » October 18, 2005, 12:35 am

Check out this site ( http://www.byopvr.com) ... lotsa reviews... I recently purchased a DVICO Fusion HDTV Silver to try out the built in ATSC tuner... while it works, its buggy. The problem your going to have if you have digital cable is that you wont get any of the premium HDTV channels yet unless you have an HDTV tuner in the PC, the copy protection wont allow you to transfer HDTV to your PC from your cable tuner.

Depending on how your cable company sends its information, a basic TV tuner like the WinTV products might work for you... That site should help. Oh and from what Ive read MythTV is a great PVR software for the PC if you have a tuner card.

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » October 18, 2005, 10:23 am

For most compatibility possible, look no further than Hauppage products.

Its what I use, and it was cheap for great quality.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » October 25, 2006, 2:52 pm

Time to update this thread!

I'm looking to put together an HTPC for a new tv..

Have

o HD TV 1080p w/HDMI & component connections
o HD digital cable box
o PC for use solely as htpc

Want

o Two tuners (preferably on one card)
o Ability to record two shows simultaneously.
o Ability to burn recorded shows to dvd.
o Ability to play DVDs / video / mp3 from htpc to tv.
o Cards must be PCI (not PCI express)
o Hardware MPEG-2 encoder

So, if I'm not getting OTA HD would I need to bother with an HD tuner card? I think there's two free Brighthouse HD stations in my area that come through the cable unencrypted. The majority of shows I'd like to record are on the SD channels. Not sure if HD OTA equivalents are available or not. If so, it would be nice to have a setup that could play/record them eventually instead of replacing a card.

Also.. if a seperate HD tuner card would be needed, how does the signal get from the tuner card to the pvr card to record an HD show?

I've heard good/bad things about the Haupauge cards.. good that they're widely supported by 3rd party software, bad that the drivers suck. I would really like to stay away from ATI products as I dislike them. A lot. I've got an Nforce chipset on the MB and read that the Nvidia cards have conflicts (maybe that's old info)..

Any suggestions to cards worth getting? Am I correct in thinking I'll need 2 card types to accomplish this?

edit: Guess I should also say, I plan on using this with MSCE 2005. I supposed I could do Linux if there was really a reason to, but I'm lazy and software is easy to come by.

edit2: The FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 2 looks spiffy.. though I don't think it has hardware mpeg2 on it. The Hauppauge WinTV PVR series (350?) looks good too.

Waikiki · Post by **Waikiki** » October 25, 2006, 5:38 pm

Siji, I see you live in Florida. That FusionHDTV is a DVB-T format tuner card, which is the European standard for digital video broadcasting. You need a ATSC tuner card for digital US OTA content, and one that supports QAM for unencrypted cable broadcasts.

I do not think there are currently any dual tuner ATSC PCI cards. Cat's Eye is about to release its 164e card which is a dual tuner that can tune both ATSC and NTSC channels on both tuners, however it is a PCI-x card. I have one of these pre-ordered, and should be receiving it next week, so hopefully I'll be able to tell how it works pretty soon. If you can upgrade your motherboard to one that has a PCI-e slot, I would definitely recommend waiting for some reviews on the Cat's Eye 164e.

The digital tuners cards that work with MCE are all OTA cards, which means they do not work with unencrypted QAM cable broadcasts. There are cards that support QAM broadcasts, however none of them are currently supported in MCE 2005. The QAM tuners usually come with their own software or are external units that output directly to your TV.

If you are looking for a pure analog receiver card, I recommend the Hauppauge PVR-500 card. It is a PCI card with dual analog tuners. So you can record 2 shows at a time, or record one and watch another. This is the analog card that I currently have. I use it with SageTV and MCE 2005. I had problems with the driver that shipped with the card when trying to install it on an ancient copy of WinXP. The newest drivers on Hauppauge's website fixed the issue. However, I just built the new HTPC with MCE 2005, and it recognized the card when I installed it. Afterwards, I did upgrade to the newest driver though.

I have read threads about issues with the NForce chipset and the Hauppauge cards though, so you might want to look into that. Both my old media center and my new build were both using Intel chipsets.

One other note, the digital cards will not have hardware decoders since the digital stream is already in a playable format, so don't worry about looking for hardware encoding on your digital card.

Here are some links:

QAM
ATSC
NTSC
DVB-M
Hauppauge PVR-500
Cat's Eye 164e

Syenye · Post by **Syenye** » October 25, 2006, 5:55 pm

i really like the DVICO FusionHDTV line. i've tried the hauppage and i'm not a huge fan of it.

if you're running a linux box and want a free solution, mythtv works great but it can be a pain to set up. for windows, i believe that you can achieve what you're looking for with media center, though i haven't actually used it. i've always used BeyondTV, and I was really happy with it.

Waikiki · Post by **Waikiki** » October 25, 2006, 6:02 pm

Keep in mind the DVICO FusionHDTV line is only able to record OTA ATSC broadcasts. I have heard good things about these cards as well on the PVR forums, however I do not have personal experience with them and would not buy one unless it had dual tuners.

Hauppauge does not currently make a digital tuner card for ATSC, their offerings are only for DVB-T broadcasts. However, they make an external USB device that can tune both ATSC and NTSC, but I have not heard much about it.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » October 25, 2006, 6:24 pm

Waikiki wrote:The digital tuners cards that work with MCE are all OTA cards, which means they do not work with unencrypted QAM cable broadcasts. There are cards that support QAM broadcasts, however none of them are currently supported in MCE 2005.

So I'm kind of confused.. I've had ATI AIW cards that hooked up to my cable and played TV on my PC just fine.. Am I incorrect thinking this is a digital signal? That's really my main thing.. I want to be able to record shows without paying Brighthouse/TimeWarner every month for their DVR box or for TiVo's fees. I also want to be able to play DVDs from the PC to the TV, as well as downloaded HD or SD tv shows as I've heard the picture quality is better. I could just buy a new DVD player, but if I could spend that $ on a tuner card to do the same thing (maybe even better) then I would rather do that.

Perhaps my understanding of digital cable vs analog is mistaken.

Also, the OS doesn't have to be MCE, I just figured that would be the easiest solution. If it's not, that's certainly not hard to change.

Waikiki wrote:I have read threads about issues with the NForce chipset and the Hauppauge cards though, so you might want to look into that. Both my old media center and my new build were both using Intel chipsets.

I'd read that there were some reported conflicts with the NVideo tuner cards, but hadn't heard about the Hauppauge ones. Will have to investigate more. The main goal I have is to not spend anymore $ than necessary (either up front or in the long run). So PC parts replacement is something I'm trying to avoid if possible. Just have an extra PC sitting around, since I don't play EQ anymore, that's not doing anything.

Waikiki · Post by **Waikiki** » October 25, 2006, 8:04 pm

Any analog tuner card will record your normal SD (NTSC) shows off of your cable. You can also hook an antenna up to the coax input and receive OTA SD shows. If you hook up your coax directly to your TV (with NTSC tuner) and it works correctly, then you need an analog tuner card.

If you want to get HD channels, this will require either an ATSC OTA tuner, or one that supports QAM for unencrypted shows over your cable.

Digital cable that requires a set top box is a different beast. To record from this source you need an analog card that has composite inputs, and you hook the output of the set top box into the tuner card. This gets more complicated when you have to set up an IR blaster to be able to control channel changes.

Nvidia just released an analog dual tuner card (Nvidia DualTV MCE) that is supposed to be the best quality analog tuner out there. Definitely worth looking at!