Getting a new TV Card. what's the best?

RuggieBear

Thinking of getting a new TV Card. what's the best one that is fully compatible with mce05/Vista ?

I've been having some problems with my present tv card (Hauppage pvr 500MCE) At first i thought it was Vista so i reinstalled MCE05 but it turns out the card is not compatible with the motherboard.

I have a fx60 so i have three choices:
get a new motherboard (939),
get a new motherboard and cpu (probably go C2D) or
get a new tv card!:)

So what's the best tv card out there?

Any advice/comments appreciated.

8T8

As far as I know there aren't any the best are gone from the EU market (ATI, NVIDIA) there is one that uses the same chip as the NVIDIA card but the name eludes me and they were pretty hard to find anyway.

So that leaves anything from Avermedia or Hauppauge and I'd probably go with Avermedia as they have decent driver support that includes XP MCE & Vista MCE 32/64-bit.

RuggieBear

cheers 8T8. i'm just completely hamstrung at the moment... i also need the card to have composite inputs as thats how i output my ntl box via a scart adapter.:(

Nothingbetter2d

i would also like to know if there are any good hybrid cards that are based on the pci-x1 slot and can tune in both analogue cable (so i can keep watching skyone, discovery, ch4, e4 & mtv) and also dvb-s free to air (so i can get all the bbc & itv channels and film four channels and also skythree) i would like it to have an mce remote that is also compatible with vista x64 mce.

does anyone know if they exist?

also why isnt there more dvb-s hybrid cards out there....not all countries (inc ireland) have dvb-t up n running yet or have sufficient dvb-t coverage in other countries....it would seem more logical to me if hybrid tv card vendors were to offer more of a range in dvb-s hybrids as everyone can easily point a dish at their "bird" of choice to get free to air channels without being constrained to the broadcast range limitations of dvb-t

8T8

Just in case you don't know Nothingbetter2d but MCE can only handle one source at a time it cannot support multiple TV sources.

PCI-e cards are even rarer as for hybrid cards technotrend are the place to go as the specialize in DVB hardware and have such a card that does DVB-S and s-video/composite.

ablelocks

8T8 wrote:

Just in case you don't know Nothingbetter2d but MCE can only handle one source at a time it cannot support multiple TV sources.

really? my WinTV-PVR-USB2 MCE-Kit got fried recently, so I was thinking of replacing it with the WinTV-PVR-500 MCE-Kit

Dual TV recorder for Windows Media Center Edition. Watch one TV channel while recording another. Or record two TV shows at once.

or is it that you would record on media centre and use the hauppauge software to watch something else?

FrankGrimes

The 500 MCE will work fine - I have one working with two tuners myself. 8T8's point relates to separate TV sources - i.e. MCE can't handle one DVB and one analogue cable tuner at the same time, different EPGs etc. cause hassle, but two tuners using the same source is fine.

ablelocks

thanks Frank.

311

Just a quick question in relation to Hybrid tuners ?

Is it normal to expect less stations on a single DVB/Analog tuner ,as oppose to a dedicate analog tuner?
I read in a few reviews that the Hybrid tuner card ,didn't pick up all analog stations available ,where the dedicate analog did.

Thats what made me go for a dedicated analog card ,I didn't think it was worth the hassle for a system that isn't fully operational as such.

stevejazzx

8T8 wrote:

As far as I know there aren't any the best are gone from the EU market (ATI, NVIDIA) there is one that uses the same chip as the NVIDIA card but the name eludes me and they were pretty hard to find anyway.

So that leaves anything from Avermedia or Hauppauge and I'd probably go with Avermedia as they have decent driver support that includes XP MCE & Vista MCE 32/64-bit.

I've had two avermedia cards...not great at all really. I have the hauppage 1300 now..it's fantastic a noticable improvement all round esp. with text display..almost exactly the same quality as ntl my digital connection

Stoner

Nothingbetter2d wrote:

i would also like to know if there are any good hybrid cards that are based on the pci-x1 slot and can tune in both analogue cable (so i can keep watching skyone, discovery, ch4, e4 & mtv) and also dvb-s free to air (so i can get all the bbc & itv channels and film four channels and also skythree) i?

I think the hauppauge 1100 does that, I had this card, paid 160 stg for it, 2 months later it was 85 stg. I never had a signal to test dvb-s, but the analogue connection worked well through its own software, getting it to work with any decent quality with media centre was very difficult.
I found the whole driver set up to be a very difficult . The drivers were very diffiuclt to work with, had to install it and then take the card out again to see what code was on the chip as this determines what dirves to use etc, lots of cleaning the reg etc.

I would not recommend this card, I still have it in a box somewhere , if I can find it you can have it FOC if you want.