are USB tuners any good?? (1 Viewer)

[datfreak]

hi all,
i really want to use 2 digital tuners on my htpc, but i only have 2 pci slots(damn sli board). One slot is already taken by a videomate t300 card.
The problem is I really want to keep one slot for a soundcard or even a dvb-s pci card later.
Now you are prob thinking that I should get a dual tuner digital card but I want to try and save some $$$.
A solution would be to use a digital USB dvb.. just as a "record" second tuner for MP, but are they any good?

thinking of compro u3 or a TwinhanDTV Alpha USB 7045A

What am I missing out using a usb VS pci??


other option would be to buy another pci digital card and hope they bring out a pci-e soundcard later...but thats a bit of a "what-if"

ideas?

 

[the_moose]

I have a dual fusion with a USB loopback for the second tuner - effectively a second usb tuner. All works fine except when coming out of standby (S3) it tends to confuse windows sometimes, as it needs to re-examine all USB devices on wakeup, meaning that it seems to lose the plot a bit and not always pick the USB card up. This may not be the case with other hardware - I am running a shuttle st62k and media portal on win XP MCE (not used!)

 

[igalan]

I'm using a Hauppauge HVR-900 (USB) as second tuner (DVB-T). And same problem, if you suspend (S3 or S4) the computer while MP is loaded (even in the Home Screen with TV off), it won't work well after resuming. I'm using PVR Scheduler to work around this, it closes MP before hibernating the PC, so when it comes back everything works perfectly .

 

[mdsflyer]

My computer refuses to recognise USB 2.0 after resuming but is fine with USB 1.0, i have no idea why this is but it means i'm very reluctant to install something like you describe above. Just my tuppence worth. Cheers m

 

[gloomyandy]

Interesting, I have a Hauppauge Nova T stick which is USB 2 (plus a HVR-1300 which is PCI). Both seem to work fine when resumed from S3. I'm using recent svns with PowerScheduler and make use of the re-init tuners on resume settings. I guess my hardware is fairly new though...

Andy

PS USB Tuner seems fine, except for occasionally losing lipsync when first turning on TV in MyTV (which I hardly ever do), not sure what causes it and I fairly sure older versions of MP did not do this. Switching channels usually fixes the problem. Oh and I also get a very occasional slight stutter but I think that may well be down to the poor signal I have (The PCI card seems to suffer even more with this...).

 

[Edna]

I'm also using a Hauppauge Nova T stick (DVBT) as my second tuner. I had some problems with the USB tuner not getting recognized after resume from S3 - but changing some of the USB power settings (not allowing windows to turn off this device to save power ) seems to have fixed that.

Quality of the signal seems to be identical to my PCI based DVBT tuner