Best supported DVB-C HDTV tuner? (1 Viewer)

ziphnor

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    Hi,

    Im about to switch from analog to digital cable TV and im trying to choose between the Twinhan Cab CI and the FloppyDTV/FireDTV DVB-C tuners.

    The FloppyDTV is significantly more expensive than the Twinhan (£105 vs £170).

    However, my main concern is getting things up and running with MediaPortal, so if the Twinhan is more troublesome im going with the FloppyDTV.

    Also, as a secondary question, does anyone know whether or not the Twinhan can theoretically handle future MPEG-4 broadcasts? The FloppyDTV can according the support forums(basicly it doesnt attempt to hw decode anything so there is no reason it shouldnt work) only requiring a software update.
     

    jawbroken

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    No DVB card attempts to decode anything, as far as I know, so whether a device will support future MPEG4 broadcasts would be entirely dependent on the manufacturer providing driver/software updates I would think.
     

    Nooky

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    November 26, 2005
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    I am using the TwinHan Cab-Ci for a while now in MediaPortal and it works fine.
    The card is capable of HDTV, but it has to be supported by the software as well (i.e. MediaPortal).

    Drivers are updated very frequently by mediaportal and they're even putting in more. (like compatibility with MediaCenter; not supported standard by Microsoft).
     

    ziphnor

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    Nooky said:
    I am using the TwinHan Cab-Ci for a while now in MediaPortal and it works fine.

    Thanks for the info, what cable provider are you using it with?(and what CAM type?).

    Btw, i just took a look inside my HTPC, and remembered that my motherboard has 3xPCI, 2xPCIE(x1) and 1xPCIE(x4), so if i was to put in 2 Twinhans, i would only have one PCI slot left(meaning i cant leave in both my soundcard and one of my analogue tuners), while i can run a large number of FloppyDTV's of a Firewire card using only one slot. Im not quite decided yet. Are there any support forums for the Twinhan? I was quite impressed by how fast and friendly the responses were on the FireDTV forums.

    Nooky said:
    The card is capable of HDTV, but it has to be supported by the software as well (i.e. MediaPortal).

    Yes, but HDTV can be transmitted as either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. For DVB-S(satellite) there is now a new standard called DVB-S2 which doesnt work with DVB-S cards, and im worried something similar will happen with DVB-C.
     

    Trax

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    September 13, 2005
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    I would'nt go for the FireDVB-C box. They don't support QAM 256, and it's not unlikely your cable provider will switch to that modulation if they need more bandwidth, like mine did :( .

    I think I'm going to try the Twinhan.
     

    ziphnor

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    Trax said:
    I would'nt go for the FireDVB-C box. They don't support QAM 256, and it's not unlikely your cable provider will switch to that modulation if they need more bandwidth, like mine did :( .

    I think I'm going to try the Twinhan.

    Are you refering to the trouble mentioned here:
    http://www.firedtv.com/Forums/tabid/311/forumid/26/postid/608/view/topic/Default.aspx

    So this is still unsolved, from the above thread it seemed like they were working on it?

    Guess id better try the Twinhan as well, im pretty sure my cable provider doesnt exactly have spare bandwidth.

    You seem more knowledgeable about this than me, so maybe you could answer me this:

    When providers switch to HDTV i have heard of the following type of changes:

    1. MPEG-2 -> MPEG-4
    2. Change in modulation ( ie like moving to QAM256 )
    3. Changing DVB standard, like going from DVB-S to DVB-S2
    4. Adding new DRM?

    Seems like 1 and 2 can be handled by the current cards. 3 definetly requires new hardware, but are any such changes planned for DVB-C or is it limited to DVB-S?

    And then there is 4, are there going to come some crazy copy protection schemes along, which might prevent the current cards from working?
    Investing in multiple digital tuners is slightly expensive and i really wouldnt like to have some useless tuners in a few months time.
     

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