United States of America
I have Media Portal setup and working well with a single PVR-150(all I can say is wow compared to GBPVR, tweaked GBPVR for a week before finally having had enough, almost out of the box MP was better than GBPVR, except for xmltv, what a PITA that was). Anyway, I want to add a second card to do both analog and HDTV. As I understand it QAM is basically out of the question right now on MP(would love to have the QAM option). So as I see it my choices are HVR-1600, HDTV Wonder or ATI 650. I would rather not spend more than $80-$90 for the card. It looks like the HVR-1600 has just recently made it so it works under MP with tweaks from users. The HDTV wonder is well supported but the comments have been that the analog tv quality isn't up to snuff. And the 650 seems pricey for me at my first stab at HD. Any suggestions, comments on the different cards or even other suggestions? Since the HDTV Wonder has been around for awhile there are plenty for cheap on e-bay. How much worse than say the PVR-150 is the picture quality on HDTV Wonder?
HVR1600,HDTV Wonder or ATI 650? (1 Viewer)
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I had an HDTV wonder and ended up returning it due to a bad remote but I wouldn't buy it again now that the 650 and 1600 are out.
I'm trying to decide which of the other two to buy myself. The 650 has a better analog tuner and a radio tuner so I'm leaning towards it but the 1600 includes an IR blaster. For ATSC I don't think there will be a difference. Even the HDTV Wonder had a great ATSC picture.
I'm trying to decide which of the other two to buy myself. The 650 has a better analog tuner and a radio tuner so I'm leaning towards it but the 1600 includes an IR blaster. For ATSC I don't think there will be a difference. Even the HDTV Wonder had a great ATSC picture.
Well, I just purchased the ATi card.
If heat is an issue in your system I'd have to give the advantage to the ATi card. It's smaller and the tuner looks much more integrated. I expected to be much larger and was pretty surprised when I got it out of the box.
I don't have my custom MediaPortal box with me at the moment but I'm going to try it out on my desktop now and the other machine in a few days.
If heat is an issue in your system I'd have to give the advantage to the ATi card. It's smaller and the tuner looks much more integrated. I expected to be much larger and was pretty surprised when I got it out of the box.
I don't have my custom MediaPortal box with me at the moment but I'm going to try it out on my desktop now and the other machine in a few days.
Ok, before I talk about the video quality I want to point out that the machine I'm running this on has SERIOUS problems with codecs and many apps can't play audio and that problem existed long before I purchased this card. It also has a graphics card that I've had difficulty with HDTV bandwidth before so I expected to see the same issues I saw before with testing HDTV on it.
First impressions...
The package:
The box includes the TV tuner card, some instructions, an FM type antenna, a purple breakout box/cable with S-Video/composite video/stereo audio and an install CD. Oh, and a neon pink "Do Not Return This Product" sheet that tries to get you to call tech support before giving up on the card. I'm guessing TV tuners have a high return rate and the returns actually have a low defect rate.
The free remote offer on the outside of the box is only mentioned inside the box on the install cd. It takes you to a web page where you can chose between a remote wonder for free (+ ~$9 s&h) or 1/2 off a media center remote. Since my media portal box already has a remote I opted for the cheap on and I'll give it to my brother.
The included software is slightly better than the previous version that came with the HDTV Wonder. I'd call it a bare minimum solution but it will let someone use the card until they install something decent.
I installed the latest ATi drivers from the website because ATi never ships decent drivers with anything.
Video quality:
The HD video quality is stunning... but that is just HD in general. I think the tuner changes channels faster than the HDTV Wonder did but it's been a while since I used it. The analog video quality is better than the HDTV Wonder was... no question. Without a head to head comparison I couldn't say how much. Since the machine has audio codec/graph issues or something like that I couldn't check the audio.
HDTV Video stuttering appeared to be the same as when I tried the HDTV Wonder. That's my graphics card being too slow and not the tuner's fault.
So you understand what it's doing...
1080i occasionally drops a frame here or there, 720P is flawless for the auto race I watched part of and 420P jerks constantly. I'm guessing it's a compression and scaling issue and my passive cooled Sapphire X1300 just isn't up to the job or I've just never found a codec that could deal with it. I even tried overclocking but it did little to help.
With the right video card or analog video this shouldn't happen.
I had an old version of media portal and it detected 6 different tuners for some reason. After installing a new one it detected two and the channel scans picked up channels easily. The HDTV Wonder didn't work with both tuners when I tried it but I don't know about how it works with the latest version.
The card seems to work but I'm having lockups when I switch MediaPortal to full screen mode. I figure that will go away when I try it in my dedicated MediaPortal box.
Overall, this card is smaller, cooler and offers better picture quality than the HDTV Wonder.
Other:
One thing I did not mention was that the manual also talks about a PCI express version of the card so I'm guessing that will appear in the near future.
This might just be the smallest and coolest PCI HDTV tuner card and it has one of the best if not THE best analog tuners if the AnandTech review I read is correct. Not to mention this one has radio, analog TV, HDTV and S-Video/Composite/audio inputs all one the same card. If your system can only handle one card that may be reason enough to buy it over the competition which has no radio.
Once I get my regular system back (I loaned it to a friend to see if he wanted me to build him one) I'll spend some more time with it. I'll also try a faster graphics card. Once I do I'll post some additional info and hopefully add some pictures to my HTPC work in progress thread.
First impressions...
The package:
The box includes the TV tuner card, some instructions, an FM type antenna, a purple breakout box/cable with S-Video/composite video/stereo audio and an install CD. Oh, and a neon pink "Do Not Return This Product" sheet that tries to get you to call tech support before giving up on the card. I'm guessing TV tuners have a high return rate and the returns actually have a low defect rate.
The free remote offer on the outside of the box is only mentioned inside the box on the install cd. It takes you to a web page where you can chose between a remote wonder for free (+ ~$9 s&h) or 1/2 off a media center remote. Since my media portal box already has a remote I opted for the cheap on and I'll give it to my brother.
The included software is slightly better than the previous version that came with the HDTV Wonder. I'd call it a bare minimum solution but it will let someone use the card until they install something decent.
I installed the latest ATi drivers from the website because ATi never ships decent drivers with anything.
Video quality:
The HD video quality is stunning... but that is just HD in general. I think the tuner changes channels faster than the HDTV Wonder did but it's been a while since I used it. The analog video quality is better than the HDTV Wonder was... no question. Without a head to head comparison I couldn't say how much. Since the machine has audio codec/graph issues or something like that I couldn't check the audio.
HDTV Video stuttering appeared to be the same as when I tried the HDTV Wonder. That's my graphics card being too slow and not the tuner's fault.
So you understand what it's doing...
1080i occasionally drops a frame here or there, 720P is flawless for the auto race I watched part of and 420P jerks constantly. I'm guessing it's a compression and scaling issue and my passive cooled Sapphire X1300 just isn't up to the job or I've just never found a codec that could deal with it. I even tried overclocking but it did little to help.
With the right video card or analog video this shouldn't happen.
I had an old version of media portal and it detected 6 different tuners for some reason. After installing a new one it detected two and the channel scans picked up channels easily. The HDTV Wonder didn't work with both tuners when I tried it but I don't know about how it works with the latest version.
The card seems to work but I'm having lockups when I switch MediaPortal to full screen mode. I figure that will go away when I try it in my dedicated MediaPortal box.
Overall, this card is smaller, cooler and offers better picture quality than the HDTV Wonder.
Other:
One thing I did not mention was that the manual also talks about a PCI express version of the card so I'm guessing that will appear in the near future.
This might just be the smallest and coolest PCI HDTV tuner card and it has one of the best if not THE best analog tuners if the AnandTech review I read is correct. Not to mention this one has radio, analog TV, HDTV and S-Video/Composite/audio inputs all one the same card. If your system can only handle one card that may be reason enough to buy it over the competition which has no radio.
Once I get my regular system back (I loaned it to a friend to see if he wanted me to build him one) I'll spend some more time with it. I'll also try a faster graphics card. Once I do I'll post some additional info and hopefully add some pictures to my HTPC work in progress thread.
do u have a link to the AnandTech review you mentioned above?
Anandtech hasn't compared the HD cards.
They don't even directly compare the ATi 650 and Hauppage cards.
They only compare the ATi and NVidea analog tuners.
However, if you look at the comments you'll see they say the Hauppage cards are about the same in quality as the ATi 550 chipset and they do say the 650 is better than the 550.
However, if the Hauppage HDTV card has an improved tuner there may be little difference. Your choice of video compression when you record may negate advantages of one over another.
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2778
They don't even directly compare the ATi 650 and Hauppage cards.
They only compare the ATi and NVidea analog tuners.
However, if you look at the comments you'll see they say the Hauppage cards are about the same in quality as the ATi 550 chipset and they do say the 650 is better than the 550.
However, if the Hauppage HDTV card has an improved tuner there may be little difference. Your choice of video compression when you record may negate advantages of one over another.
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2778