Looking for Mediaportal-supported FM Radio tuner card (1 Viewer)

[CanadianEh]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of switching over to MediaPortal from SageTV. I have the TV cards I plan to use already, but was interested in adding an FM tuner card, that I can hook up to my outdoor FM antenna. I'm looking for a card that is either USB/PCI or PCIe, is something I can currently buy, and has a good quality tuner in it that is capable of picking up distant signals.

I have my outdoor antenna hooked up to an old Pioneer home receiver, so I know the antenna setup is capable for the stations I wish to be able to capture.

Also - I am in the USA, so I am looking for a standard FM radio tuner.


Thanks!
-Jay

 

[mm1352000]

Hi and welcome Jay

Have you got any particular tuner models that you're looking at? I couple of points:
- there aren't too many plain PC FM tuners around - most would be analog TV tuners that also support FM
- cheap and USB analog tuners will almost never have hardware encoders (for digitising the signal) - software encoders can be a real pain to set up and can also be unreliable so avoid them if possible

mm

 

[CanadianEh]

Hi mm, thank you for your comment!

Yes, I realize the answer may likely be a tv/fm combo card with hardware encoding. I'm hoping others that currently are using the FM radio portion of MediaPortal will chime in on specific tried-and-true tuner cards, as well as their ability to reliably pick up FM transmissions.

I see some talk about a Pinnacle board by searching the forums on here, but that's been about it.

Actually, doing a different search, I found that you created a patch for the Hauppauge 2250 card for MP 1.2. Would that patch work with the 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 versions, as well? I currently have 1.2.1 installed, but could easily upgrade.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again

The patch was integrated in MP 1.2.0b I think. Anyhow it should definitely be in both MP 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 - FM radio should work with the 2250. If it doesn't then there is a problem and I would like to see logs.

mm

 

[CanadianEh]

Awesome - thank you so much for the info!

I ordered the card off of Amazon today. I'll try it out this weekend.

 

[CanadianEh]

I just wanted to provide some quick feedback to anyone that may reference this thread in the future. The Hauppauge HVR-2250's built-in FM tuner is able to pull in distant FM radio stations, at least when matched with a good, quality, outdoor FM antenna. I'm able to pull in stations that are around 90 miles away - some are slightly fuzzy, but still, I am pleased with the result.