Low profile Dvb-t Cards (1 Viewer)

[northernmonkey]

OK im finally getting round to sorting bits out for my media centre (after a failed attempt at mythtv with an aver 761 and 771),

ive got my eye on a nice low profile case that im going to mod the front and make i nice acrylic bit for with a slot loading dvd drive, so back to the point which tv card should i go for

so far the list of possible contendors is as follows

Dvb-t
Compro VideoMate DVB-T200 £40
Blackgold DVB-T by GDI £69 (non mce one)
Lifeview Fly DVB T £46

Dvb-t + Analogue
Compro VideoMate DVB-T300 £52
Lifeview Fly DVB T Hybrid duo £56
KWORLD DVBT-220 £45 ??not sure low profile :? ??

As far as i can tell they all have bda drivers (correct me if wrong) the compro 200 is probably the one im going to get atm due to its price, but the lifeview comes with a low profile bracket, what i want to know is which is going to work the best with media portal, and most other software out there?

A nice features to have would be the fm radio but not that important (only on the combined cards anyway), and use of the cards remote if its not too crapy

Plans are to buy two, so they should work in dual dvb-t mode. is this still a problem on media portal, under xp home or do i need to go installing the mpeg2data.ax & PsisDecd.dll patch thingy?

Dont forget im looking in to LOW PROFILE cards, first person to mention a nova-t.......ggrrr

(first person to welcome me to the forum wins a prize :wink*

 

[nbradford]

Welcome! What do I win?!

Ive also been down the MythTV route and ended up being a lot more satisfied with MP - Im pretty sure you are in for a pleasant surprise

Im using dual Ultraview (OEM'ed DVICO) DVB-T Plus cards. They use BDA drivers, and are low profile (come with both a standard and low profile slot mount.). They work really nicely - and are HD capable, and also include an analog input aswell (not tuner - just comp/svideo)

They have the added advantage of being supported in the latest linux kernels if you :GASP: ever go back to myth.

They also come with a very functional USB remote that comes with a remote agent application that you can build configs for each app you use. These configs simply map remote keypresses to keyboard keypresses. You can switch configurations from the remote aswell . It works flawlessly in my setup - no native MP support required (as well as being able to drive any windows app that lends itself to being remote driven!)

 

[northernmonkey]

nice looking cards only trouble is that i cannot seam to find them for sale in the UK or europe, doh

as for the prize see asterisks below

Think im going to get a couple of compro 200's. HDTV would be nice but the UK is so far behind the rest of the world with HDTV, i think its going to be at least 2 years before we see hd on dvb-t mux's. if i got sky or cable and a hdtv tv it could be as early as 3 months away.







* all prizes listed are metaphorical :wink:

 

[nbradford]

Doh - There I was getting hopefull

What a pity you cant get them over there - good luck with the compros.

 

[northernmonkey]

just had a look at the system in your sig and noticed that it is pretty much what im going to build minus the sata and sound card.

how well does it run media portal? any problems with video on the mx440?

 

[nbradford]

Oops - a7s8x-mx should actually be a7v8x-mx now - I had to a do a snappy swap with my my server mobo because of issues with the onboard Soundmax AC97 sound. So its not SATA - but the boards are otherwise pretty similar. (VIA rather than SIS)

I could not get the o/b soundmax to pass through AC3 or DTS to my amp - it insisted on downmixing to stereo no matter what I tried. So I ended up needing the SBLive (which passes everything just fine), which in turn required an extra pci slot (thankfully I had the machine with which I could swap the board ) If you do have o/b soundmax sound and intend s/pdif passthru to a capable amp - beware this problem...

The MX440 with purevideo codecs works very nicely - nvidia must implement DX9 in the driver such that MP doesnt care that that card doesnt support DX9 natively. The purevideo codecs offload MPEG processing to the card so the CPU is still only 60-70% decoding a full HD stream. Quality is excellent. Having said that, Im having occasional stability issues that Im starting to think may be related to the card not supporting native DX9. If you have the choice, Id probably opt for a cheap DX9 card.

MP in general runs really well - I use the powerscheduler plugin to hibernate the machine automatically when idle, it wakes up automatically to record scheduled recordings, takes about 15 seconds to come out of hibernate, cant say I have any performance related issues...

 

[Marcusb]

I have two Compro t300s in my machine downstairs and a DVico Lite in my PC upstairs. I much prefer the compros over the DVico.

The Compro remote also works with MP if you mess around with HIP. I couldn't be bothered and bought an MCE remote.
The DVico remote is ok, but I'm thinking of an MCE for upstairs as well.

The compros are also much cheaper than the DVico.

I do like the low profile brackets that the DVicos come with though. The compros dont, you ahve to remove the bracket.

Also, both the t200 and t300 do HD as well.

For the graphics cards, 5200 is generally the minimum for a really good MP experience.

 

[nbradford]

Yeah - the lite is based on the good old 878A, the plus uses the much newer cx88 - the difference in quality (and price ) is quite marked.

 

[markr]

Hi,

had the same investigation to find a low profile DVB-T card.

hauppage make one (HVR1100LP) - but won't sell it unless you are and OEM manufacturer.
and the one I ended up with - Avermedia 777 - and them email avermedia and they will send you a low profile bracket out.

only issue now - MP doesnt see the card and I cant prove the drivers are BDA ones !. looking throught the MP xml files I can find the Avermedia card listed (A16AR) - so I don't quite know what I've missed.

any suggestions ?

Mark

 

[Marcusb]

My first card was the aver 771. This was supposed to be supported as Aver had said tehy were making BDA drivers available. Then it was decided to hold off these drivers so people would have to buy the 777.
Dman and a few others made a lot of effort to get it working, but with no luck. Aver were extremely unhelpful.

as far as I know, the 777 should work, but I will never touch an Aver card again... A few other MP users have this opinion.