New Capture card - any ideas? (2 Viewers)

[PoBear]

I'm thinking of adding a new TV capture card to my system and was wondering if anybody had direct experience of either the following or has another suggestions.

The two cards I'm looking at are the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2205 and the TBS 6281.

Both cards offer dual DVB-T and DVB-T2 tuners and are about the same price (£90) in the UK.

Any thoughts

Thanks

 

[CyberSimian]

The two cards I'm looking at are the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2205 and the TBS 6281. Both cards offer dual DVB-T and DVB-T2 tuners and are about the same price (£90) in the UK.

I have the TBS 6284 quad-tuner card, which is effectively two TBS 6280 tuners on one card. The TBS 6280 was the predecessor to the TBS 6281.

The problem that I (and others) had/have with the TBS 6280/6284 is that it uses a rare version of the PCI-Express standard, namely version 1.0a. After I purchased my card, it transpired that my Dell motherboard supports PCI-Express 1.0 and 2.0, but not 1.0a. In my case this results in the card being absent from Windows "Device Manager" on wake from sleep.

Others who has this problem were able to get updated BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer, which cured the problem. But my Dell HTPC was already out of warranty, so no new BIOS updates were forthcoming.

So my advice would be:

(1) Check which PCI-Express version the card requires.
(2) Check that your motherboard claims support for this version.
(3) If unsupported, ensure that your motherboard is still under warranty, or still being supported by its manufacturer (i.e. still receiving BIOS updates).

Finally, just to be even handed, my very first tuner cards were a pair of Hauppauge Nova DT-500 dual-tuner cards. One card by itself worked fine, but two in the same HTPC did not.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[PoBear]

Thank you for your reply.

In doing some more searching I came across the following I don't know if it is of any help to you.

Some customers have reported that the TV tuners on these TBS cards become disabled after the PC resumes from sleep mode. This is due to Windows 7's power saving configuration on the PCI Express bus. In order to prevent the problem occurring, please change the PCI Express Link State Power Management setting to 'off'. It can be found in Control Panel > Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change advanced power settings > PCI Express > Link State Power Management.

 

[CyberSimian]

In order to prevent the problem occurring, please change the PCI Express Link State Power Management setting to 'off'.

That may have been the cause of the problem for some users, but there was another set of users for whom that change did not cure the problem. But thanks for suggesting it.

For me, I found that hibernation seems to work OK. On wake from hibernation, Windows presumably resets the PCI-Express bus (or tuners) to a greater extent than it does on wake from sleep. The result is that the tuners remain present in "Device Manager", and are usable by MP or WMC.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK