PCI vs PCIe tuner... (1 Viewer)

[lodger_001]

I've been researching putting together a micro-atx based HTPC and I'm planning on using an Asus P5K-VM mobo in it. The only problem is that this mobo (and the majority of G33 matx boards i've seen) has 1 PCIe 16x, 1 PCIe 4x and 2 vanilla PCI slots. After an add on vid card, this leaves me with only 1 PCIe slot for a tuner. Is there a significant performance difference b/w PCI and PCIe tuners? And is mixing PCIe and PCI tuners in the same machine a recipe for disaster? I'm looking at the hauppage 1800 & 1600 if it makes a difference....

 

[Marcusb]

At the moment I have a dual DVico PCI and a Dual Digital Now PCIe and both are working fine together.
PCIe is a bit better than PCI, since it doesn't have to share the PCI bus with other resources.

An excellent PCIe card in Australia is the DigitalNow dual hybrid. Only AU$149 for dual DTV and dual analog tv tuners. Don't think this will help in the US though, sorry.

 

[coopers]

Marcusb, that card is only 2 tuners, right? One each of analog and digital?

 

[petsa]

My $0.05 worth would be to check that the tuner you choose support the standby scheme you intend to use, i.e. S1 vs S3. I've had a couple of PCI-based tuners which did not support S3 and it was a major pain before I realized where the issues was. I now have a terratec 2400i (PCI-E) card which works great.

/Peter

 

[coopers]

How do you know what tuners support what sleep states though?
I cannot see this information on any tuner manufacturers websites...

 

[petsa]

That's the tricky part... I found out the hard way, the first card was a Twinhan 3040 which caused a lot of headache for me. I eventually replaced it with a Hauppauge NovaT-500 dual tuner with the same result. Fortunatly I could return it and get the Terratec 2400i instead. All three cards being DVB-T cards for FTA channels.

I guess my advice would be to search these forums and ask questions if you have a particular card in mind.

/Peter

 

[3dcoder]

I'm using Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT which has two tuners and fits in a single PCI-E 1x slot. In my opinion, there's no performance difference between PCI and PCI-E versions.

Using multiple, lets say 5 dual-tuners in all PCI-slots could cause hang-ups. That's because PCI-devices, like those tuners, network cards and some HDD-controllers share the bandwith of the PCI-bus.

In my opinion, if you have PCI-E slots free, buy a card which fits in that slot, then you have older slots available for legacy devices.

 

[m0rph3us]

right, heres the deal,

1 proliant server, 5 PCIe slots, 4TB of storage, 10 mini-itx pc's, 10 42inch plasmas, lots of time on my hands!

what would be the best DVB card(s) for this application? I've seen terratec cards mentioned quite a bit and was wondering if they run fine with mediaportal? if so what models do you reccomend?


regards

m0rph3us

 

[Marcusb]

Marcusb, that card is only 2 tuners, right? One each of analog and digital?

Sorry, just noticed the question now.

That card is four tuners. two digital and two analog. you can use any combination of two at the same time. 2xD OR 2xA or 1D and 1A.
I don't use the analog side of this card so can't comment on that though.