Recommended TV Cards (1 Viewer)

[mrkaras]

I will second that, I have a DNTV Live! Dual Hybrid PCI-E S2 (same link as Marcusb). It doesn't seem to cause any problems and it seemes to be the strongest tuner I have come across (compared to an asus USB stick tuner and a PCI card from jaycar(the jaycar card causes BSODs as well)). I can't comment on the analogue part as mediaportal won't work with anythin analogue but the digital is fine, but do you have a PCI express slot?

 

[globaldonkey]

Well, after unsuccessfully trying to migrate to TV Server with the DVICO (all sorts of weird problems that I just couldn't be bothered with), I've bitten the bullet and accepted marcusb and mrkaras recommendations and going with the DNTV card. $139 for a dual tuner is a pretty good price.

BTW, I did find out that the Blackgold gear is pure PCIe - no USB brdge, for those who are looking for what looks like a good DVB-T / DVB-S combo.


Update:

DNTV card arrived today. Removed the DVICO c**p, which by the way also has an uninstallation problem just to put the icing on the cake (ie didn't remove the driver package that shows up in the installed programs). Installed the DNTV in a few quick minutes, and tuners auto-tuned in MP a few minute after that.

AND I get SBS now off the same antenna that the DVICO was using and couldn't find it.
AND channels change MUCH faster.....

Whoot! No looking back now..... next job is to migrate to TV Server...... thanks for the recommendation guys.

 

[jimbolina]

Dvico recently updated their drivers and it fixed all of the issues that I had with the dual digital 4. This card works perfectly for me now.

Edit: *This card works perfectly for me now.* I take that back. The 3.67.01 drivers caused the system to lock up when the second tuner was accessed I'm gunna try the 3.68 drivers tomorrow

 

[jwp_online]

Marcusb,

I am considering purchasing the DNTV Dual Hybrid based on your posts. I currently have a single Leadtek DVT1000 and, after reading other posts in forums noted that MediaPortal when loaded on win XP SP2 would not support more than 1 Digital tuner card at a time without a registery patch being applied.

My question is, do you know if I need this registy patch in order to get the DNTV Dual Hybrid to work or does it work straight out of the box

Regards Jason

 

[globaldonkey]

Yes, you will still need the updated dll's from the Windows MCE rollup to allow XP to use multiple tuners properly. Microsoft have never fixed it in XP to my knowledge. Per the install requirements section of the wiki:

GeneralRequirements - MediaPortal Wiki Documentation

 

[Marcusb]

yep, Global Donkey is scorrect. It's not an issue with MP but an inherent XP bug that MS know about and have not fixed, although they did fix it for MCE.

GlobalDonkey, glad you had a good end result. I think my issues were pretty much the same as yours. Spent a lot of time trying to get the dVico working, gave up in disgust, bought DigitalNow - Happy ending

 

[MightyPolo]

Hi, i have gone through this thread and have a question. It was said, that the channel switching time depends on hardware. Is it only the DVB-T tunner or whole computer. My configuration suffers from slow channel switching (10-15sec) with Winfast DTV2000 H. CPU Celeron D 3Ghz + 1GB Ram.

I would like to buy another card, i was thinking of Pinnacle PCTV Dual DVB-T Pro PCI.

Please let me know.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Hauppauge T500 has better reception.

Channel changes once TV started (5-6 secs to start live TV) are around 1-2 secs with my setup, could be slower if low powered graphics, as potential delay while screen redrawn.

 

[rampage101]

Does the DNTV Dual Hybrid do hardware based mpeg/hdtv encoding? I'm assuming it does, but can't see this info anywhere.

 

[Marcusb]

the analog encoding is software based (as is the case for almost all hybrid cards).
For digital, there is no encoding needed since the stream is just recieved and then output to the system (IE, Digital to digital needs no alterations).

With regards to channel changes, this is dependant on a lot of things, especially the signal in your area (not too low and not too high in some cases) and also how well the drivers are written. you'll find big changes with different versions of driver for the same card.