USB or PCI (1 Viewer)

[4Fred]

I'm looking for a DVB-S card or two since I'll be switching from DVB-C to DVB-S. Today I have a FireDTV-C since I'm on cable right now. Been doing some reading and checking and from what I understand ALL devices connected trough USB uses the computer CPU to decode MPEG 2/4 and many PCI or PCIe cards have hardware decoding, right?

I'll be watching and recording HDTV and maybe even record and watch at the same time. If on USB, do my CPU handle to load well enough? It's an Athlon x64 dual core 4000+.

Soo.. the million dollar question is what should I get?

 

[Libra]

You are not quite right - not all DVB-S cards have a hardware decoder. Card only demodulates the signal and converts it into a digital videostream, but further work is done by the video card and/or processor.

 

[4Fred]

I ordered and installed this card: TeVii S470 DVB-S2 but not dish up yet so cant test it.

So what you are saying is that there is no difference between using an USB or PCI card?

 

[mm1352000]

Hi there

Generally USB tuners for DVB-S/S2 aren't as good as PCI/PCI-e cards. They usually can't accept as wide a frequency range or symbol rates as PCI/PCI-e cards. That is all very technical though...

Probably the most important thing with DVB-C, DVB-T or DVB-S is not the card but the codec that you choose to decode the TV signal. The simplest way to describe a codec is to say that it is a small bit of software that takes the signal from your TV card and puts it on the screen. An example of a codec or codec pack is FFDShow, CoreAVC, klite... There are many codecs available!

I think the TeeVii card you chose should work fine. Other users say it works well...