What Freeview TV card do you recommend? (1 Viewer)

[bertybassett55]

At present I have a Happuage Nova-T 500 daul tuner but the channel changing is very slow and painful. A lot of the time the channels appear as a black screen with sound and I rekcon this is due to the card. Also every time I return from supend the system has to install the card again. You can hear it go bing and then bong (like you removed a device and re-installed). This can take as long as 20 seconds to happend in which time the girlfriend as clicked the TV app and it fails to work.

My requirements are it must be PCI, at least a dual tuner and be DVB-T (for freeview). What is everyone else using or can recommend?

in advnace thanks for your replies.

is the blackgoldTV USB dual tuner any good?

 

[mcraenz]

Hauppauge HVR-2200 (If you have a PCIe System) Not sure if It will be any faster though, black screens sounds more like a signal issue?

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

At present I have a Happuage Nova-T 500 daul tuner but the channel changing is very slow and painful. A lot of the time the channels appear as a black screen with sound

Mine has none of the above symptoms, it just needs to 20 secs delay to be found and reinitialiase, also usually very good at weaker signals, so i would agree with mcraenz.

 

[bertybassett55]

last time I tested media portal was with the old TV engine, had a good test with the latest version + SVN today and the problems appear to have disappeared. The channel changing is faster but still not like a dedicated PVR, also the Bing Bong problem is still present but that is a well known problem with the card so can not fix that one.

Yesterday I freed up a PCI-E port and ordered a Pinnacle dual tuner card (with remote) for £17.99 including postage from Play.com. What a bargain!!!

I will let you know if it is any faster at channeling channels.

 

[bertybassett55]

The new card is ace. A little faster at changing channels, same reception when used in ariel no2 (I think ariel no1 is for an indoors ariel but without the instruction I can not confirm this). No supend delay or Bing Bong problems. In fact every is much better card. My only problem was I had to use my only PCI-E slot so lost my external video card with 720p/1080p and had to go with 1028*768 as that was the best I could get from the internal video card

The new card is so much better, the best thing was the price difference, delivered it was £17.99 vs £60.

forgot to say the new card also does analogue TV so good if I get a SKY or FreeSat box.